She pondered what outfit to wear and decided to spurn more conservative dark colors for a brighter look. She considered the backdrop against the dark oak paneling of the executive conference room might look better if she wore a bright color. She decided on a recently purchased red business suit and a matching red pair of Charles David mules which had a classy-looking white tassel on the upper. After getting dressed and slipping her freshly-manicured bare feet into her mules she decided she needed to be a little dressier. Trisha opened the top drawer of her dresser, which contained dozens of nail polish bottles and manicure/pedicure equipment, a collection of outfit accessories and a small section where she kept less than half-a-dozen pair of nylons on hand - a mixture of white, black and nude styles. She hoped she had a pair of nude nylons that wasn't snagged. It was late September and she could not recall wearing nylons even a single time since March. The South Carolina humidity was brutal on nylon-wearers from Easter to well past Labor Day.
She carefully unrolled the nylons on each foot and leg and slipped her mules back on before grabbing her car keys to leave. She rapped on roommate Joanna's open bedroom door. "I guess you're still too sick to go in today, huh? Sorry you're missing the presentation."
"Yeah, me too on both accounts. You knock 'em dead today."
"You need anything before I leave?"
"I'd love a glass of orange juice."
Trisha obliged hurriedly and noticed that with each step, her toes came out about half an inch, sometimes more. It took a semi-conscious effort to keep the backless shoes attached to the slippery nylons. She was reminded why she didn't wear nylons more often, however at the same time there was something almost tingly about the feeling in her stomach as her shoes almost came off with each step.
In the parking garage of the Palmetto Center, Stanley "Stan" McLeod, a paralegal working for SCANA - the local public utility company, made his way toward the elevators. He noticed that the left one was out of service so by the time the one elevator came down and opened, there were a few others waiting with him. As they all piled in, Stan turned around and pushed the '3' button on the elevator panel then he noticed that one of the girls on the elevator with him was the pretty, petite blonde he had seen around the building a few times. She struck a resemblance to Tony-award winning actress Kristin Chenoweth - but Stan knew her from her recurring role on the West Wing. He looked down and saw that today, she was sporting a French pedicure that was shown off by her cute little pink thong slide sandals. Stan made special note of the gold teardrop-shaped ring that served as the focal point of the shoe. He also noticed that Katie was smartly dressed in a casual pink top (she loved to wear pink!) and white Capri's. He paid special attention as she pushed the '5' button on the elevator panel. "Aha, she must work for Wachovia,' Stan theorized.
A few minutes early, Trisha arrived in the car park and made her way to the elevator. As it came into view she saw that some other people were getting on and soon it would be gone for at least 5 minutes as it deposited them on one of the 20 floors before coming back down. She remembered that the other elevator was out of order when she left yesterday so she did not want to count on that one getting her inside the building. As she neared the elevator at a diagonal, the people in the elevator did not see Trisha as she began to jog toward the doors. As Trisha got about 30 feet away, the doors began to close and the people inside tried to stop the doors from closing but their execution was flawed. Trisha relaxed her grip on her shoes a bit much and one of her shoes went bouncing across the parking lot and into the elevator just as the doors closed.
"Oh, that's just great!" Trisha exclaimed as she came to a quick stop. Her excitement was short-lived for just as soon as the doors closed, someone pressed the 'door open' button and the doors opened again. Trisha carefully stepped into the elevator where, department Administrative Assistant, perky Katie was holding her shoe.
Katie seemed slightly redeemed as she held Trisha's shoe. Recently she, and not Trisha, had been gaining a reputation for being single shod. About a month before, Katie had gone to lunch with, her now ex-boyfriend, Tom. Being a warm, early fall day, Tom had the convertible roof down and the windows rolled down. As they returned from lunch out at Fuddruckers, Katie sat down in the seat and slipped her right foot out the window. All was okay until the pressure of the door pressed against her ankle tendon caused her foot to go numb. Without paying attention to what she was doing, she quickly pulled her foot back inside and on the floorboard. As her foot tingled back to normalcy, she noticed that her foot was unshod. Katie squirmed in her seat and reached down to see if the shoe, a pink, 2 inch slide with two narrow straps, had slid under the seat.
Tom noticed the agitation and asked, "What's wrong?"
"My shoe came off and I can't find it."
"Did you have it on when you pulled your foot back in?"
