Holes in the soles of my shoes

One day several months ago I put on my favorite loafers and something felt not quite right. So I looked on the bottom of my shoe and there was a big hole in the leather sole right at the spot of the ball of my foot. After wearing the shoes sparingly for a few months I noticed the inside part of the shoe sticking through the sole was wearing away. It was time to get them fixed before the shoes were totally ruined. So last week I took them to Paolo's shoe repair. When I dropped them off Paolo made me pick a very specific time as to when they needed to be done. So we agreed Monday at noon. I went to pick them up today around 2:30. Paolo was out to lunch so I waited around until he came back. A lady in front of me presented her ticket stub for shoe pickup and Paolo proceeded to search the scores of shoes in his shop to no avail, her shoes could not be found. Finally she suggested he help me so I could get back to work. He found my shoes right away - there they were, beautiful new soles, almost within my grasp. But Paolo, he wanted to polish them up a bit they just weren't looking nice enough for him so if I could just come back in an hour he'd have them all shiny for me. It's always been a secret desire of mine to have my shoes shined so I couldn't say no to that. Needless to say I never got around to going back to pick them up. One more day I'll have to find something to wear that doesn't involve flat, brown shoes.