Humor: Dress for Success

[38Chevy454]

I was talking with co-worker 1 and another co-worker 2 came up. Here was the conversation

1 to 2: "You are dressed up nice today and yesterday."
Me (joking): "You must have an interview for a new job?"
2 to us: "Well, received these clothes for Christmas, so I figured might as well wear them. However, you know what they say 'Dress for the job you want, not the job you have'."
Me: "Guess I better come to work in my shorts, old t-shirt and tennis shoes then; I want to be retired and not have a job!"

I thought many of you could appreciate my attempt at humor. My work is actually pretty casual dress, no ties or suits unless a real big mtg with lot of visitors. Most days is dockers type pants or nice jeans and a std button shirt, and some oxford style dress shoes. Sure glad I don't have to wear a tie for normal workdays like when I started out as engr back in 1987. Now to just survive approx OMY!

 

[Ronstar]

OMY'ers definitely slack off in workplace "dress for success". In college, one of our professors said "whether you like it or not, people judge you by the way you look". So I would dress well when I was in a situation to be judged - mtg, etc. But most of the time I went to work in jeans, since I would routinely do site visits. We did have a no jeans dress code in the office that I was somewhat exempt from.

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[bingybear]

I thought many of you could appreciate my attempt at humor. My work is actually pretty casual dress, no ties or suits unless a real big mtg with lot of visitors. Most days is dockers type pants or nice jeans and a std button shirt, and some oxford style dress shoes. Sure glad I don't have to wear a tie for normal workdays like when I started out as engr back in 1987. Now to just survive approx OMY!

I got my MSEE in '86 and in my first job wore a dress shirt, pants, and shoes. In '91 I changed jobs ( a few times since) and it's been jeans, t-shirts and sneekers.

1.5 months to ER. I think I finally convinced them I'm serious

 

[foxfirev5]

I wore jeans on a customer call for the first time this week. As a bulldozer salesman this would not be unusual, but I've always felt that dressing for success was important. Now into OMY I don't feel it so much.

 

[REWahoo]

I'd think wearing jeans would be 'dressing for success' in your business...

 

[travelover]

I used to dress warmly, with a hoodie, when I flew for business as it usually involved standing in a freezing parking lot waiting for an airport shuttle. I knew I'd overdone it when another passenger pushed his luggage and a few dollar bills into my hand.

 

[foxfirev5]

I'd think wearing jeans would be 'dressing for success' in your business...

Actually many of the guys making the big bucks seldom get their Gucci loafers dirty while swinging multimillion dollar deals. While not at all in that league, I am old school enough to wear a dress shirt and pants. Of course much of it is regional as well. Much of my time is spent in the NYC, northeast US area. There most jobs are union regulated which eliminates much hands on action on my part. At my age I'm fine with standing there and doing the pointing and talking.

 

[Sarah in SC]

I used to dress warmly, with a hoodie, when I flew for business as it usually involved standing in a freezing parking lot waiting for an airport shuttle. I knew I'd overdone it when another passenger pushed his luggage and a few dollar bills into my hand.

Awesome!
DH was waiting for a friend to meet him when he flew out to Seattle last year to meet our bus at the shipyard, and apparently was looking especially hobo-ish sitting on the curb, as a guy came up and gave him directions to the soup kitchen.

 

[REWahoo]

Actually many of the guys making the big bucks seldom get their Gucci loafers dirty while swinging multimillion dollar deals. While not at all in that league, I am old school enough to wear a dress shirt and pants. Of course much of it is regional as well.

+1

My son in law is a 'bulldozer salesman' in West Texas and Oklahoma. He'd be SOL if he showed up at any customer's place of business wearing anything more formal than khakis.

 

[ABQ2015]

My workplace for the last 30 years (federal government office) never had a dress code. But I wore suits or skirt/blazer or jacket the first ten years just to try to get some respect because I was a 5'0 female engineer ('85 ChE) who looked at least five years younger than my actual age. And most of the other engineers were male and 15-20 years older than me. Now it is generally just a blazer and slacks and jeans on Friday but never a T-shirt and tennis shoes. Also my office is cold all year round so the blazer is handy. However as I OMY, am noticing that I am starting to wear jeans more than once a week.

 

[MRG]

+1

My son in law is a 'bulldozer salesman' in West Texas and Oklahoma. He'd be SOL if he showed up at any customer's place of business wearing anything more formal than khakis.

My late nephew was a banker that helped farmers get financing. He was always in a suit per his employer. The farmers he worked with got a huge kick when he'd climb into the cab of their new equipment for a test drive.

