MT

A friend of my wife, at the time we met, posted a stupid picture on social media that we took more than 40 years ago. The picture was of me, my best friend Chris (the one who passed away 10 years or so after that picture) and my future wife. We were sitting on the furniture in the shoe store I worked at, called The Shoe Box.

The same family owned this shoe store and three others in the mall. It was a small chain of stores in central Illinois. I give that detail to reinforce that the corporate structure wasn’t robust, so a lot of things were done a certain way because they didn’t have the resources to do it differently.

This was before the computer tracking of sales and inventory. When we sold a pair of shoes, we had to list the sale on the handwritten receipt (with a carbon copy kept) that included a special code. The code was the cost of the shoes disguised by subtracting nine from each of the digits. So, for example, a shoe that cost the store $25 would have a code of 7499 on the box, which would have to be listed on the receipt with the style and size. This code had to be written on each box in our inventory.

Another family business-oriented practice was that we needed a container for those carbon copies of the written receipt. Since we always had empty shoe boxes, we would use those to store the receipts.

Our stock room was filled with shoes and we had to stock them in a logical manner to quickly find the right shoe and the right size when a customer wanted to try on a pair (we were constantly shifting the boxes as a selection was depleted or a new style came in).  We had a section in our stockroom with these empty shoe boxes. We marked them with a big “MT” on the end facing out from the shelf. If you haven’t figured it out yet, sound out the “MT” and phonetically it sounds like “empty”.

I imagine now there would be a computer database, created by the corporate office, that transferred the inventory to the store and kept track of that inventory by scanning a code on the shoe box at the point of sale. Even with that technology, they still likely would have a few empty boxes that they kept for miscellaneous purposes. I wonder if they mark them as MT?

“Then Moses said to the people of Israel, ‘See, the Lord has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, for work in every skilled craft. And he has inspired him to teach, both him and Oholiab the son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan. He has filled them with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, or by a weaver—by any sort of workman or skilled designer.” - Exodus 35:30-35 ESV

I often look at someone or something and admire the expertise or skill of the person. Think of Mahomes. He is regarded as one of the best quarterbacks in the game of football. You could pick almost any occupation and find a person that a lot of people would admire for their expertise or skill. However, I would be far better off if, when I admired a person's skill or expertise, I praised God for providing them with it. Otherwise, I’m MT.