dress code follies

I never had a problem with Megacorp's suit and tie dress code. First, I look good in a suit. :) Second, as a minority I was treated with more respect and equality the better I was dressed.

Even when Megacorp went to casual attire, my outfit of choice was a sports jacket, dress shirt, and slacks. I think the only times I ever wore jeans into the office was when we had some type of moving physical activity to do.
 
GrayHare said:
Maybe I should not bother mentioning the following because it will be doubted, but I swear it is true. Eventually she and I visited a distant client together. She had on the shortest skirt I have ever seen worn in a business setting. Apparently this was her "thing" to do when away from home. She was a health nut and supposedly for those reasons claimed to not wear underwear. During our client visit that day she showed me that was indeed true. It was then I understood the dropped white board marker comment.
Click to expand...

A business owning lady I knew had to buy a selection of jackets, scarves, and long skirts for her female staff to use when meeting with male clients. It seems that the men were either to distracted to do business, or were to nervous/fearful to concentrate on business.
 
I just started my first office job. It is in a call center. We have three levels of dress codes and an email goes out on Thursday or Friday with the dress codes for the following week. Most of the time we can wear jeans and a collared shirt, no tennis shoes,sandals, etc. If there will be a client walking thru then we need to wear Khakis or Slacks with a button-down. A few times a year a special client comes thru and we need to add a tie. No clue about the women, they seem to be able to wear pretty much whatever they want except graphis t-shirts, shorts and sandals. I'm three weeks into my job and have found I prefer slacks over jeans because it feels better for moving around. I also prefer polos to button-down when I have the choice.
 
One of my favorite dress code stories.

Back in the late 60s/early 70s, IBM had a very strict code of dark suit and tie, and the shirt could only be a white dress shirt. Then at some point they decided to liberalize the dress code and allowed (gasp) pastel shirts.

All was well for a while, but my friend was called in to fix a printer (they were huge things then, the size of a piano) in the back office of a Wall Street brokerage firm. This happened early on a Sunday morning.

So he figured nobody could possibly see him except some other low level drones, and he just threw on some jeans and a T-shirt and rode the subway into Wall St. After all, it was before 6 am on a Sunday, for heaven's sake!

Well, the job took longer than expected, and a few hours later one of the partners walked in to visit his office for some reason. He looked through the glass wall into the machine room and saw this IBM technician flat on his back under the printer, wearing (shudder) blue jeans. Right in his company!

He marched right up to his office and placed a phone call to Armonk, NY.

Next week the memo to all IBM folk said that the pastel shirt rule hadn't worked out and that they were going back to the tried and true white shirts with their DARK SUITS!!!

My friend's supervisor had a good laugh about it when he got the whole story, but the memory lingered on ...
 
braumeister said:
I guess in a way I had it very easy. The Air Force told me exactly what to wear every day, and exactly how to wear it. :LOL:
Click to expand...


You must have retired longer ago than I did. AT my final assignment they kept a very visible "mandatory fun" account fully funded by selling tickets every week for, I think it was 2 bucks. If you bough a ticket you were allowed to not wear a uniform on Friday. And on Friday everybody's attitude and work ethic went to hell. And if you didn't buy a ticket? That world reflect. It was one of the reasons I decided to retire.
 
Just to be clear, with the most sought after employers there’s still a dress code. Only it’s different. Skinny jeans, t-shirt, hoodie, backpack, water bottle. Electric scooter left out front.
 
There was no official dress code where I used to work. Most people wore whatever was cheapest and covered them decently. I remember a few young women who were obviously advertising their physical wares, but nothing so awful that they were "counseled." Never heard of anyone going commando (and I would have heard of it; it was a gossipy workplace).

I liked the way I looked in suits, so always wore one even when I wasn't a manager. A good suit lasts for years and years, so I didn't need to buy clothes very often.
 
