I have worked for the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy for 19 months. This November will mark my two-year anniversary. I have done some shopping in the employee store, but I have never signed up for the service.

I first learned about Stitch Fix when they were brand new and I had renewed my subscription to Vogue magazine. You see, part of the reason my fiction takes place in the high fashion world is because I fell in love with the ideas of fashion as a teenager.

If I had more resources and hadn’t grown up in a family struggling to look middle class, I 100% would have been a mall-obsessed fashionista with haute couture aspirations. But my frugal nature and my minimalist desires mean I prefer thrift stores to fancy designers and weeding out clothes to buying them.

It’s one of the core dichotomies of my personality— perhaps that Taurus cusp Gemini natal sign— I want the opulence and beauty but am not willing to pay money for the experience. It feels like a waste.

Right now, I’m dressed in a Target basic white tank top, hand-me-down denim shorts, Dollar Tree socks and a brand new pair of Vans. That sums me up.

So I gave my 40% employee discount to my friend Joan, but if you assign your discount to someone else, you can’t change it for six months. And you can’t have more than one person using it at a time.

And I have had a great time watching Joan unbox her seasonal fixes. I am very glad she was the first one to take advantage of my discount.

Now that Stitch Fix has expanded their “Direct Buy” into the whole Freestyle experience (where I typically spend my Sundays packing orders and shipping them out to clients), it has become possible to order the items you want any time you want.

I asked Joan to use the brand navigation menu to order five or six specific pairs of shoes— one of them for the teenager. In the time it took for me to compile and send the list, one pair of shoes sold out in my size.

But Joan did manage to find three pairs of shoes for me—pink Toms, green Vans and a laceless DV by Dolce Vita sneaker— and one pair of old skool Vans high tops with a zipper for the teenager.

We ordered them Friday afternoon. On Saturday I saw Joan and I gave her money. On Sunday, I went to work wondering if I might see my shoes process out or if they had been shipped by the Saturday crew. The person at the table in front of me got a cart of shoes.

I wondered if she might have mine in there.

While I was considering this fantasy of sneaking my own shoes out of the building, I got a text from Joan. “Your shoes have shipped.”

Now I don’t know if clients are alerted when we hit the “complete” button and the mailing label prints out or when the post office gets their hands on them.

They arrived at Joan’s house on Tuesday, which we didn’t think to change the shipping. Despite having worked a ten-hour shift, the teenager and I headed to Joan’s.

Joan had never seen the large Stitch Fix bag and I was more than a little impressed that whoever packed them got them in there. And the postal carrier got it into Joan’s mailbox.

We placed the shoes in the back of the teenager’s new car and she dove right in. Neither of us knew her sneakers had zippers and she didn’t recall the color so those were fun surprises.

I didn’t have the strength to try on all my shoes— it was my bedtime by this point and we weren’t even home! I did however put on my DV by Dolce Vita laceless sneakers and wear them for the tour around Joan’s quaint home.

When we got home I piled my shoes on the table and my cat Fog made himself a bed on the Stitch Fix shoe duster bags.

Then yesterday I wore the laceless sneakers to work because my Vans needed the laces laced through and I just didn’t even want to untie and retie the Tom’s. But maybe I should have as today when I tried the Toms on my left foot was so tight I couldn’t wiggle my toes and my right foot couldn’t even get into the shoe.

To see me try these shoes on, click here for the YouTube video.

Shame as they were pretty. And had some nice cushy stuff in them.

But sadly I threw away the return label. And the garbage was at the curb. So, yes, I went through my own garbage. Digging through cat refuse to open the discarded Stitch Fix bag and grab the label.

But then I realized that I don’t have an envelope.

At this point, I think I’m going to slap it on the shoe duster bag and hand it to my former supervisor on Sunday morning. When we moved to day shift, she went to women’s returns.

I’d love to exchange them— but I don’t know if I need an 8W, an 8.5 or an 8.5W.

Meanwhile, I’m happy with my other shoes.