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[LoneAspen]

I became very skeptical, and even have a lot of animosity for, the suit-and-tie dress code based on my own observations in my first job out of college.

My first job in the early 90's was at a VERY (and I emphasize VERY) conservative large consulting firm. Back then, they had a very strict corporate dress code. Suit and tie, always. It was so strict, I remember having to keep my jacket on while running cable underneath a raised data center floor. One guy I worked with got sent home one day because he had violated the dress code. He had forgotten to wear either a belt or suspenders (one was required).

They tried to pitch it as being professional, but I quickly learned it was a sham. Some of the worst performing people got cherry-picked for assignments just because they kissed ass and dressed the part. Some people even wore three-piece suits in an effort to get ahead.

To me, it meant it the quality of your work didn't matter, just how you dressed. I thought it was bullsh*t.

The next job I took was at HP, where it didn't matter what you wore (within limits), and every job I've had since then hasn't really had a dress code. In fact, I haven't owned, or worn, a suit in probably 25 years, and it suits me (no pun intended) just fine.

I think corporate dress codes are a sham. In fact, I'm so biased against suit-and-tie types, when somebody comes in to interview and they're wearing a suit and tie, my first thought is that it's a facade, and I wonder if they're trying to hide incompetence by wearing a suit, which is exactly what I saw in that first job of mine. It's a hard impression to overcome for me.

 

[MRG]

.....snip......

They tried to pitch it as being professional, but I quickly learned it was a sham. Some of the worst performing people got cherry-picked for assignments just because they kissed ass and dressed the part. Some people even wore three-piece suits in an effort to get ahead.

To me, it meant it the quality of your work didn't matter, just how you dressed. I thought it was bullsh*t.

Couldn't agree more. I was part of a super team, we'd had years together. Nobody cared how you dressed.
Then our director left, replaced by a new CTO who picked the new leaders in the group based on how they started dressing .

They were the two worst leaders in the group. Most of the remaining folks transferred out, myself included. Karma came to visit eventually. When one of the new people "came out", the CTO told his hand picked manager to fire him as he didn't want any of "those kind" in his area. I was so proud of the new manager as she went straight to HR. One CTO was gone.

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[braumeister]

My first job in the early 90's was at a VERY (and I emphasize VERY) conservative large consulting firm. Back then, they had a very strict corporate dress code. Suit and tie, always. It was so strict, I remember having to keep my jacket on while running cable underneath a raised data center floor. One guy I worked with got sent home one day because he had violated the dress code. He had forgotten to wear either a belt or suspenders (one was required).

I have a great story along the same lines.

A good friend of mine was a technician with IBM back in the late 60s/early 70s. Strict dress code of suit & tie. At the time, they were starting to ease up a bit, and allowing people in some offices to opt for a pastel shirt instead of plain white.

Well, my friend's territory was Wall Street, and he got a call early on a Sunday morning to go in and fix a machine. He figured that at that hour, nobody could possibly see him except building security, so he just threw on a pair of jeans and a sweat shirt.

A few hours later, he was on his back under a machine (they were pretty big back in those days), and a partner of the brokerage firm came in to visit his office for some reason. He looked through the glass wall into the data center, gasped, and went up to his office to make a phone call to the CEO of IBM, who happened to be Tom Watson, Jr., son of IBM's founder.

The conversation went something like "I just saw one of your people in here, and he looks like a slob!"

Next day, word went out throughout IBM that the days of relaxed dress codes were over. No more pastel shirts, and anyone caught out of "uniform" would be summarily fired.

The funny thing is that my friend went on to a long and successful career with IBM, and nobody he worked with ever knew about his little incident.

 

[Rick_Head]

My late nephew was a banker that helped farmers get financing. He was always in a suit per his employer. The farmers he worked with got a huge kick when he'd climb into the cab of their new equipment for a test drive.

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Sounds like he'd get along well with Oliver Wendell Douglas.

My farmer GF used to tell us "If someone shows up on the farm and wants to shake your hand, do it. If he's wearing a tie, count your fingers before he leaves."

I have a great story along the same lines.

A good friend of mine was a technician with IBM back in the late 60s/early 70s. Strict dress code of suit & tie. At the time, they were starting to ease up a bit, and allowing people in some offices to opt for a pastel shirt instead of plain white.

Well, my friend's territory was Wall Street, and he got a call early on a Sunday morning to go in and fix a machine. He figured that at that hour, nobody could possibly see him except building security, so he just threw on a pair of jeans and a sweat shirt.

A few hours later, he was on his back under a machine (they were pretty big back in those days), and a partner of the brokerage firm came in to visit his office for some reason. He looked through the glass wall into the data center, gasped, and went up to his office to make a phone call to the CEO of IBM, who happened to be Tom Watson, Jr., son of IBM's founder.