"Of course I did, did you think...well, er..Actually I don't know. I assumed so."
"It's been so long I don't know how we would ever find it. And you have to be back at your desk in 4 minutes"
Katie said a few curse words under her breath but she tried to be positive, "Well, at least I have a job where I spend most of my time behind a desk. Maybe hardly anyone will see me."
As it turned out, she had to make several intra-office errands and her one shod state was soon known throughout the office.
While handing Trisha her shoe, Katie noted, "I guess you'll need this today, huh. I'm supposed to be getting catered lunch from the Cat and Cleaver today for you, the team and those execs. Is Joanna still sick?"
Trisha leaned over and placed the errant shoe back on her foot. "Yes, she's going to have to miss today unfortunately. And she did such a good job designing the graphic user interface of the product."
Stan got off on the third floor, but not before glancing down at Katie's pretty legs and her cute little feet in those sandals again. Then he glanced at her face to look her in the eye with a flirtatious glance. Just as she started to look back at him, he shyly turned back toward the front and walked out of the elevator. On the fifth floor, Katie stopped off at her receptionist desk and Trisha said good morning to Mike, who was sipping his morning coffee nearby, as she continued on to her desk to check on her email.
Shortly after sitting down, Elliott came quickly from the direction of the new lab. His shabbily knotted necktie swung back and forth with each step. "Trisha, Mike there's a problem!"
"What's wrong?" Trisha and Mike said in practical unison.
"The lab's not ready!"
Trisha exclaimed, "But the equipment was here when we left and Paul's group said it would be ready to go by evening!"
"Maybe they got pulled off that project onto an even larger emergency - can't imagine THAT happening," Mike sarcastically replied.
As Elliott led the way, Mike and Trisha, with her slapping mules, followed close behind. Sure enough, the equipment was all there and the networking cabling was in place. It just had to be unboxed and connected. A job that Trisha, Elliott and Mike were soon to be taking care of.
Trisha called Paul to discuss the problem. Paul explained that they had a server crash on the seventh floor and had to devote time to that. He said they would not be free until the afternoon. Of course Trisha said that would be too late.
"Well guys, we're own our own."
The three remaining team members walked past Katie's reception desk to tell Mr. Allen, their boss what happened. Considering Joanna was out sick, Trisha wondered if.."Hey Katie, you want to forward your calls to Dana on the sixth floor and help us out?"
"What do you need?"
We've got to get the hardware unboxed and configured by lunch. We could use a hand opening boxes, pulling things out then repacking the boxes to go up to the storage room on the eighth floor."
"Sounds like you could use my help. Let me ring her and let her know and I’ll meet you in there.
Minutes later, perky Katie removed her building security badge to get it out of her way, and jaunted into the computer lab. This was going to be an exciting day. Technical work was definitely a routine change from answering phones, making coffee, delivering lunch, making photocopies, etc...
"Okay, I'm ready to help, what can I do?" Katie eagerly inquired.
Elliott was lifting boxes off the stack and Mike was carrying them over to the tables where the lab was going to be set up and Trisha had begun to open them. Trisha suggested, "Maybe you can help me unbox these things - I'll help you with where they need to go."
Katie was eager to help and she took the hair clip out of her pocket and put her shoulder-length blonde hair up so it would stay out of her face and keep her from getting too warm while engaged in unexpected manual labor.
After close to an hour of work, boxes and the packaging from those boxes were all over the floor. Mike said he needed to leave for a restroom break. Elliott volunteered to get everyone something to drink. Katie, who was eager to know about this seemingly very important project, asked Trisha, "So what are these computers going to be used for?"
Trisha was really a pretty modest person but talking about this pet project, her 'baby' was a source of pride. She climbed up and sat on one of the desks over where a chair might slip in nicely underneath. As she sat, she crossed her feet at the ankles and began to swing her legs back and forth. Katie similarly sat on the desk across and diagonal from Trisha and listened intently to the full explanation. Trisha decided it was time to work feeling more relaxed so as she swung her feet back and forth she allowed her shoes to drop off under the desk out of sight.
