NO

THE heels on my fashionable new black brogues measure a little under half an inch but nonetheless I feel nothing but sympathy for receptionist Nicola Thorp. Ms Thorp is the jobbing actress and temp worker who was sent home without pay when she questioned the need to don a pair of “two to four inch heels” on her first day at accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

And while it is the bulletproof consistency of the leather rather than the height of the heel to blame, my newly acquired office shoes have put me through hell ever since I bought them 11 days ago. Nobody needs to convince me of the merits of comfortable footwear.

Advice has not been hard to find. “Make sure you get some blister plasters,” intoned my mother knowingly. A female colleague, noticing me hobbling through the office, suggested stuffing them with wet newspaper overnight to soften the leather. One female friend’s cheery response to my predicament was: “At least you get that feeling of relief when you take them off at the end of the day.”

It is telling that these comments have come exclusively from the fairer sex. In a fortnight my feet – hardly photogenic at the best of times – will be free of blisters and bruises and I will once again stride pain-free through the office. But for women who for whatever reason regularly wear high heels, keeping their feet in good shape is a lifelong concern. I don’t envy them.

While I hardly know a great deal about what it is like to endure them on a daily basis (they’re hard to come by in a size 10) I do witness the hordes of women matching their smart business suits with a pair of battered trainers during the daily commute.

I have been at formal parties when, usually around 10.30pm, the ladies have duly swapped their glamorous heels for a pair of flats retrieved from the depths of their handbags. I have been privy too to the nightmare moment when a heel snaps, gets caught in a grate or sinks into soft grass.

In short, they are a pain. And it is a pain that no employer has the right to inflict on anybody for nine hours a day. Of course in certain settings one needs to look formal. But there is a difference between enforcing a smart dress code and micromanaging the attire of every employee.

MS THORP is a 27-year-old woman not a schoolgirl flouting uniform regulations. Whatever next, executives lining up their female employees and using a ruler to measure their hemlines? The flat shoes she wanted to wear were hardly a pair of saltstained sandals. They were perfectly appropriate for an office.

Given that she was instructed as well to wear make-up of “acceptable shades” it is impossible to shake the suspicion that this has rather more to do with pleasing the eyes of retrograde clients than it does with fostering a professional working environment.

One can imagine such requests being made of receptionists in the days when ceilings were shrouded in cigarette smoke, every desk harboured a bottle of whisky and the firm’s sole computer was the size of a shed. But in this day and age it is as outdated as a typewriter or a Rolodex. And what’s more Portico, the agency that hired Ms Thorp, agrees. Yesterday its bosses admitted they had put their foot in it and gave the “high heels only” policy the boot.

So only one question remains: who’s going to foot the bill for Ms Thorp’s lost earnings?