Quote:
|
Originally Posted by jthig32
Attention office kissup:
Yes we just moved to a swank new building. Yes most of the people in the elevator with me every morning are wearing suits. Yes I feel a bit out of place in my jeans and polo shirt.
But you know what? That's still our dress code. They haven't changed it, and here's hoping they don't.
If you want to bring your game up a little, fine. Business casual is cool. But a tie?!?!? An effing tie????
Our freaking CEO doesn't wear a tie!
You sir, need to wipe the brown off your nose, immediately.
p.s. I realize a lot of you will read this and wonder what the big deal is. But seriously, neither our CEO nor any of our VP's are EVER in anything more than slacks and golf shirts for non special occasions. In our old building we wore shorts and flip flops (well some of us "young people" wore flip flops) on fridays, and jeans and tshirts quite a bit.
|
I've been out of college nearly 6 years and I've worn jeans or shorts to work every day except maybe three. I wore shorts to my first day on the job at IBM. How many people can say that, do you think? Shorts every day when it's 80+ outside. Flip flops occasionally. T-shirts more often with jeans than with shorts, but whatever.
I dressed that way as a newbie, and I dress that way managing 9 people.
Luckily I've worked at places that don't have written dress codes per se, and that have a culture that recognizes achievement and skillz over the business casual lemming style.
Oh yeah, I forgot to give my manifest on "Casual Friday." It makes no sense at all.
If you have a dress code, you are saying that your ability to do business is dependent on your mode of dress. I think this is perfectly acceptable for any number of client-facing occupations, service jobs, etc. Lots and lots of areas where dress code is totally reasonable. So, could you imagine casual Fridays for the sales people at your local Chevy dealership? How about everyone at the dentist office chilling out on Friday? Receptionist wearing her old Aerosmith Permanent Vacation '87 t-shirt? That's going to hurt business.
Are there any businesses where it's perfectly acceptable to follow a rule only 80% of the time? What if we only paid 80% of our invoices, or billed 80% of our clients? What if we only followed our IT Security Policy 80% of the time, or told our Legal Counsel that he only had to adhere to the law Monday through Thursday?
If wearing a certain style of dress is *so* important to your business that you feel the need to codify it, then it should be important enough that it's detrimental to your business to chuck it out the window 20% of the time. Otherwise, it's pointless. It's there because people think it has to be. Waste of time & effort.