dress code follies

Back in the early 80's, my healthcare mega-corp had as part of their dress code requirements that employees display no visible tattoos or body piercings apart from earrings that were ambiguously deemed to be "modest and tasteful".

Extreme hairstyles were also expressly prohibited. Those included "unnatural hair colors" and in the case of men, a shaved head.
 
candrew said:
Back in the early 80's, my healthcare mega-corp had as part of their dress code requirements that employees display no visible tattoos or body piercings apart from earrings that were ambiguously deemed to be "modest and tasteful".

Extreme hairstyles were also expressly prohibited. Those included "unnatural hair colors" and in the case of men, a shaved head.
Click to expand...

Sometime around 2010 our hospital instituted a dress code for staff and contract physicians. Private physicians did not need to adhere to it. No shoes with any holes (for safety reasons), no visible tattoos, limited piercing, no "unnatural hair color" even for non-patient care staff. Non-patient care staff were much more likely to have visible tattoos. For about 2 weeks, people with a visible tattoo had to cover up, which was complicated if it was up on a neck, or on a hand. I saw staff walking around with strange bandages, which looked way worse than a tattoo.

The thing that bothered me was instituting a dress code around tattoos. It's kind of difficult to not wear your tattoo to work. I'm not a fan of tattoos, but it seemed ridiculous and unenforceable.
 
marko said:
I was the big boss and scheduled a video conference on a Friday with a remote sales office.

Everybody in sales showed up in jeans and golf shirts (sales were required to wear jackets and ties when visiting customers).

When I observed that "I guess we're not seeing customers today", the reply was "Well, it's casual Friday", implying that no customer visits were planned.

I completely lost my mind and went on a 20 minute tirade, colorfully explaining that Casual Friday does not apply to salespeople! Idiots! Actually had to fire one guy because he stubbornly insisted that casual Friday applied to everyone and as such he wasn't required to see customers on Fridays; I threatened to ban CF for the entire company!

Our other policy was when flying: Khakis and dress shirts, regardless of how long the flight. The thinking was that as we were required to fly First Class, you never know who you'll be sitting next to and should look your best.

Even now (15 years after RE) I still don't wear jeans flying. Never. Just can't do it.
Click to expand...
SOOOOOO glad this mindset is a thing of the past. Enjoy your retirement.
 
marko said:
Our other policy was when flying: Khakis and dress shirts, regardless of how long the flight. The thinking was that as we were required to fly First Class, you never know who you'll be sitting next to and should look your best.

Even now (15 years after RE) I still don't wear jeans flying. Never. Just can't do it.
Click to expand...

To this day, I wear khakis and a dress shirt to fly. If I'll need a sport coat where I'm going, I'll wear that too, rather than pack it. Airline personnel treat you better if you don't dress like a slob.
 
Clothes make the man... NOT!

I spent a career in manufacturing plants. In the 1980s, engineers were expected to wear neckties to perpetuate a charade that we were "management". However, safety rules required ties to be tucked inside one's shirt so they wouldn't become entangled in moving equipment. Dispensing with them entirely would have been simpler and safer.

It wasn't until the mid 90s that the anachronistic tie rule finally was abandoned.

The last 15 years were in a glorious worker's paradise were everybody has to wear uniforms made of fire-resistant fiber. We all dress the same and call each other "Comrade". :LOL:
 
DF worked for on of the major airlines and when we flew as children back then we had to wear "church clothes" as there was the great possibility we would would be flying first class. But also, flying was more of a luxury before 1979 and deregulation. For the most part, the fling experience has gone done dramatically since then, as we are treated like cattle nowadays. But what I can't figure these days is the lack of decent clothing/footwear these days. I realize that flying is extremely safe today, but in the highly improbable chance I would have to exit a burning aircraft, I sure as heck wouldn't want to be wearing flip flops, sandals, shorts or a tank top. Even the poor lady who recently got sucked partially out the window, had enough clothing on that someone could hold on.
 
