‘On the front door was a sign: ‘No bare feet — for Health & Safety reasons”

Mark Steyn writes:

Really? Yes, it’s true that the bare foot is particularly prone to fungus and bacteria, and one wouldn’t want it promenading in large numbers around the meat department — in the same sense that it would be unhygienic to take a leak in the produce department. But the reason a civilized person neither urinates nor pads barefoot amid the fruit and veg is not that it’s a health-code violation but that it’s (in the Moulton sense) ill mannered. Shaw’s can no longer rely on its clients to know this (and to “obey self-imposed law”), and it apparently feels it cannot prohibit such behavior merely as an affront to societal norms, so it can disapprove of barefoot shopping only as an act of regulatory non-compliance.