Sounds like the kind of insufferable person that will also argue about the food they're served, the music they hear, and even the way you decorated your home.

> cultural reasons for removing shoes are respected though

"I will show no respect for your decisions regarding your personal space, but only if that doesn't make me look bad"

...And of course, when you read a bit further, you realize that this kind of person doesn't understand the decision because there ought to be some kind of domestic fixing their mess.

> Why don’t I just leave my shoes on and give you the amount of money [...] You can use it to hire a housecleaner to mop up after my shoe detritus.

I guess the Crux of the argument is:

Why are you assuming that your guests’ shoes are dirtier than your floors?

They believe a floor mat would suffice and it's rude to expect people to get their socks or bare feet dirty from the floor.

Maybe slippers are the answer?

This is not the meeting of equals on neutral ground though.

One party is entering another party's home. If you're not comfortable with rules inside that home, then don't enter that home.

100% agree that whether your own home is shoeless or not is a personal and cultural preference and decision. More power to you. But if I am entering your home, then your rules prevail.

Agreed. This is so obvious that I don’t know why it even makes sense to discuss, unless the person entering has some health issue. Even in that case, they have to ask the house owner or renter whether they can keep their shoes on inside.

Since it is their house, they, and only they, get to decide the rules about shoes allowed inside or not.

The crux of my argument is:

Why is that guest assuming that their opinions are more important than the overwhelmingly accepted idea that people get to set their own home's rules?

> Maybe slippers are the answer?

The author explains in no ambiguous terms that they won't settle for slippers.

> Why are you assuming that your guests’ shoes are dirtier than your floors?

Are my guests regularly cleaning the bottoms of their shoe the way I regularly clean my floors? (Almost certainly not, because why would you?)

> Sounds like the kind of insufferable person

Indeed. And it's just plain being a bad guest. When you're a guest at someone's house, honoring their wishes about things like this is a duty. It's showing them respect.

There's no actual "argument against it" in the link - it's just a random person expressing their apparently strongly held personal preference.

(In a pretty antagonistic, nasty way, too, but them's the breaks when you want to write op-ed pieces and get attention :-/ )

Here's Why I'll Never Get Invited To Your Home Again

The author of that sounds like an archetypical arrogant, insufferable, American Karen. She's not welcome in my Tokyo home.