We never had a formal dress code until about 10 years before I retired. Each year it was revised, as staff challenged it. It was ridiculous by the time I left, I felt like we were children.
They got to the point of defining the material your clothes could be made of!
 
While working in industry I was required to wear a tie in the office and a suit/sports coat during colder times of the year. When traveling it was casual unless involved with entertaining clients. Before I retired from teaching college I wore what ever I wanted. Sometimes I would wear a coat and tie and other times a black leather motorcycle jacket and boots or jeans and sandals. At the beginning of the term it was usually coat and tie. Later I would ride if the weather was good. It was fun to see the reaction of the students to my riding clothes. :D Since retiring it is shorts/t-shirt/sandals.



Cheers!
 
I worked at a very large Telecom and in the early 90's had re-joined the data center from a development group. Note: I'm a female (this is relevant to the story). I was accustomed to wearing slacks and casual shoes to work; my previous group had no issues with it. The data center had a policy of "casual day" every other Friday, but you could "buy" casual dress every day if you wanted to pay $1 per day (never learned where the money went). HOWEVER, men were allowed to wear plaid shirts, khakis, and Dockers with a tie and that wasn't considered "casual". I was told, and these are the EXACT words, "if you're not wearing a skirt you're dressed down".
Oh boy did that start a firestorm in the data center with the women when I got through with it.
Needless to say the "every other Friday casual dress" and "buy your casual days" policies were dropped rather quickly after I pointed out that the dress policies between the men and the women were just a tad inconsistent and rather discriminatory....
 
frances said:
I worked at a very large Telecom and in the early 90's had re-joined the data center from a development group. Note: I'm a female (this is relevant to the story). I was accustomed to wearing slacks and casual shoes to work; my previous group had no issues with it. The data center had a policy of "casual day" every other Friday, but you could "buy" casual dress every day if you wanted to pay $1 per day (never learned where the money went). HOWEVER, men were allowed to wear plaid shirts, khakis, and Dockers with a tie and that wasn't considered "casual". I was told, and these are the EXACT words, "if you're not wearing a skirt you're dressed down".
Oh boy did that start a firestorm in the data center with the women when I got through with it.
Needless to say the "every other Friday casual dress" and "buy your casual days" policies were dropped rather quickly after I pointed out that the dress policies between the men and the women were just a tad inconsistent and rather discriminatory....
Click to expand...

:clap::clap::clap:

Go Frances!
 
Gumby said:
At my first law firm, it was all suits all the time, and only white shirts (at least for the lawyers). If you were going out of your own personal office, you were supposed to put your suit jacket on. Women were not permitted to wear pants, until all the women in the firm got together and all wore pants on the same day. The old guys almost croaked, but the rule changed on that day.
Click to expand...

Haha! My first law firm, I was expected to wear a coat and tie every day--generally I wore khakis (this was also acceptable courtroom attire in my area unless you had a trial). The next one, I was able to ditch the coat and tie, and eventually started wearing short sleeve Polo shirts and khakis when it was warm outside. I had an auto accident and was going to physical therapy three times a week - I avoided scheduling appointments those days and just came in wearing jeans; if I had a walk-in, I figured my casual attire was their problem.

Now, I work for a minicorp, and the official dress code is a Polo or dress shirt and khakis + dressy shoes every day except Fridays, which is a bit much, since we don't see customers in our office. Some people don't follow it and have never been reprimanded. I generally wear the shirt and khakis with trail running shoes.
 
davebarnes said:
When I started at StorageTek in 1989, the [unwritten] dress code for males was: suit and tie. But, the only allowed suit colors were black, blue, gray. I once wore a pink button down shirt (very Brooks Brothers) and was reprimanded by a Senior Executive VP.
When I left in 1995, it was business casual every day. The ex-IBM VPs were very unhappy.

Now, at my "place of business", cargo shorts are always in style when dressing up.
Click to expand...

