When I took my first job in a Wall Street bank in 1985 I wore suits and nice dresses (that was viewed as somewhat daring since all women were told to wear suits back then, but I had a nice collection of silk dresses from my previous job in the suburban office of a petrochemical company, which I won't mention but began with "E" and ended with "N" LOL.) So naturally I had to have nice shoes. I wasn't a shoe maniac, nor did I buy just to have the name brand, but I did have around ten pairs of great shoes.
Soon after joining the Wall Street bank we went to an "offsite" in Delaware and I gave my first management presentation. It was a short presentation, not on the most thrilling of topics, but I was delighted that these managers and executives were just riveted to my every word. In conclusion I asked if there were any questions and right away there were, starting with "Where did you get your shoes?" It turns out, as the guys later told me, they were fascinated by my shoes. They were, in fact, my favorite shoes. They were black shiny patent leather with about a two or two and a half inch heel, and were decorated with golden dots. Not too many dots, not too large, just right. I discovered that the managers were not only admiring the shoes but trying to figure out things like, are the dots equally distributed on both sides of each shoe (they were not) and so forth. I was and still am fond of that memory, it was really funny, high in the good humor scale in all respects.
A few years later I had acquired a pair of Ferragamo high heels, three inch, which remains as high a heel as I am comfortable in. What a great pair of shoes, but being navy and red, with a dash of yellow, I did not wear them that often as the correct outfit was necessary.
At that time my boss, who I really liked, often asked me to help him interview new candidates for employment, even if they were not for my area. I was wearing those shoes one day during such an interview. The guy was kind of the stereotype of the large and kind of overweight geek, and not of the anxious type but of the kind of self satisfied type. He wasn't really our cup of tea but we gave him a great interview, as we did out of courtesy to everyone. However, listen to what happened, then, as we walked him into the hallway after the interview. While we were standing there wishing him good-bye and a good day he suddenly pointed at my shoes and said "You have something stuck on the side of your shoe." He made it sound like toilet paper and declared it at the top of his lungs as if he had discovered the origin of cancer. My boss and I looked down, and there was nothing there. The oaf had mistook a small yellow bow on each side of the shoe as, well, "something stuck on my shoe."
My boss and I looked at each other as I silently turned my foot so he could see that it was a bow on the shoe and at the same time I said, "Fashion critic too, huh?"
He wasn't going to get the job anyway, but he sure was smug without justification on many topics, not just computer programming!
