Well, as you might have guessed I worked a 9 to 5 shift today, which, now I think about it, is probably the first time I've ever worked that shift in 22 years. But I can't really say it was a typical day at the office.
After I got to the store, the manager told me to take off my shoes so they could make me a pair of the "Thotic" orthotics that are their trademark. To make the Thotic, a person stands with his/her foot partially weighted and in its neutral position. To acheive the desired and critical "neutral position," the salesman (me) digs his fingers into your ankle joint to feel the location of the tibia/fibula, and then positions the knee and foot accordingly.
The next step is to map the contours of the foot. This is done by several hundred plastic "pins" (they're not sharp) that raise up until they touch the underside of the foot, then lock in position. When the foot is lifted, these pins show the contour of the foot. Data is collected from the height of the pins and transmitted to a computer, where the data is shown as a contour map of the foot, with .1mm intervals (really precise).
It's actually something of an art to get the foot in the proper position, especially when the person has a flat foot and tends to pronate. Interestingly, I have a flat, narrow foot that pronates. Both of my coworkers, each of whom has done hundreds and hundreds of these readings, struggled mightily to get a good reading. I think between them it took 18 attempts to nail it down. Both said they get it perfect the first time 90% of the time. So I have difficult feet, which I knew.
After the foot is mapped, the orthotic is milled from a blank of the proper size. The blank is placed in a machine that mills it in about 10 minutes. After the machine is finished, the tech mills down the rough edges and sticks on a topsheet. The process takes 15 minutes.
Putting these orthotics in my shoes was the Whistler version of "Pimp my Ride," minus Xzibit. I mean, these are $8.00 black dress shoes I had purchased from the Reuse-it-Center in Function Junction and all of a sudden they're rockin' a $235 custom orthotic. Wild.
The other cool thing I saw today was a custom foam-injected liner being made. But, that's another story for another day.
As I was leaving, I was introduced to a former employee of the store, named Brett. After he went back in the shop, T, my co-worker, said "Oh yeah, he's the current Freeskiing champion of the world. He doesn't have to work here anymore." I gather things like that happen quite a bit. There's a poster on the wall of a guy dropping a 140ft cliff, which was a world record at the time. "Oh, he used to work here too."
For the first time in my life I'm a little concerned I won't be able to keep up. Just a little.
After I got to the store, the manager told me to take off my shoes so they could make me a pair of the "Thotic" orthotics that are their trademark. To make the Thotic, a person stands with his/her foot partially weighted and in its neutral position. To acheive the desired and critical "neutral position," the salesman (me) digs his fingers into your ankle joint to feel the location of the tibia/fibula, and then positions the knee and foot accordingly.
The next step is to map the contours of the foot. This is done by several hundred plastic "pins" (they're not sharp) that raise up until they touch the underside of the foot, then lock in position. When the foot is lifted, these pins show the contour of the foot. Data is collected from the height of the pins and transmitted to a computer, where the data is shown as a contour map of the foot, with .1mm intervals (really precise).
It's actually something of an art to get the foot in the proper position, especially when the person has a flat foot and tends to pronate. Interestingly, I have a flat, narrow foot that pronates. Both of my coworkers, each of whom has done hundreds and hundreds of these readings, struggled mightily to get a good reading. I think between them it took 18 attempts to nail it down. Both said they get it perfect the first time 90% of the time. So I have difficult feet, which I knew.
After the foot is mapped, the orthotic is milled from a blank of the proper size. The blank is placed in a machine that mills it in about 10 minutes. After the machine is finished, the tech mills down the rough edges and sticks on a topsheet. The process takes 15 minutes.
Putting these orthotics in my shoes was the Whistler version of "Pimp my Ride," minus Xzibit. I mean, these are $8.00 black dress shoes I had purchased from the Reuse-it-Center in Function Junction and all of a sudden they're rockin' a $235 custom orthotic. Wild.
The other cool thing I saw today was a custom foam-injected liner being made. But, that's another story for another day.
As I was leaving, I was introduced to a former employee of the store, named Brett. After he went back in the shop, T, my co-worker, said "Oh yeah, he's the current Freeskiing champion of the world. He doesn't have to work here anymore." I gather things like that happen quite a bit. There's a poster on the wall of a guy dropping a 140ft cliff, which was a world record at the time. "Oh, he used to work here too."
For the first time in my life I'm a little concerned I won't be able to keep up. Just a little.
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