Snow getting into every nook and cranny only makes sense if people are slogging through the back forty to get to the door. Presumably a customer drives into a parking lot, steps onto a paved surface that has been shoveled (or plowed?), and stays on a paved surface until they reach the door.
If salt has been used to melt the snow it would only adhere to the bottom of the soles and mostly come off on the outer door mat and certainly on the inside mat. If it is a gravel parking lot any problem with it sticking to shoes would apply regardless of the season. My dentist has a gravel parking lot and I have never had the gravel stick to my shoes so much that it could be noticeable.
But it doesn’t only snow overnight! Snow accumulates all day long on a LOT of days!
It’s very, very, very common to slog through 2, 4, 6 inches of snow in parking lots and walkways.
Sorry, but I’m on chemo, which makes my extremities sensitive to cold. I have to have shoes or slippers on. Even with socks on it’s torture on my feet.
At any rate, I worked in an optometrist’s office for 7 years. We did not ask people to remove their shoes. Even on the wettest days there was rarely any water or mud tracked in. I’m talking maybe, maybe 2 or three times in 7 years.
My mother, for one. One of her knees is majorly fucked up (she had the cartilage removed years ago after an injury, and she has arthritis, and she also has tendonitis in one foot. She even wears sandals around the house.
I can’t imagine wanting to wear a pair of boots provided by a doctor’s office that other people had probably worn. Athlete’s foot, plantar’s warts, etc. Yuck!
I grew up in Buffalo, so I know snow. I’ve never gone to any business that asked me to remove my shoes or boots. Certainly none that provided booties to wear. Very strange concept.
Hell, we used to cross country ski to the grocery store when a blizzard hit, so please do not tell me I don’t get “winter weather”.
I happen to have really poor balance from being hard of hearing and have
neuropathy , I am not diabetic. A doctor had me walk in his office bare feet and with out my cane and I lost my balance . Yes some people needs to have good support on their feet when walking .
Well, what can I say. We do things differently in our different countries.
Sure, maybe not every office follows the same rules, but the number of bleeding times this shoe thing has been debated here is almost comical.
We clearly have a cultural difference here; we don’t have many! But this is one.
Try not to get too frustrated, Leaffan - I am completely with you on this one.
Of course people who can’t walk without shoes, or have some medical reason that their extremities are unusually sensitive to cold, should be accommodated. (Although if shoe removal is a cultural norm and I had unusually sensitive feet, I’d travel with my own booties so I could manage the latter situation.)
I grew up in New England and know how much ice and slush and snow accumulates on boots. We had a thing (no idea what it’s called, but sort of the opposite of a shoe-horn) by the entryway to our house that helped people get their boots off so they wouldn’t track a mess into the house.
Commercial establishments didn’t (and presumably still don’t, though I stay far away from cold these days so I have no recent experience) require boot removal, but they generally had tile or linoleum floors for easy cleaning. ISTM that it is perfectly reasonable for any place that has a nice carpet to expect people to remove outer footwear, as long as they don’t pull any United-Dao antics for the occasionally non-compliant.
And Canadians have efficient public transportation and use it. They don’t just get out of their nice warm cars and walk a few steps on neatly snow-blown walkways to the front entrance, or walkways through indoor garages. The ride the bus or train, and walk several blocks through slush and salt to get to the doctor’s office. And they’re hardy enough to do it without whining. And polite enough to leave their grunge outside somebody else’s business property, also without whining…
No we don’t have efficient public transportation. Maybe if you live in Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal.
Are you kidding me? Public transportation sucks in Canada, as a whole.
It’s funny, having lived my whole life in extremely snowy areas, I’ve never walked into a business drenched in slush and sleet. Most people stomp their feet outside the store, or stores have vestibules and floor mats for wiping shoes on, and mats inside as needed.
I’m not sure we need to make this a “crass and impolite Americans” thing. After all, the OP was Canadian, and was just as confused.
I spent several years living in Kashmir. Smack in the middle of the Himalayas. We regularly saw feets of snow. Never took shoes off or was expected to.
Now in a monsoon climate, I did. Then again you would be wet all over very quickly and you would try and dry yourself first.
The opposite happened to me when my first daughter was born.
I took her from our room to the place where she had her daily bath. It was a very short walk, almost exactly across the corridor but I crossed a nurse on the way and she told me to put on some shoes in a tone that made it clear that saying “no” wasn’t an option.
Or a “people in warm places just don’t understand what a real winter is like” thing, when there are people from Buffalo and Winnipeg who have never heard of such a thing.
