DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse — Local services in Santee

Feet don't stop growing and keep wearing out shoes, even during a Pandemic. We went in search of shoes to wear to work for my son & husband. DSW was open till 8pm which makes shopping during a heat wave bearable. Famous Footwear in the same outdoor mall closed at 6pm and Big 5 in El Cajon closed at 7pm.

I did stop at Big 5 & will review that store too.

Walking into DSW felt odd. They already have their aisles generously spaced but they removed the benches so they look bigger.

They do have a great and varied selection of womens shoes for summer and new fall fashions. The womens shoe selection looked like it could meet all budgets. There were some great sandals and wedges on sale for $14.99.

But, we were there for men's shoes. My husband can wear athletic shoes to work so our task was to find shoes that were black so machine shop dirt doesn't show, are comfortable for standing all day and that don't look ridiculous.

It was an odd shopping experience. They had just a few Puma, Reebok, Nike, Asics models and those had limited sizes to choose from. There was a decent selection of mens fashion shoes. But for athletic shoes, but there were tons of Sketchers. We were able to find him a pair of shoes that work for him.

The prices for mens shoes seemed to start at $59 and go up from there. Make sure you use your...

After looking at a number of stores for a specific shoe for my son, an employee at Tillys looked up the inventory of DSW and said they had one pair left. We went to DSW and of course couldn't find it on our own because they refuse to label any of the different sections (mens, women's, etc), or even the different sections of brands (Nike, Adidas, etc). So after walking up and down every aisle we had to go to the front counter because there were literally zero employees on the store floor. There was not a single person in line and the cashiers were just chatting with each other. We asked if they had heelys (thinking they would check the inventory on the computer) and the woman said "we had some yesterday but I have no idea if we still have them. Go check the clearance section." And she immediately resumed her conversation with the other cashier. All I know is that when I worked retail we actually were trained to automatically check the computer and help the customer locate the item. I understand if it's busy but there were like 5 people in the store at the time and 2 of them were employees. Laziness at it's finest. I put back the other stuff I was going to buy and left. Never going...

I'd like to publicly thank the store manager, EJ, for going out of his way to help me with a difficult shoe problem. I don't need to go into all the details, but let's just say that I had been frustrated for a number of months, and EJ took care of it, turning an unhappy customer into a happy customer. On top of that, he was patient, proactive, creatively helpful, and just nice. He demonstrated the definition of really, really good customer service. During our interaction, he had the chance to share about his family, his classwork, and his career aspirations. And based on today's visit, I have no doubt he will go quite...