Katie listened intently, but did not understand all of what Trisha said. However it did seem like what they were doing that morning was very important to the rest of the team and that made her hard work worthwhile. Katie and Trisha engaged in a little small talk while waiting on Mike and Elliott to return. Katie found that her kitten heels rested nicely inside the lip of the metal desk drawer that was immediately underneath her. This lip was used as a handle for the drawer and it ran the entire width of the drawer. She crossed one leg over the other and began to dangle one sandal off her toes. The other foot began to push and pull the drawer out and back in a repetitive fashion. About the time Elliott and Mike returned, Katie's dangling shoe fell off and landed inside the drawer of the desk right before her other foot closed it.
"Nice catch," Trisha mused.
Katie jumped down and retrieved her sandal from the drawer just as the guys got to see what had happened.
Mike teasingly reminded Katie, "So this time the drawer wasn't locked, huh?"
"It wasn't actually locked the other time, it was jammed. There's a definite difference."
Elliott's memory was jarred, "Oh yeah, I was the one who got your shoe out of the filing cabinet by picking the drawer open with the screwdriver."
Trisha got in on the act, "I guess you haven't used a shoe as a place-holder since then, huh?
Katie tried to defend herself, "It was a flat-heeled dressy slide. Mr. Allen had me trying to look up information from two files at he same time and that was the only thing handy. He was in a hurry calling me from his cell phone in the Charlotte airport and he only had one battery bar left."
Mike added, "You were so embarrassed that you stayed behind your desk all afternoon and it was nearly 5PM before you asked Elliott to help you."
"There was no way I was going home with only one shoe!"
Trisha I remember those slides, they were the black pair from Talbot's weren't they? I bought the red pair back in the summer."
"They're comfortable aren't they?"
"Yes, the cloth upper is very smooth..."
Mike interrupted, "Okay, enough Style Network. I don't see Finola Hughes anywhere asking how do we look?. Don't we have a lab to finish setting up?"
Elliott pondered inside how Mike knew about Finola Hughes and the Style Network, but he kept quiet.
Trisha interjected, "Really all we have to do is clean up the mess, haul the boxes up to the 8th floor and I can load the test software and data and we'll be ready to go."
Mike volunteered, "We'll get the boxes ready, but I saw my email and found out Elliott and I have a conference call with some folks in Charlotte in 15 minutes."
Katie added, "I don't mind taking them up to the 8th floor. I'll get the cart and the key from Dana upstairs and come back in a few minutes." Katie skipped along with the excitement of an intern who had just received their first big assignment. She longed to someday finish college and get a job like Trisha's, but for now she was having too much fun to be serious about homework and tests. After getting the key, Katie was able to get back on the same elevator quickly. She got off on the 8th floor to get the cart. Someone had left the cart in the hallway - a big no-no, so she just pocketed the key and took the cart back down the elevator - after a three minute wait for it to return.
By the time Katie returned, Mike and Elliott were gone and Trisha was loading software and making final network connections. "Great, you got the cart!" You can begin clearing this stuff out of here if you want." Trisha was enjoying padding around the carped lab in her stocking feet. The firm but rippled carpet gave her feet a light massage with every step.
There were large boxes, Styrofoam, red fabric packing tape, small boxes that fit in the large boxes and various other things scattered all around. While Trisha took the time needed to load software and data sets, Katie began to scurry around the room and clean up the mess. At times she looked pretty comical getting tangled up in packing tape and tripping over Styrofoam. One time, her kitten heel of one shoe got stuck in a piece of Styrofoam and in the process, she knocked one of Trisha's shoes all the way under the desk it was sitting and into a pile of packing material for one of the boxes. Katie ended up kicking her shoe off with the Styrofoam and had to limp over to pick it up and disconnect the two before putting her shoe back on.
While Trisha continued to make good progress, Katie packed boxes. She gathered all the packing material that went with a box and stuffed it back inside that box. There were certainly some items that got placed in the wrong box but that was of little consequence at the moment. What was of consequence was that Katie inadvertently stuffed the shoe that she had kicked under the table into one of the boxes. Its red and white color blended in with the packing material a little too well. Soon Katie had enough on the cart to make a trip. Three trips were to be needed to get everything upstairs. Trisha continued to work unaware of her missing shoe and Katie used the elevator to take the cart full of boxes up to the 8th floor. Knowing she had two more trips coming, Katie placed the rubber door stopper in the warehouse door to prop it open. About 20 minutes and two more trips later, Katie closed the storage room door and came back to the lab to make sure that Trisha was finished with her help - there was a caterer to call and a backlog of things to do back in her office.
