I’ve spent the past two days wearing gym shoes to work, because I managed to aggravate my knee on Tuesday morning. I then spent the day in agony until I could get home and ice it up. That helped, but I think the biggest plus was not wearing dress shoes the next day. I usually don’t have many problems with my feet, but since I did something to the knee, I’ve needed to be careful with what shoes I wear (adequate cushioning, etc.).
What perplexes me is seeing all these people who wear freaking flip-flops all day long. And these aren’t all just kids, teens and early 20s either, I’ve seen women and men older than I am wearing these things. Besides the fact that wearing flip-flops gives your feet no support at all, they just look crappy. I don’t care how much you fancy them up, nothing can make these things look even remotely professional.
For example, yesterday, I saw an older woman dressed in a professional suit and a matching pink pair of flip-flops. It looked absolutely terrible. I don’t mean just inappropriate, but horrible. If I were a client/customer of this woman, my opinion of her professionalism would take several notches downward when I saw this.
I’m not sure when or why these things became acceptable to wear outside the gym shower or the beach. Granted, it’s summer here in Chicagoland, and with the heat we’ve been having, the prospect of wearing dress shoes (and possibly hose, not that I wear hose anyway) tends to go down. But flip-flops?!?! These just don’t look good period.
Now, I can’t stand having anything between my toes like that. I’ve never developed the callous there from the thong, nor do I have any desire to. I wear slides or mules when I’m doing the sandal thing. And I consider that borderline even though I work in a business casual environment. But even here at the bank, I’ve seen women wearing “dressy” flip-flops to work. Of course, some of these genius women think wearing short length capris and cropped tops are appropriate attire for the bank (business casual or not).
Oh, and another thing about these icky shoes.. the majority of people seem incapable of picking up their feet while walking. It’s freaking annoying to hear “schlup, schlup, schlup” coming down the hallway because someone is a lazy slug. Combine this with the habit of wearing pants too long, and the overall look is just sloppy as hell.
/rant off.