Speaking of women's dress suits, my DW still has our closet 1/2 full of hers that she wore as a District Manager in a big real estate firm 30 ++ years ago. :confused:

When I ask her when will she get rid of them, I get a bank stare. I have no clue, I guess. :blush: (but that's a topic for another thread, I guess)
 
Polos and khakis. Then Fridays tshirts and jeans. Casual fridays morphed into casual everyday when techies could walk out and get a better offer in the late 90's.
Then the 2000 recession hit and the tight a$$es asserted their petty powers again. During A mid 2000s strike an empty suit decided managers doing manual labor needed to wear dress pants and button up shirts to show them out resolve and solidarity.
Now that the job market has turned I hear the techies are back in jeans and ts
 
This is an important point. Although I am white, I was a pretty young woman, and thus treated as "less than." I started working in a time when "sexual harassment" was perfectly OK, unless your boss literally demanded sex in return for a promotion in front of witnesses. It was not unusual to hear myself followed down the hallway with snickers and little kissy sounds; briefing a male audience (which they always were) was something of a trial. Wearing a suit seemed to help.

jollystomper said:
Second, as a minority I was treated with more respect and equality the better I was dressed.

.
Click to expand...
 
Oh, no, not the dreaded Bank Stare! The one that says, "You think you have some right to a loan composed of Our Money?"

aja8888 said:
When I ask her when will she get rid of them, I get a bank stare.
Click to expand...
 
Oh, I have dealt with some doozies. The worst was a dress code that was pretty antiquated for post 2010. Men had basically the dressy end of business casual (collared shirt, khakis, shoes that could be shined, etc.), plus a bunch of nonsense about allowable hair length, etc. Women had a bunch of complete nonsense to adhere to. Stuff like must wear panty hose at all times even if you are wearing pants (WTF?), peep toes shoes are permissible (but not encouraged) but open toed shoes are verboten, etc. An obvious infraction in the home office would get you sent home to change. I had to wonder who the foot fetishist was in management who walked around looking so closely at women's feet.

I was actually the cause of a dress code once. It was a tiny 8 person firm and they told me there was no dress code. Since I had a long commute and worked long hours, I wore whatever I pulled out of the drawer in the dark at 4AM. I wasn't thinking about it, so I didn't care. Apparently the final straw was when I showed up in a pair of stained cargo shorts and a t shirt with a picture of fishing gear and a caption that said "the way to a fisherman's heart is through his fly." The next day we had a business casual dress code.
 
My last 5 years we had jeans/polo shirts dress code, except when meeting with clients.
There was a huge battle over it.
I fought for it with the concept that if one just has dress down for Fridays, then the message is that Friday is a more relaxed day and de facto less work is completed.
If there is dress down every day, then all days are the same and the same efforts will be made all the time.
Maybe a little confusing, but it worked.
 
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.
 
We had several young artists in employ and they in particular were known for pushing the limits clothing wise. One lady in particular would often show up in flip flops, gym shorts, and an athletic t-shirt that was two sizes too small. Nothing else, over, under, or otherwise. Her shirt was thin enough to make out different skin tones underneath. Hey, they're artists, we don't want to impinge on their creativity, and we didn't, and they did a good job. Before long a second girl decided she wanted to be as comfortable, and finally the third did as well. Not long after a female client visited. Her jaw dropped open as she saw our artists milling about, and she was so incensed she canceled the contract because she was not going to finance a "playboy mansion". The next day we had our first dress code, but it only applied on client-visit days. I dare say all in all it was a fun place to w*rk.
 
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...

Boss? Is that you? :cool:
 
Wife & I ran our computer consulting corporation for 32 years, & our dress code was simple: stay legal! Of course, here in Hawaii dress codes are probably a bit looser than elsewhere, but no one ever complained about how the ladies dressed.
 
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...

At technology company I worked for, CEO was asked if company had a dress code - he said "Yes, all employees must dress" :)
 
Code monkey in Portland OR

Winter: jean and t-shirt
Summer: Short and t-shirt
 
We had a no jeans, no t shirt dress code. Later jeans were ok on Fridays. But I wore jeans every day that I was going out on field assignments.

In the 70's we had dark pants/white shirt type of dress code. It was messing for draftsmen (draftspersons) leaning over their drafting tables, drafting in pencil. Especially the women.
 
I had to wear a collared shirt and tie in grade school and high school; it was to teach us to prepare for the corporate world. I spent my professional years in a coal mine wearing jeans and a work shirt.
 
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
5K
deserat
D

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom