This is an Emergency Interruption of your normal Trends and current Fashion Week coverage.

I am trying rather unsuccessfully to reign in my inner drama queen here.  I can’t do it.  This is enough to make any shoe lover cringe in horror.

This is blatant and intentional shoe abuse. There is no excuse, no store policy that can excuse these blatant actions. There must be better ways to reduce retail shrinkage. Ones that don’t result in mutilation of  otherwise innocent and flirty pairs of shoes.

Exhibit 1 (Pierced right through the leather/vinyl!):

Exhibit 2 (Just to confirm this is not an isolated case):

Exhibit 3 (Along the stitching; maybe someone realizes we like to buy shoes with minimal damage):

Exhibit 4 (Compare and Contrast):

Exhibit 5 (Okay, there must be at least one tortured shoe-lover working here):

I can only assume that with the current tight economy a larger number of ‘morally flexible’ women have begun availing themselves of the rather shameful five-finger discount. However, is it really best to destroy the product in order to prevent shrinkage? Does a huge discount off the original retail forgive carelessness? How about the side note that this also makes it impossible to even try on the darned things. One thing that is obvious is that no shoe-lovers were consulted or involved in establishing this policy.