This study focuses on sequences in which shoes and other leather items are returned to customers at a shoe repair shop in North America after having been repaired in some way. Before customers’ final payment for the items, the staff engage in three different ways of presenting the returned items, each making relevant a different kind of response from the customer. First, most frequent type, the staff person places the item on the counter and then turns to ring up the sale; in the second, the staff person engages in manual displays of the repair work that has been done; and in the third, the staff person verbally pursues a response through questions. The first type of presentation does not make conditionally relevant any kind of inspection or assessment from the customer, although customers may still inspect and assess; in the second, the pursuit is a bit stronger; and in the third, through questions from the staff such as ‘good?’, an assessment is made conditionally relevant. The study queries the theoretical implications for the general lack of pursuit of assessment at the shoe shop, compared with, for example, hair salons, in which assessments are typically actively pursued by the stylist.

The chapter examines the transfer of the item(s) from the customer’s hands into the hands of the seller. This transfer is a crucial part of many commercial transactions, as the seller must enter the item number into the shop’s inventory system, both to learn the price and to subtract the item from inventory. Exploring data from ‘kiosks’ or convenience stores across Europe, the precise details of this manual transfer of items are examined There are two general methods by which the transfer is enacted: in the first, the customer gives the item directly into the hand(s) of the seller; in the second, the customer places the item on the counter and the seller picks it up. Which method unfolds depends on a variety of factors, including the seller’s physical availability at the moment the customer approaches the counter, the kinds of items purchased, and whether the seller has anticipated the transfer by reaching out their hand, in a shape recognizable as ready to ‘take’. These two methods are seen to reveal the moral and commercial nature of the manipulation of objects, and ultimately of the transaction.