Trisha thanked Katie, "I appreciate all your help. The lab is ready to go and the room looks presentable. Thanks a lot." Trisha began to walk in between the desks to look for where she had left her shoes. She found one and put it on, then knelt down to look around for her other one.
Katie noticed a look of concern, "What's wrong, Trisha?"
Help me look for my other shoe - it seems to have gotten kicked somewhere."
"Okay, it could not have gone far." However 10 minutes later and having looked under every desk in the room, there was still no sign of the shoe. Trisha began to panic a little since her meeting was to begin in only 10 minutes - there was no time to get another pair from home. Joanna, who had lent her shoes to Trisha in a similar situation once before was not at work so that option was out.
How about this, Trisha? You go ahead and get what you need for the meeting and go into the conference room. If you're first, maybe no one will notice your one shoe situation. I'll serve lunch - the caterer is probably in the lobby on his way up. I will go look for your shoe upstairs in the boxes until I find it. It has to be in one of them - it couldn't have just disappeared. I'll text-message you when I find it and then figure out some way to get the shoe to you.
Trisha was impressed how her work as an Admin had made her able to troubleshoot the problem and come up with such a fine plan. She also wondered how someone who was so organized as an Admin could be a klutz at times. "Okay, thanks for your help. I will keep my phone on vibrate and be on the lookout. I hope you can find it before the meeting is over."
Katie's assumption about the caterer was correct. She showed her where the conference room was located and helped get everything laid out. The caterer asked, 'Do you want me to set everything out buffet style or what?"
Thinking of Trisha's plight, Katie smartly replied, "It might be better just to put a lunch box at each chair and then put the drinks and other stuff in the middle."
Down in the lobby, three well-dressed and well-dressed executives made their way toward the open elevator. There were two men and one woman. The last to enter was the woman whose left shoe heel got caught in the crack between the floor and the elevator. Embarrassed, she stepped out of the shoe and the doors came closing in around it. Since the doors sensed an object it did not close any farther. One of the men on the elevator pressed and held the open door button. The woman knelt down in the elevator and began to try to shimmy the heel out of the crack. It was not moving. In frustration, she yanked at the slingback and that actually seemed to loosen the heel a little. A couple of the men offered to help with the heel and one of her cohorts was able to get her shoe free in a couple of minutes.
About that time, Mike and Elliott joined Trisha in the conference room and their manager Mr. Allen followed soon after. Sitting to the right of Trisha, Mike took note of Trisha's one shod state and looked on the floor under the conference table for her supposedly errant shoe. It was not to be seen. Mike whispered to Trisha, "What happened to your shoe?"
Trisha whispered back, "I think Katie accidentally packed it in one of the boxes. She is looking for it now as we speak"
Katie then hurried to the elevator to go back to look for Trisha's shoe. After a 4 minute wait, she decided that there might be another elevator issue so she make a run for the stairs. The stairwell was a large and wide and cavernous. The stairwells were arranged two per floor so that at each landing there was an up and a down segment. There was a one foot gap between the railing of each up section with its corresponding down section.
Katie begun to sprint up the stairs with the key to the storage room in her hand. As she turned the last corner to go up the second section of the stairs to the eighth floor landing. Katie tripped and her left shoe came off behind her. It slipped off the railing and made a terrible echoing noise as it bounced off the railing on one side then the other in somewhat haphazard and alternating fashion. Katie looked down to watch where her shoe landed, but as she did she begun to get dizzy so she had to look up now seeing exactly how far it fell. She tried to remember that nasty formula for gravity acceleration using meters per seconds squared from physics to calculate how far the shoe had fallen. However, she was not really even sure how many seconds it had taken - it seemed like minutes but was actually only seconds.
Not wanting to be deterred from her mission, Katie decided the shoe would be there later and she limped one-shod up the last few steps and got to the landing at the eighth floor. She made a split-second decision to lean over and grab and remove her other sandal and walk out into the hallway and jog down to the storage room.
Katie turned the key and laid it and her other shoe on the counter next to the door. Then, she began to rummage through boxes looking for Trisha's shoe.