Since I owned my business I did not have too much trouble with dress code. But then this is Maui, where our first appliance repairman did not work if the surf was up. Once, someone told me I should not wear slippers (thongs or flipflops to mainlanders) at a job site. I told them if they did not like what I was wearing they should call someone else to fix their computer.
 
Early '80's as a new enginerd it was polyester short sleeved shirt and tie. Later we lost the polyester but still wore ties. Sometime in the '90s casual Fridays came along, and some of the younger engineers would "forget" their ties on other days. Eventually someone realized the clients were showing up for meetings wearing polo shirts so casual Fridays became every day.

My last j*b I took knowing I was planning to RE soon, which wound up being less than two years. Anyhoo, that company was way behind the times and still officially required ties. Our office was a branch of a field office in the hinterlands, so our guy in charge told us to just keep a tie in the drawer "just in case." Well, that didn't work so well with a polo shirt at least once! One advantage of being a hard-to-find specialty engineer with a full BS bucket on the cusp of ER is that I basically just laughed at their ties knowing the last thing they would do was get rid of someone they couldn't replace for months.

Back in the '80s, we had a guy TDY in a client's office that had a strict dress code and was run by a bunch of anal ex-Navy nuke skippers. If you went off your floor you had to put on your suit coat. He called it his "elevator jacket." Some young IT guy got booted for showing up off his floor without one.

DW worked in state government and they were having issues with young women not knowing the difference between professional wear and a little black dress for Saturday night. To get the point across they decided to have a little fashion show demonstrating what not to wear. Took most of a day. Our tax dollars at work.
 
How far back were women wearing little black dresses for Saturday night? It certainly predates me!
 
I only worked at one company for my whole career. You could dress as nicely or casual as you liked. My department wore jeans, male and female, but I wore khakis using that dress for the next job concept. Even when I advanced to the top job I still wore the same clothes unless I was meeting with politicians or business partners, then I wore a suit. Even in meetings with our Fortune 500 CEO we dressed casual.
 
When I was hired as a software instructor at age of 23 out of school, my supervisor suggested wearing a tie on the first day, just to show professionalism and provide an aura of confidence. I never wore jeans on a day I taught, but many in office wore jeans if they were not facing customers.

Now, at a different megacorp, everyone wears jeans. The executives wear jeans with a sport coat.
 
Winemaker said:
DF worked for on of the major airlines and when we flew as children back then we had to wear "church clothes" as there was the great possibility we would would be flying first class. But also, flying was more of a luxury before 1979 and deregulation. For the most part, the fling experience has gone done dramatically since then, as we are treated like cattle nowadays. But what I can't figure these days is the lack of decent clothing/footwear these days. I realize that flying is extremely safe today, but in the highly improbable chance I would have to exit a burning aircraft, I sure as heck wouldn't want to be wearing flip flops, sandals, shorts or a tank top. Even the poor lady who recently got sucked partially out the window, had enough clothing on that someone could hold on.
Click to expand...

I wear only cotton or other non-synthetics on planes in case there is a fire as I'm exiting a burning aircraft. I do wear Gym shoes though. We try to get seated over the wings for a hasty exit if need be. Safety is no accident. :cool:
 
These replies have given me the best laughs! My last Co didn't take suits with panty hose off of the dress code until the very late 2000s... and this is Houston- known for being warm & humid most of the year. July- Sept were miserable months if you had to be out in the heat in those kinds of clothes. They did have casual Friday rules which were- for the women- smart pants or skirt & blouse or a "professional" dress. There were some abusers here & there including a few of our female directors which was odd. As their ages rose so did their skirts and collar span.

Yearly or so emails would go out from HR reminding everyone of the dress code. We did have a lot of customers and investors who were in our offices, so I erred on the side of conservative dress. Meetings with clients were sprung on us by the sales guys from time to time. We all regularly rode in elevators with the CEO, board members & the like. I'd have been mortified to be caught looking shabby in that environment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

R
That first day ...
Replies
1
Views
1K
target2019
target2019
Nords
Haleakala or bust...
2
Replies
37
Views
4K
deserat
D

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom