Open Post: Hosted By The Viral Story About Indoor Shoe Etiquette

Are you a “shoes indoors” or “socks/barefoot/slippers indoors” house? Because if you’re the latter, don’t invite Kris Frieswick inside because she’ll clomp her boots all around your floor! Kris wrote up her thoughts about shoe etiquette in an article on the Wall Street Journal which basically boiled down to “Don’t ask me to take off my shoes because I WILL NOT (unless it’s cultural)!” Needless to say, this did not sit well with people who do what they’re told when they’re guests in someone’s house!

According to her article, “Here’s Why I’ll Be Keeping My Shoes on in Your Shoeless Home,” Kris’s pet peeve is when people cite cleanliness reasons for not wearing shoes indoors. Via Newsweek:

Explaining that she will remove her shoes for religious and cultural reasons, Frieswick asserted that if going shoeless in somebody’s home is a matter of keeping floors clean, it’s not happening.

“I do understand that there are people who don’t wear shoes in the home for cultural or religious reasons,” Frieswick wrote. “If I am entering the home of someone from a culture in which wearing street shoes is a sign of disrespect, I’m of course going to take them off.”

Throughout the column, Frieswick combated research about tracking E. coli and other bacteria into the home via shoe soles and pointed out the potential hypocrisy involved with letting pets walk into households after being outside, but making visitors remove their shoes. She also said that every broken toe she has suffered was a result of not wearing shoes inside, and detailed her own household’s shoe policy.

If she’s suffered multiple broken toes from not wearing shoes in a house, she may have an undiagnosed inner ear problem. That is some bad balance. Inner ear or not, she clearly has a DISRESPECT problem! The culture and religion caveat ain’t gonna cut it, Kris! What if my culture is “I politely adhere to reasonable requests when I am a guest and expect others to do the same?” The internet took her to the cleaners for writing something she could have just kept to herself.

If you don't wanna take your shoes off in my house, you can stay outside and talk to me through the window 🤗 https://t.co/3pG7lZUGl8

— Ash (@ashindestad) February 10, 2022

I don't even have a shoeless home, but if I politely asked someone to take off their shoes or use a coaster and they decided to launch into a self-righteous rant about why they won't, they'd NEVER be invited over again.

— Emily Bryant (@ErmBDesign) February 10, 2022

Kris is apparently a humor columnist, so a great deal of this piece is probably tongue-in-cheek. But there’s always SOME truth in every joke, so I wouldn’t take any chances with her. If you see Kris coming down your driveway, close the blinds and lock the doors, or else you’ll be welcoming the rudest houseguest that Wall Street Journal has to offer!

Pic: Wikimedia Commons