Gumshoe

My coworker was leaving the shoe store where I work in a week's time.  She hated our customers; they were mostly very rude and demanding.  Her form of revenge:  she put chewed gum into the toes of shoes that were most likely to be tried on (the most popular styles, and 7 1/2 to 8 1/2 are the most common sizes in case ya didn't know).  It was pretty disgusting; people freaked out when they pulled their foot out with a great big wad of gum attached.  She had to 'fess up so none of the rest of us would get in trouble, but she didn't care since she had quit anyway.

I guess she wasn't worried about getting a good reference...

I'm going to depart from my usual snark and bitchiness for an educational interlude:

According to The Word Detective, the term gumshoe came to mean detective because:

It turns out that the original "gumshoes" of the late 1800's were shoes or boots made of gum rubber, the soft-soled precursors of our modern sneakers... At the turn of the century "to gumshoe" meant to sneak around quietly as if wearing gumshoes, either in order to rob or, conversely, to catch thieves. "Gumshoe man" was originally slang for a thief, but by about 1908 "gumshoe" usually meant a police detective, as it has ever since.

Who ever thought you'd actually LEARN something by coming here?  Certainly not me! We will return tomorrow with the usual snark.  I can only be intellectual for so long.

Thanks to Terri!