The conversation went something like "I just saw one of your people in here, and he looks like a slob!"

Next day, word went out throughout IBM that the days of relaxed dress codes were over. No more pastel shirts, and anyone caught out of "uniform" would be summarily fired.

The funny thing is that my friend went on to a long and successful career with IBM, and nobody he worked with ever knew about his little incident.

In the late seventies I worked in a university data center. I get the midnight call, go in, determine it's HW. Call IBM, our guy shows up in about an hour: 1/2 drunk, wearing sandals, cut-off blue jeans and a tie (no shirt), fixed the machine and left. I wonder if those events are related?

 

[Throwdownmyaceinthehole]

Hate to admit it, but I've spent the last two days in 10 year old paint splattered yoga pants, cleaning my boat. That's what I call success!

 

[growing_older]

There are some conservative dressing companies in the high tech world, especially when customer contact is involved, but in the deepest darkest caves of programmers, the dress code is sometimes opposite. Indeed, there is actually a bit of social pressure to dress down - old tshirts, shorts, very worn jeans. If anything it's a reverse social measurement. You must be really really good that they allow you to wear THAT.

 

[LoneAspen]

I have a great story along the same lines...

I love these old war stories about these companies.

I'll share a couple more I remember...

I had to go to their Texas HQ for three months, and it happened to be in June, July, and August. In Texas heat.

As long as you were on the corporate campus, you were supposed to keep your jacket on. IIRC, the only place we could remove our jackets was in our cubes. Walking to and from the buildings to the parking garages in 100+ Texas heat, gotta keep that jacket on (how stupid).

A bunch of us newbies went down our first day there to the cafeteria for lunch. When we went to sit down at our table, we took our jackets off and put them on the backs of our chairs. A couple minutes later, a security guard came around and said something like, "I'm sorry gentlemen, you have to keep your jackets on in the cafeteria." We didn't notice it when we sat down, but every guy there had his jacket on while eating.

We felt like little boys being reprimanded, it was embarrassing.

Another story from a couple years later...

This was in either Indianapolis or Denver (I forget, it's been so long) but one of the mainframe security guys liked to push the envelope a bit and see how much he could get away with. The dress code stipulated VERY conservative shirts, either white or very conservative pinstripes.

One day, he shows up in a pastel shirt. I'm sure he knew it was against the rules, but he did it anyway.

That lasted all of about a couple hours, and they sent him home.

Last story I remember, a few years later than that and right before I left...

They started bringing in some third-party contractors that didn't have to fully adhere to the dress code. We couldn't have facial hair, and no hair below the shirt collar, but some of the contractors showed up with beards and mustaches, or longer hair. It just about caused a mutiny from some of us.

I remember getting all full of "piss and vinegar" (as my Momma used to say) one day, and decided I was going to talk to the General Manager of our development center about it. Now this was a guy who dressed to the nines. Three-piece suit, and cufflinks. When the company did relax the dress code a few years later and allowed casual dress on Fridays, I heard from friends who still worked there, that he tried to stop it. But I digress...

So I arrive for my appointment with this guy, and tell him a bunch of us are disappointed that contractors are allowed a more relaxed dress code than we are. I forget exactly how he worded it, but he basically marked me down as being a troublemaker, and told me in no uncertain terms that if I was unhappy with the rules, I was free to find employment elsewhere.

Which I did a few months later, when I quit and went to work at HP.

I stayed at that company for 6 years, the longest I've ever been at any employer. Looking back, it was about 4 years too long.

 

[scrabbler1]

LoneAspen, I have an odd story about the "Jacket Police" like yours. Back in 1991, after my company moved to another building in lower Manhattan. Our new office had more partitions separating our cubicles as well as blocking some of the larger beams from view. Because of the odd, trapezoidal shape of the building, there were some little gaps between some cubicles and the beams including mine.


I used one of those gaps to install a hanger to hang up my coat and jacket. One day, one of the company bigwigs was walking around our floor and saw a small part of the sleeve of my overcoat sticking out from behind the partition. He scolded me for not hanging up my overcoat in the coat closet which was not near my cubicle and making me hang it up there. He said I could hang it on the back of my chair but the chair wasn't nearly tall enough to keep the long overcoat from hitting the rug and I would inevitably roll over it with the chair's wheels and make it dirty or even damage it.


The next morning I resumed hanging my overcoat and jacket in the cubicle gap. The bigwig never returned and I used that handy spot to hang my overcoat and jacket for the next 10 years until we relocated again. In my new cubicle, I hung my coat up in a similar way just outside my cubicle but no bigwigs came around that time.

