It's sad to see that this is turning into millennial-bashing, both from the disclaimer the author had to insert at the top and the first few comments here on HN. The interns learned a valuable lesson about the way the world works: there are people who both possess authority and value customs like placing particular styles of cloth on your feet; and if you decide to work for such people and don't show them the proper deference, you might get fired. Sometimes, you are in a financial and/or life situation where you have to shut up and take it. But it's asinine to trumpet this as millennial entitlement. It's millennials asking perfectly reasonable questions about why certain things are the way they are. Some of these questions are about trivial things, like an innocuous dress code. Other questions are about incredibly meaningful things, like how forcing women to wear heels is a product of patriarchal culture and can drive women out of particular careers (disclaimer: I have no idea whether that was the case here). If your only response to an office custom being questioned is to tout your authority and sneer at the insolence of the youth these days, it's clearly not the youth that believe they're entitled.