Back on the fifth floor, three additional executives entered the conference room to hear Trisha's overview of the Bank Information Encryption Project. They were Mr. Allen's boss, Wachovia VP of Data Systems, Rich Landers, James Thomason, VP of Data Services from Union Planters Bank, now affiliated with Wachovia and Executive VP of Bank Operations, Sandra Lemmings from Charlotte, whose left slingback was flopping due to an apparently loose strap, sat down to Mr. Allen's right. Trisha stood at her seat and met each person as they came in. Apparently, none noticed her one shod state as they passed by her to take their seats. The group talked a bit over lunch to get better acquainted. Trisha sat much of the time with her unshod foot flat on the floor with the leg of her shod foot crossed over the other one. Her one shoe was hanging on the end of her toes. Unbeknownst to her, Sandra was also a fervent shoe player and had dangled off one of her black slingback pumps to the floor, but not before squashing the sling behind the back of her heel making it look somewhat like a mule.
Katie meanwhile had been frantically looking through box after box. Finally with one yet to go, she found Trisha's shoe buried amongst the packing tape. Not taking time yet to clean up her mess, she hurried out the door carrying Trisha's shoe. She got about 10 feet away when she realized, "Oh no, I forgot my shoe and the key!' She went to open the door but it was locked. "Oh no!" Katie exclaimed as she realized that she has only turned the key enough to get in, not unlock it. So now, she had accomplished her mission by retrieving Trisha's shoe but one of hers was locked in the storage room and the other was somewhere in the stairwell several flights below her.
Stan McLeod grabbed his satchel and walked to the elevator area to go down to the lobby. He had a couple of errands to run and he planned to grab a sandwich while out walking around. Anxiously, after awhile, Stan looked at his watch and realized he'd been waiting for 4 minutes to get a ride downstairs. He made a trek to the stairs. On the way down as he got to the segment of steps before reaching the second floor landing, he saw a ladies' shoe upside down on the step.
'That's strange,' Stan thought and he picked it up to look at it. Much to his surprise, he saw it was a pink thong slide with the teardrop-shaped gold emblem on the upper - just like the shoes the pretty blonde was wearing in the elevator. He first suspected she might have been carrying her shoes and wearing sneakers for some reason and dropped one. But then, his imagination began to wonder if she was in trouble or danger in some way. He took his hand and slid it into her shoe like it were a foot and noticed that the sole was cool - he reasoned the shoe had been lost at lease a few minutes or more. Stan began to make his way up the stairs to the fifth floor. He reasoned that someone would know where to find her. As he reached the last stair segment before the fifth floor landing, his boss, the general counsel for SCANA paged him, "Hey Stan, you left the building yet?" The sound echoed through the stairwell.
"No, what do you need?"
"The attorney for the company lawsuit you've been working on is here and he wants to discuss a settlement over lunch. He's buying."
Not sure how he could come back with, 'There's this shoe I found in the stairwell and I know the owner works on the fifth floor and I was on my way to find out who she is,' Stan stuck the shoe in his satchel and replied, "Okay, I'll be right there." Stan retreated down the stairs to the third floor and made his way to the conference room to begin negotiations over lunch.
Putting Trisha's welfare ahead of her own, Katie delayed retrieving either of her shoes before making sure Trisha had hers back in her possession. She had an idea to take care of the immediate problem. Getting out her cell phone, she text messaged Trisha, "COFFEE CART SHOE BOTTOM." Katie hoped her few words would be enough to tell Trisha that she was coming by with the coffee cart and that her shoe would be on the bottom rack. How the high-ups would take seeing their Admin completely barefoot was another story and of little concern to Katie at the moment.
Katie made her way downstairs and hurriedly arranged cups and saucers, cream, sugar, non-dairy creamer, sugar-substitute, and both regular and decaffeinated coffee on the fancy serving tray and pushed it down to the conference room. As she entered the room, Katie attempted to keep her bare feet shielded by the tray as much as possible. She served the high-end executives first then made her way around to Trisha near the end. She made contact with Trisha and glanced down to the bottom of the tray. Without calling any attention to anyone but Mike, Trisha was able to slip her shoe off the tray onto the floor and casually replace her foot in her formerly lost shoe. Trisha noticed that Katie was missing both shoes and made a mental note to follow-up on that later. Unfortunately, when Trisha uncrossed her shod foot so that she could put her lost shoe back on, her shoe clipped Mr. Allen's tassel loafer and fell over near where Sandra's slingback pump lay.