 

[Sarah in SC]

Wow, these stories are like learning about some tribal customs in some far flung country!

I've never worked anywhere with a dress code beyond wearing clothes that covered most of your private parts.

I wouldn't have survived two days.

My dad worked for Lipton Tea a long time ago, and I remember him and his staff bitching about having to wear long pants when the bigwigs came down to their little research station from New Jersey for visits.


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[MRG]

Wow, these stories are like learning about some tribal customs in some far flung country!

I've never worked anywhere with a dress code beyond wearing clothes that covered most of your private parts.

I wouldn't have survived two days.

My dad worked for Lipton Tea a long time ago, and I remember him and his staff bitching about having to wear long pants when the bigwigs came down to their little research station from New Jersey for visits.


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How fortunate you are. I've got a couple but this relates to your post. We had a dress code and it was a mess. Women were required to wear hose with a dress or skirt. Then there was the woman's shoe policy. I remember pumps(over a certain height) were outlawed as well as sandals and a couple other woman's shoe styles.

One gal on my team was not following the policy and other women started complaining. I ended up in HR talking with the director. There was a copied sheet showing examples of what was alllowed and what wasn't. There were a couple of styles I honestly couldn't tell apart.

I was telling the female HR director I knew nothing about women's shoe styles. I mentioned as a male manager "it made me feel uncomfortable" to be checking out if female employees were wearing hose(how could I tell for sure?), and exactly what style of shoe they were wearing. The director suddenly got real quiet.

A week later there was a special exemption put in for summer rules for women's dress code, later made permanent. Guess they hadn't really thought out the possibility that some young woman might not appreciate an old guy staring at their feet then asking them if they were wearing hose.:what:

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[poorcarver]

I was one of the IBM contractors that did not have a dress code and it caused purple H**L for the rank and file. Funny to watch but in retrospect I am sorry to have caused pain to anyone. My team of three including myself consisted of me, full beard albeit trimmed and short hair and a very young fellow who had hair down his back in a ponytail and he wore a small crucifix as an earring. The third guy who had long hair that he combed straight back and the curliest thick black beard I ever saw. We wore ordinary pants, whatever sort of cheap shirt and that was that. There was wake of consternation everywhere we went in the Maryland Office where we were working. The big guy would scold me occasionally and I would say we can leave now, no sweat, your choice. And that would be that. The best part was we were very happy people who worked very well together and were always laughing about something which really drove the straight-laced types mad. Ah well.

 

[Sasset]

I used to work for Lipton and remember in the 80s male supervisors and managers were required to where white shirts, ties, and jackets in the manufacturing plants. The jackets could be removed at the desk and on the floor, but ties must be worn even around the equipment. (How dangerous!) The men would tuck their ties in their shirts. As a woman, I had to wear the white shirt, but at least I didn't have to wear a tie! LOL

 

[LoneAspen]

I used to work for Lipton and remember in the 80s male supervisors and managers were required to where white shirts, ties, and jackets in the manufacturing plants. The jackets could be removed at the desk and on the floor, but ties must be worn even around the equipment. (How dangerous!) The men would tuck their ties in their shirts. As a woman, I had to wear the white shirt, but at least I didn't have to wear a tie! LOL

It's amazing how many of these companies used to think alike.

That consulting company I used to work for had a lot of projects in large automotive assembly plants. I never had projects there, but I accompanied some friends of mine there on occasion to observe their projects.

We had to keep our jackets on, including ties. Walking around in a suit, jacket, and tie guarantees you'll be alienated from any plant worker you have to work with.

And, like you posted, it's incredibly dangerous to be working around machinery that could kill you wearing a stupid tie. You either had to make sure to wear a tie clasp, or tuck your tie into your shirt.

Not to mention ruining clothes getting grease and oil on them. I remember friends of mine who worked more in the plants having to constantly replace clothing because it would get stained. Consequently, they'd buy the cheapest stuff they could find, and some would haunt the secondhand stores looking for suits at bargain prices because they were ruining them all the time.

 

[Sarah in SC]

Sasset, I imagine it was like that in the rest of the company for sure. Dad ran a tea research station (he is a horticulturist) with a bunch of science types and they were fairly immune to the corporate requirements thanks to distance from NJ to Charleston. They had a great workplace, with lunchtime volleyball, cookouts, and practical jokes galore.

MRG, though I've worn pantyhose at least a dozen times in my whole life, if some boss guy was staring at my legs every day, I'd totally think he was a creeper! Too funny!


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