Shoes Shoes Shoes

In New York, the sidewalks and stairs are punishing on a woman's feet. I am always amazed when I see a woman in the subway in heels. I can't imagine walking around the city that way. Not only do your shoes get torn up and quickly ground down by the cement - it just becomes down right painful.

So most wall street gals walk to work in comfortable shoes. Sneakers, flats, Uggs and in the summer - flip flops. Then they get to work and switch to the nice shoes. Obviously you aren't going to transport shoes back and forth, so the space beneath your desk becomes your shoe closet. Of course you don't have just black pumps under the desk - you've got everything. When I left Bear Stearns I carted out one entire box of just shoes. 9 pairs.

I asked my former colleagues how many and one girl copped to 18 pairs. I know another who wore a size 5 and he mother worked at Bloomingdale's in the buyers office. The shoe samples came in a size 5, so this gal had an entire plastic bin stored under her desk with what had to be 30 pairs of shoes.

As a reporter, I don't have a strict professional dress code, nor do I feel the competitive fashion pressures of professional women. But I have accumulated 5 pairs of shoes in my drawer and under my desk. And I am a frequent public shoe changer. If I need to be somewhere in nice shoes, I'll carry them with me and outside the building with no embaressment whatsoever - change my flat shoes for heels.

The guys think we're nuts for storing shoes under the desk and the cleaning ladies never steal them. So there you have it. The secrets of the wall street shoe storage.