Great topic Ian - love the post. This is getting a lot of hype! Here is the picture she posted of herself and a link to an article about it.
Personally, seems fine for summer retail attire at JCPenneys to me. I do respect that different companies might have different dress codes, but it sure seems that the managers actions were indefensible given she wore something from a "Career section" at JCPenney. Good grief!
But funny how life turns out - she is getting an amazing 15 minutes of fame off this. Hope she's having fun with it!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jcpenney-sylva-stoel-shorts_55b7f582e4b0a13f9d1ab2b2

I heard about this story and in my opinion, the shorts were not inappropriate and the manager's actions were unfair! If managers decide to enforce dress codes, they should make the rules very clear to employees, and first-time offenders should receive warnings, instead of being sent straight home. I've never broken a dress code, but at my old job, employees that did were simply given a warning and a copy of the rules.