With problem #1 solved, Katie went on to work on problems #2 and #3. She went out to the stairwell and began to go down the stairs looking all around for her shoe. She went all the way down to the basement exit into the parking garage and there was no shoe to be seen. 'Where could it have gone, she pondered? Will getting my other shoe out of the storage room help me it only leaves me with one shoe?' Katie decided to be optimistic and walked over to the elevator - both seemed to be working now, finally. She hurried up to the sixth floor and walked over to Dana's reception desk.
"Looking a bit casual today, huh?"
"It's a long story...hey, do you have a spare key to the Storage Room?"
"Why do you need another one? We have security concerns you know?"
Katie knew that Dana was just giving her a hard time. "Well, I opened the door and laid the key on the counter and then left it there. When I walked out the door closed before I realized the door was still locked."
"That's the third time this month that's happened. You will have to go see Earl the Facilities manager on the eleventh floor."
"So there's no other way, huh? I guess I have no other choice," Katie retreated as she walked back toward the elevators again. By now, she was getting tired of all the vertical travel. Her feet were getting dirty and she had stubbed her great toe three times. Once at the eleventh floor she had to walk all the way to the other side of the building to find her man.
"Hello Earl, I need the backup key to the Storage Room on the eighth floor."
"Okay, I just need to see your building security badge."
Katie went to reach for it, but remembered removing it earlier. "Oh, Earl, I left it at my desk, are you sure you couldn’t..?"
"Sorry Miss, I have to scan your badge to give you a key. This is one of the tallest buildings in South Carolina, which makes it a terrorist target. We were under orders to be careful about giving out keys. You'll have to get it and come back."
Katie rolled her eyes like a schoolgirl and ran back to the stairwell to repeat the process all over again.
Stan got deep into his negotiations and had forgotten about having a shoe in his satchel. His boss had locked them in the negotiation room until a settlement was reached. (The room did have access to a private restroom.)
Back in the boardroom, everyone was starting to finish their dessert and sip on hot coffee. Trisha felt around for her knocked-off shoe and instead she found the top of Mr. Allen's loafer. She decided to try something else by 'accidentally' dropping her pen on the floor. She did so and saw that her shoe was in between Sandra and Mr. Allen. She figured that her next idea was not going to cause any problems. Meanwhile, Sandra uncrossed her legs and without looking reached over and lightly brushed the bow tie adornment on the upper then and pulled the shoe she found under her seat but did not put it on - she only kept her toes in the upper. Immediately she began to play with it lightly.
Trisha tore off a slip of paper and scribbled a note: "Mr. Allen, I think you may have knocked my shoe off a few moments ago. Would you mind pushing it back my way?" She slipped it to her boss and he gave it a quick read and offered quick action. Mr. Allen glanced under the desk and pushed the shoe he saw under the table back toward Trisha. He decided that the group had waited long enough. "Trisha, how about that PowerPoint presentation?"
"Okay," Trisha reached her remaining unshod foot forward and placed her toes in the shoe that Mr. Allen moved her way. It did not feel right. This shoe had a slingback! Thinking quickly, she reasoned that this was Sandra's shoe and that maybe Sandra even had her shoe, or else her shoe was in Sandra's vicinity. Again, dropping her pen she looked under the table and saw that indeed, Sandra was playing with her shoe. "Now what,' Trisha thought. There was no way she was going to stand before the group wearing one of the executive's shoes so she just ditched both of them and decided to do the presentation in stocking feet.
As Katie made her second trip down and up six flights of stairs in bare feet she really would have been upset if she realized that her heroic effort to find Trisha's shoe was practically in vain. Eventually, however, Katie did get the key and make her way down to the eighth floor to retrieve her shoe and the original key. This time she decided to wait 4 minutes for the elevator to return the spare key to the maintenance technician. Again after a long wait, Katie returned the original key to Dana while holding her one shoe in her other hand.
I surmise that you recovered one shoe from the storage room. Where's the other one?"
"I tripped coming up the stairs and one of my shoes fell down several flights of stairs, but I could not go look for it immediately. By the time I did it was gone."
"I haven't seen anything emailed from lost and found about it, do you want me to send out a message?"
"Thanks a bunch, that might help."
Katie carried her one shoe back to her desk, stopping in the restroom on the way to wash the soles of her feet, dirty from walking in the the stairwell.
