It’s official. I’m back working in an office for the first time in…well…actually ever. Newsrooms are not offices. Newsrooms are what happen when you give developmentally arrested monkeys word processing programs and car keys. The dress code is rather lax among other things.

This means I haven’t exactly amassed a stellar work wardrobe, and not only do I not have one, I don’t even know how to go about acquiring one. Take shoes, for example. I wore the only pair of black pumps I own today, purchased several years ago for the purpose of – okay, I don’t remember why I bought them, but from the looks of them, it’s possible I’m pole dancing at the Spearmint Rhino while in a fugue state.

News flash: Wearing 4-inch heels to work is a shockingly bad idea.

By one o’clock in the afternoon, you will consider peeing your pants rather than get up from your desk to hobble the painful length of the hallway in those satanic torture devices.

The minute I got home, I tore them off, set them on fire, pulverized the ashes with the business end of a Swiffer Sweeper and then swallowed what was left. The next minute I began scouring the internet for replacements. (Okay fine, the next minute I ate two handfuls of Chex Mix, but then I scoured the internet.)

An hour later, me and my stripper shoes were very sad.

Cute work appropriate shoes exist. I see them on the feet of my lady co-workers, co-workers who do not, as best as I can tell, wet themselves rather than take one more step. Perhaps they are cobblers, who make these miracles of comfort and stylishness in their own living rooms while watching Sex in the City. I do not know, but they do not buy them on Zappos. That’s for sure. Everything rated for comfort looks like something your Aunt Millie would wear to the church social when her bunions are acting up.

I want something cute. Something that says “Yes, I work in a cubicle, but I’m am still some mix of hipster young person and Juliette Binoche.” Admittedly, it would help if I were French. As I am not French, I have to say it with shoes – shoes that must actually function as shoes and not some relic from the Spanish Inquisition.

I am, in case it wasn’t clear, taking advice.