Rocky Women's Soft Toe Side Zipper Work Boots, 5 M,Black

I bought my second pair of these boots, my initial pair were fantastic and fit me perfectly. Unfortunately the sole fell off one of my boots while on deployment for Hurricane Helene and had to get new ones while deployed. When I returned home I got my second pair. They looked the same as my initial boots, breaking in was tough and I’ve kept tightening the laces during the break in process which can be lengthy. It’s been a little over a year and I have decent days and than some days where my feet hurt, lately I noticed my feet have a lot of excess room in the boot itself even with tightening the laces as best as I could while still trying to not irritate my calves. Over the last month I’ve noticed increased rubbing to the back of my Achilles tendon and has caused some significant irritation. I double checked my sizes thinking maybe I messed up. But nope, it’s the same exact size, product code, width and all. But for some reason the foot area feels excessively big with too much room for my foot to move around causing my laces to loosen and tighten in different area and now causing pain to the back of my ankles. My last pair were heaven to wear and now I’m having this issue after a year of fully broken in. I feel the quality has gone down from my initial boots 15 years ago.

Cuts the back of your foot.. different then before. Leather is weird stiff right above the ankle like almost plastic. Trying to soften it and have to wear extra socks and tuck in pants. Not the same quality as before. Avoid if you can.

I've had these boots for about a year now, and never have I had a less comfortable pair. I simply do not understand all the reviews saying they're the most comfortable boots 😭 I'm so disappointed, because I wanted to love these so much. A year later, and I'm still even trying to make them work for me! I don't know how successful I'll ever end up being... But let me go over the issues I have. I can barely get my foot into these. And I absolutely have the correct size, there's no chance I need to size up. The problem is with the vamp; it's not very high at all. Even with the shoes ALL the way loosened up in the laces, I struggle to get my foot in. My arches are very slightly high, and I do mean slightly, like I'm on the higher side of normal, but not quite fully high arches. That makes my instep maybe the slightest bit higher, but not even that fraction of an amount can be accommodated by this boot. The toe box has developed diagonal creases because of the twisting I need to do to get my foot in. I have to wear my thinnest socks with these, because anything else means I can't get my foot in at all. Speaking of the laces, they were on the short side (so if you have wider calves, these laces will not work for you), but the bigger issues was how much they hurt my fingers. Because I have to loosen them up SO much every time, I also have to tighten them quite a bit, and while the roughness and stiffness of them would definitely help hold them tied, my fingers feel the burn. I ended up swapping them out for both softer and longer laces, which at least made the lacing experience tolerable. The zipper is stiff and does not want to go up smoothly. It frequently gets a little caught on a part of the inner flap near the top, a problem that kept getting worse over time. Because it's so stiff, I really had to hold and pull. Now if the zipper were just regular smooth metal, that wouldn't be as much of a problem, maybe just a bit annoying. But it's not just smooth metal. It's covered in a textured plastic (or maybe hard rubber?) that makes my fingers hurt too. All this just to get the dang things on! If that were all, I'd actually be all right with that. Not happy about it, but acceptable enough to still net a much higher rating. But there's problems once the boots are on as well. Despite the not so tall vamp, I will say that the pressure along my foot's instep is actually not that bad. The problem I have with that is only in the discomfort and difficulty of getting it on, but once my feet are in proper place, it's fine. Maybe a bit more pressure than some other shoes/boots I have, but I've also felt far worse, and it's more than tolerable. (Maybe that would be different with some thicker socks, but alas, I can't even come close to testing that.) This is, unfortunately, about the only positive I have to say here. The tongues are gusseted, which is pretty normal for this kind of boot of course. But that gusset is quite thick. And it sits RIGHT on my ankle bone, crushing into it... hard. Listen, I even got the wide width hoping for a tiny bit of extra breathing room, and I do get that in the toe box area making that all comfy, but NOT in the ankle, so that gusset is quite painful. I can futz around with the tongues though to get them moved off juuuuust enough to not give me pain. But I sure do wish I didn't have to do that every single time! Still, at least I can adjust here. What I can't adjust is the counter (the part on the back of the heel, sometimes called "foxing"). This causes quite a bit of pain to my heel area. It's so stiff, and presses into my heel in all the wrong ways. I keep trying to wear these, hoping that part will soften out just enough to not suck, but so far, no luck. I can only wear them for a few hours before it becomes too much, and forget about wearing these two days in a row for anything. That's why my process of trying to break them in has taken so long - I just can't wear them regularly due to the pain. I tried putting a heel cushion right at the top of the counter, but because there's almost ZERO wiggle room in getting my foot in, 3/4 of the time, I'm ripping the cushion out as my heel slides down into the boot. I haven't been able to test if these will fix the pain problem, because it's so annoying to try to keep the cushions in place while getting my foot in. Perhaps I'll try a thinner cushion, I don't know. Maybe this wouldn't even be an issue if I could wear socks thick enough to be the cushion themselves 🥹 I don't know whose feet these boots are made for, but sadly, it's not mine. They get two stars rather than one because they look great, and I think they would be durable if I could actually wear them with regularity. Such a shame that I can't 😞

I enjoy wearing my Rocky boots. They have always lasted about a year and a half. Great boot!