Trisha stood at the end of the boardroom with her laser pointer in hand showing off the various facets of her data encryption project. She noticed that Sandra had a puzzled look on her face but she never saw her look under the table to see that she had essentially swapped left shoes with Trisha. The presentation took about 30 minutes and Trisha showed an impressive grasp of the technology as she explained 128-bit encryption, password and account number verification as well as the triggers put in place inside the SQL Server database that prevented unwarranted database access. She completed the question and answer time flawlessly then asked the group. "Are you ready to see my demonstration over in the lab?"
Trisha stood back next to the wall and slowly disconnected her laptop from the In Focus projector. All the males had stood and were chatting as they walked toward the door. Sandra was noticeably looking puzzled as she finally looked under the table and saw a red mule instead of a black slingback. Trisha went back to her seat and put on her single right red mule and picked up the black slingback, and noticed its damaged heel, and walked toward Sandra. "Ms. Lemmings, how about a trade?" Sandra looked down and picked up Trisha's mule while putting on her own slingback.
"Sounds fair to me." On that comment Sandra and Trisha swapped shoes and put them back on. Sandra added, "I was quite impressed with your presentation today. You are a very intelligent young woman with a lot of confidence. The fact that I had somehow gotten one of your shoes did not deter you one bit. You just kicked off the other one and went about your business without apology. That's the right way to do it."
"If you don't mind me asking, I noticed some damage on your heel shaft on the front and back sides.”
"Well actually, it happened on the way up to your meeting. I was not paying very good attention and my heel got wedged in the door. It took several minutes to get it free. Not only was the heel damaged but I inadvertedly stretched the back strap and it won't hardly stay on any more."
"I've had that happen too. Straps without elastic or at least a buckle are particularly troublesome. I even once took a razor blade and removed the straps and made them a pair of slides."
Sandra looked down at her own shoes and pondered, "Yeah that might work on these too."
Realizing how their conversation had veered from their professional presentation, Sandra recomposed herself and said to Trisha, "I'm looking forward to your demo in the lab. I hear from your manager (looking at Mr. Allen) you have worked quite hard to get this working."
As Trisha slapped along in two slippery mules that came off her toes slightly with each step and while Sandra slapped one errant slingback, Mr. Allen concurred, "She sure has! This presentation will be very informative."
Trisha's lab presentation went off without a hitch and by 2:00 PM, the Wachovia executives chatted with Trisha and her team for a few more minutes before leaving, hopefully early enough for the ones from Charlotte to get back home before rush-hour.
Back downstairs in the SCANA legal office conference room, Stan was deep in negotiations and had practically forgotten about the shoe - or else his mind was too occupied to choose to remember. However, he reached in his satchel to pull out a yellow highlighter and his fingers brushed against the sole of Katie's shoe not in his possession for over 3 hours. He dared not ask for a break during intense negotiations but he hoped he would be able to be free to leave before he had a chance to locate the owner of the shoe he found.
Trisha was beaming as she returned to her office. She stopped by to see Katie and thank her for being such a big help. As she entered through the opening of her round cubicle in the middle of the lobby of the fifth floor, Katie swung around with her feet crossed at the ankle, purposefully and without words showing Trisha she had lost a shoe herself.
"Wow Katie, you were so much help today. I really appreciate it.er, uh, you didn't lose a shoe did you? You even served lunch barefoot.
"Actually this shoe (Katie pointed her toes down then raised them back up on her shod foot) was locked in the storage room for awhile - stupidity on my part. But the other shoe fell down several flights in the stairwell and when I went down to look for it was gone. No one's turned it in."
Trisha replied, "That's strange, seems like a janitor might have found it and alerted someone to send out a building-wide email."
"Or else, someone would have at least responded to the building-wide email announcing the lost shoe - you'll see that when you get back to your desk."
Strangely speaking as if she had no prior experience, Trisha asked, "So, what do you plan to do if you don't find it?"
Cynically, Katie replied, "I guess I'll go home in one shoe and wait for Prince Charming."
"Hopefully he'll come before you have to go home."
"Go home..Hmmm. I wonder if Dana could cover my calls so I can go home early. Maybe I'll treat myself to replacement pair of shoes on the way home."
