Shoe.

My wife ordered some shoes online, because she A) loves to do her shopping online and B) has feet. Sometimes shoes can be tricky to get without trying them on, but she's had good luck with finding good fits, enough to justify the occasional annoyance of returns.

But when Macy's sent her one shoe, we were surprised.

The box was packaged properly and mailed as stated, arrived on time, and had just one shoe in it. It was a formal shoe, although not the one pictured here. I'm sure her one foot would have been grand in it.

Equipment for the ass-kicking contest.

She complained, Macy's took some time in addressing it, and ultimately the situation required some live-window chatting. My wife was told she did not have to return the lone shoe and would receive a full refund. Of course, this was followed right away by an auto-generated email saying that she would have to return the shoe, which required another message from my wife, and another assurance that she could keep the single left shoe or throw it away or turn it into a pinata, but don't bother returning it. So I guess we're safe.

What happened, that's what I want to know.

I suspect thievery, either a warehouse employee who thought that one shoe from two different identical boxes would not be missed until she could cover her well-shod tracks, or customers who teamed up to order the same shoes and each returned one shoe so they could have a pair between them. It required knowing that no one would inspect the goods before the shoes were restocked. Or maybe there were other possibilities of which I know nothing; I've never worked in retail or warehousing. Maybe it was just an accident and there's a shoe lying under a warehouse stack somewhere.

I hope the thieves, if there were thieves, repented of their actions, tarnishing their consciences for the sake of quality footwear. What would St. Hubbins say? "What does it profit a gal to gain her soles but lose her soul"?

In the meantime, we got an extra left shoe. If it looked like the one above, I could hang it on the Christmas tree, but it's black. Halloween?