Clothes Make (or Break) the Man
So I come to work today, and my manager Skippy Whitebread is out ahem...“sick”. Poor bastard couldn’t hack the stress for 5 days in a row, I suspect. Okay, no big deal – we’ll live just fine without him and his obsessive/compulsive ways for one day.
Ah, but there’s a big all-hands meeting scheduled for this afternoon, with some new V.P. of something or another. I’d never heard of Mr. V.P. before Wednesday, when we all received meeting planners to come sit on these miserable hard-as-hell folding chairs for two hours today to listen to some new guy drone on and on and on while our asses get progressively number and number. Since Skippy decided to play hooky today, we’ll all have to go without him.
But here’s the catch – ol’ Skippy was apparently supposed to tell us all to play Dress Up today – ‘cause Mr. V.P. doesn’t like seeing people dressed as commoners (i.e. blue jeans). It offends his California-based good fashion sensibility, I suppose. But Skippy didn’t pass this bit of information along, so we all showed up in our usual work wear: jeans.
The company technically has a “business casual” attire policy for work, but it’s only enforced at the corporate office in the O.C., and not here in Cowtown USA. It’s never been even officially rolled out in our building, and as long as you’re not wearing Daisy Dukes or ripped jeans or marijuana logo t-shirts, you’re pretty much free to wear what you want. It makes sense in my team, as I tend to spend a part of each day crawling around on these nasty-dirty tile floors hooking up computer cables. (The floors literally have not been swept or mopped once in the year that we’ve been in this corner of the building. They’ve got a good half inch of dirt and grit embedded in them.) Good clothes would be trashed within a week.
But today we were all supposed to wear our Sunday best – only nobody told us. So I’m working away and our former supervisor “Shakey” who is filing in for Skippy stops by and tells me I need to go home right now and change.
Well. I decide to take a stand about this. And yes, I am a stubborn mule sometimes. But here’s how I put it:
“One, I didn’t know I had to play dress up. The meeting planner I received didn’t mention it, and Skippy Whitebread didn’t mention it, either. Two, I have a ton of work that needs to be done. If I was to go home and change, it’d take me a minimum of four hours to do so, as I’d need to wash and dry my “better” clothing. (It’s actually clean, but I’d wash it again just to be 100% sure, and then take a nap while it’s in the spin cycle.) So if you want to kiss away four hours of productivity when we’re already overwhelmed with work, then you be me guest, Shakey.”
Well, that ended that argument pretty much right there. I’ll sit here until 1:00 and continue to work, and then I’ll try to sneak into the back of the meeting behind someone who is dressed to the nines, and hopefully Mr. V.P. won’t see me in my disgusting denim.
I’m a decent guy. I showered this AM, put on clean clothes, and even used both deodorant and cologne. I don’t reek of ‘eau du ass’, my teeth are brushed twice a day (even flossed after eating popcorn), and I even manage to run a comb through my rapidly graying hair every now and then. So it’s not like I’m a leper, for God’s sake. It’s just jeans. If Mr. V.P. can’t live with it, then tough shit on him. I don’t work any harder or faster or more efficient when I’m dressed up than when I’m not. But I do find myself more bugged when people insist that I put on a dog and pony show for someone who wouldn’t give me the time of day if we were to pass in the hall.
Sheesh.
Time to go get some work done, I suppose. We’ll see how this meeting goes. There’s supposed to be 200 of us in it; I’ll be curious to see how many have jeans on. ‘Cause it’d really suck big time to stand out in a crowd, wouldn’t it?
Ah, but there’s a big all-hands meeting scheduled for this afternoon, with some new V.P. of something or another. I’d never heard of Mr. V.P. before Wednesday, when we all received meeting planners to come sit on these miserable hard-as-hell folding chairs for two hours today to listen to some new guy drone on and on and on while our asses get progressively number and number. Since Skippy decided to play hooky today, we’ll all have to go without him.
But here’s the catch – ol’ Skippy was apparently supposed to tell us all to play Dress Up today – ‘cause Mr. V.P. doesn’t like seeing people dressed as commoners (i.e. blue jeans). It offends his California-based good fashion sensibility, I suppose. But Skippy didn’t pass this bit of information along, so we all showed up in our usual work wear: jeans.
The company technically has a “business casual” attire policy for work, but it’s only enforced at the corporate office in the O.C., and not here in Cowtown USA. It’s never been even officially rolled out in our building, and as long as you’re not wearing Daisy Dukes or ripped jeans or marijuana logo t-shirts, you’re pretty much free to wear what you want. It makes sense in my team, as I tend to spend a part of each day crawling around on these nasty-dirty tile floors hooking up computer cables. (The floors literally have not been swept or mopped once in the year that we’ve been in this corner of the building. They’ve got a good half inch of dirt and grit embedded in them.) Good clothes would be trashed within a week.
But today we were all supposed to wear our Sunday best – only nobody told us. So I’m working away and our former supervisor “Shakey” who is filing in for Skippy stops by and tells me I need to go home right now and change.
Well. I decide to take a stand about this. And yes, I am a stubborn mule sometimes. But here’s how I put it:
“One, I didn’t know I had to play dress up. The meeting planner I received didn’t mention it, and Skippy Whitebread didn’t mention it, either. Two, I have a ton of work that needs to be done. If I was to go home and change, it’d take me a minimum of four hours to do so, as I’d need to wash and dry my “better” clothing. (It’s actually clean, but I’d wash it again just to be 100% sure, and then take a nap while it’s in the spin cycle.) So if you want to kiss away four hours of productivity when we’re already overwhelmed with work, then you be me guest, Shakey.”
Well, that ended that argument pretty much right there. I’ll sit here until 1:00 and continue to work, and then I’ll try to sneak into the back of the meeting behind someone who is dressed to the nines, and hopefully Mr. V.P. won’t see me in my disgusting denim.
I’m a decent guy. I showered this AM, put on clean clothes, and even used both deodorant and cologne. I don’t reek of ‘eau du ass’, my teeth are brushed twice a day (even flossed after eating popcorn), and I even manage to run a comb through my rapidly graying hair every now and then. So it’s not like I’m a leper, for God’s sake. It’s just jeans. If Mr. V.P. can’t live with it, then tough shit on him. I don’t work any harder or faster or more efficient when I’m dressed up than when I’m not. But I do find myself more bugged when people insist that I put on a dog and pony show for someone who wouldn’t give me the time of day if we were to pass in the hall.
Sheesh.
Time to go get some work done, I suppose. We’ll see how this meeting goes. There’s supposed to be 200 of us in it; I’ll be curious to see how many have jeans on. ‘Cause it’d really suck big time to stand out in a crowd, wouldn’t it?
posted by Tommy G at
10:38 AM
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