Trisha replied, "I can't speak for our boss but I think you've certainly put in a full day of work already. It is almost 3PM and it is a nice day outside. And it's always a good day to buy a new pair of shoes. Heck, I may just go with you!"
Back at SCANA, the arbitration team was wrapping up their recommendation and it appeared that Stan was going to be able to leave in a few minutes. He reached into the satchel and touched the shoe again - just a reminder to himself and a bit of a motivator that he was about to meet the cute girl from the elevator. He pondered what he might say to her. Minutes later, Stan finished shaking hands with all in the room and he slipped out to the hallway and toward the elevators. By the functioning lights he was pleased to see both elevators working for the first time in over a day. One was descending from the top and one was coming from the bottom.
Trisha and Katie popped into Mr. Allen's office and received no contest to their plea to leave early. He even told them not to put it on their time card. They made their way to the elevators. "Great! Both are working - finally," Katie exclaimed. She had certainly had her fill of stairs for the day. The elevator made it down to the fifth floor and Trisha and one shod Katie entered and pressed 'G' to take them to the parking garage.
The elevator made it up to the third floor and Stan entered and pressed '5'. He nervously reached in his satchel and rubbed his index finger on the sole of the shoe he was about to return.
Trisha and Katie exited the elevator and realized they had no plan. Trisha asked, "So where are we going to shoe shop? And to you want to ride together or take both cars?"
Katie paused and thought about it and suggested, "Hey let's try out that new shop down at the Congregee Vista!
Trisha thought for a moment and began to beam, "Sounds good to me. You wait her and I'll go get my car."
Stan nervously exited the elevator and saw no one at the reception desk. He happened to see Mike walking down the hall, "Excuse me, this is going to sound strange, but there's someone on your floor who lost a shoe and I found it."
Mike quickly replied, "Oh, that's Katie, our admin. But she just left."
Stan felt dejected and unsure what to do, "How long ago?"
"The elevator just left with her moments ago. Maybe you can catch her."
Stan quickly sped around and saw the other elevator get to 'G' and his elevator head up past '10.' Realizing that time was the essence, he ran to the stairwell and hurriedly made his way to the ground floor. Meanwhile, Trisha had made her way to her car and was making her way back down to the bottom level of the parking garage.
Suddenly, the metal door to the parking garage flung open and Stan saw Katie standing next to the driveway with her bare foot resting on top of her shod foot. He took a moment to compose himself - straightening his tie and collar, tucking in his shirt, wiping the sweat from his brow, just as Trisha whipped around and stopped next to Katie. Stan realized he had to move fast. He jobbed closer and called out, "Katie."
Just as Katie opened the passenger door to Trisha's car, she heard her name called from behind and she stopped to look. She saw Stan coming toward her carrying her missing shoe and was speechless.
"I assume this is yours."
Katie replied, "Why yes, how did you find it and where?"
Boldly, Stan knelt and asked, "Allow me." Katie quickly wiped her bare foot off onto her other leg and stuck out her foot to receive the shoe from her prince. This only emboldened him further to ask, "How about I tell you over a cup of coffee?"
"I'd sort of like to know your name first."
"Of course, how rude of me, I'm Stan McLeod. I'm a paralegal for SCANA on the third floor."
"Nice to meet you Stan, you seem to already know I'm Katie and I'm the admin on the fifth floor - Wachovia Data Technology."
Trisha was enjoying what was happening to her friend. She recognized Stan as someone she had seen around the building quite a bit but had never met - he seemed nice enough. Trisha then leaned over toward the vacant passenger seat and suggested, "Why don't you to go on without me?"
Katie looked back at Trisha as if she needed her approval and she got it. Trisha replied, "Maybe I'll try to find Jay in the Law Library and see if he wants to take a break."
On that note, Trisha sped off toward campus, leaving Katie and Stan to get better acquainted.
Stan asked, "Do you want to walk with me to my car or would you like me to pick you up?"
Wanting the opportunity to get better acquainted, Katie said she'd walk along. Stan was ecstatic that he had secured a date with the cute little blonde from the elevator that morning. They found a nice little java cafe in the Congregee Vista where Stan explained the whole found shoe saga and Katie dared to tell her side of the story. Both had a good laugh. Stan enjoyed this opportunity to get to know Katie and enjoy her good looks, her carefree personality and her whimsical shoe dangling and shoe play. A second date was a certainty.
Go To: Part 2.
