Some jobs require employees to wear uniforms. Some schools require students to them. One notch down from the uniform is the dress code, in which not everyone dresses identically, but according to (sometimes strict) guidelines.
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Tonight’s feature presentation: DRESS CODES AND uniforms
I was sitting in a comfy chair at the Starbucks nestled inside my local Safeway the other day, sipping on my liberal elitist caffè latte, when this topic came to me.(*) Around a small table close by, on a break, sat the supermarket’s management staff. White males, mostly of a certain age, all wearing the obviously mandated garb for their position: long-sleeve white shirt, neck tie, no jacket, black pants, black shoes.
As this is the grocery store I shop at most often, of course I’ve seen these gentlemen before, individually or together, working on whatever it is they do to keep the store operating. I know they are management types due to their name tags. Rain or shine, winter or summer, they always wear the long-sleeve white shirts and the rest of the outfit. I haven’t surveyed other Safeway stores to find out if this is a company-wide policy, or something local to this store.
It made me sad, in a way.
I get that these people are required to look like they belong in their jobs, especially being in public, and to be distinguishable from customers who may want their assistance. But those shirts look distinctly uncomfortable. Some people like them; I personally hate them. Long sleeves, always white, and with a neck tie. It’s not for me. It takes me back to my days as a young teenager when my sisters, both older teenagers, worked as part-time cashiers in an independent grocery store in our neighborhood. The store manager was one of those guys. I can still picture him now, all these years later, wearing a long-sleeve white shirt, and neck tie. Some things never change.
(Sidebar: he was also one of those “guys with purple fingers” described by George Carlin. If you’re old enough, you’ll know what that refers to).
There are lots of jobs that require full-on uniforms. In some jobs, you wear coveralls provided by the employer; often these are “hands-on” kind of jobs. Military members, of course, have uniforms for various occasions. Police officers. Team sports players. Uniforms are worn in many factories. At another grocery store in my area, cashiers and other staff wear identical t-shirts emblazened with the company logo plus whatever promotion is going on at the moment. It seems like they have new t-shirts every week. When everybody wears it, it’s a uniform.
Dress codes are in effect for many more occupations. You will find many restaurants have a theme for staff. I’ve been in countless restaurants where the staff all wear 100% black (at least the visible parts). Each person has their own variation on shirts, pants/skirts/dresses, and shoes, but they all have in common that the clothes are solid black. Other places have their own variations.
And then there’s the ubiquitous office. At my first full-time job in the 1970s, all of us were required to dress for business. For the men, that meant dress shirts, ties, and jackets. In summer short sleeves were permitted, but the tie and jacket were required. You could take the jacket off while in the office and drape it over the back of your chair, but you had to have it.
I hated it.
We were constantly told: you have to look professional in order to be professional.
Bullshit.
It’s one thing when your job requires interaction with the public. It’s something else when you are a cubicle dweller whose only contact with the public is when you leave the building for lunch. Having a piece of cloth tied around my neck makes me physically uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable distracts from my concentration on the job. It’s that simple.
Years later, I joined a large well-known multinational computer company. At that time, we had a similar dress code to my 1970s job, except for the jacket. Dress shirt and tie were required at all times, even for us cubicle dwellers. For the sales force, which made up a very large part of the company, their dress code was more stringent: back to the long-sleeve white shirts, neck tie, and jacket. Always.
As time went by, the company introduced Casual Fridays, which had become the rage elsewhere, and our company tried to catch up to (then) modern times. It was, in fact, Business Casual. No jeans, but dress pants and dress shirt, and no tie. That became the norm on Fridays. Eventually, as you might expect, this gave way to everyday Business Casual. And then, ultimately, casual everyday, on which even jeans were permitted.
At my most recent job, before retirement, it was pretty much anything goes. At that job, I regularly wore shorts and a t-shirt to work in the summer months, as did pretty much everybody else. Even senior management dressed very casual, the exception being dressing up to Business Casual when clients were expected to come in for meetings. Our CEO kept a suit hanging at the office in case he had to dress up on short notice.
My partner is a mid-level manager at another large multinational corporation. Most days, he wears jeans and a nice shirt to work. He will upgrade to dress pants and shoes on days when he has certain meetings scheduled, and for some travel occasions.
In many occupations, the dress code has become distinctly more casual over the years. In others, like the supermarket example I began with, nothing has changed.
What do you wear to work?
(*) Had I been shopping for some cheese, I might have started this diary with: “I was sitting in the public library over on Thurman Street just now, skimming through Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole, when I suddenly came over all peckish.” (If you don’t know where that originates, just go away. :-) )
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