Are you required to dress up at work? Pressured or encouraged to? Do you resent it?

In My Humble Opinion
81

Scrubs. If you’re working front desk you can wear business casual, but everybody just wears scrubs and calls it a day. It’s cheaper and simpler and you don’t have to worry about getting iodine or whatever on your nice clothes if you get pulled to help with a patient. Makeup and such is encouraged, but I almost never bother with it unless my face is all broken out.

As for there being any sort of correlation between taking great pains with one’s appearance and ambition/work ethic, I’ve worked with far too many well-dressed paper-weights to put even the tiniest shred of credence in that. I’ve got one at work right now–gets her scrubs altered so they fit nicer, always has her hair and makeup done just so, and so damn sorry I’m surprised she wipes her own ass. She’ll flat-out tell you that she just sits there when something needs to be done because eventually someone else will get fed up and do it themselves. If our boss acted like he took her more seriously or thought she was more ambitious than me, I’d be massively pissed. Fortunately, he has more sense than that.

82

I’m not trying to arbit anyone’s comfort, I’m trying to fight ignorance, just like it says on the tin. I won’t, however, fight willful ignorance. You clearly have little knowledge about suits, and you’ve decded based on what little you know that they’re varying stages of uncomfortable. All I can do is tell you you’re mistaken, and that you would benefit from browsing the resources I named earlier. If you can’t get past where you are and accept that maybe the thimbleful of knowledge you have might not cover everything there is to know, there’s nothing to do. You’ll be one of the teeming millions of guys who wonder how that one guy looks comfortable in a suit in this heat, that cold, this late in the day, blah, blah, blah.

83

I read this to mean “throw on another” as if you replace your work tie with your around-the-house evening tie. Or maybe you do?!

I haven’t seen an official dress code in years, but neat and presentable and jeans on Friday seems to fit. People are in varying levels of dressiness and a coat and tie is appropriate too.

84

Even I am not QUITE that crazy. That was a typo for “throw it onto the floor.” And of course I don’t really stomp on my ties. If I wore a tie to work it means either that I like it or that it was a gift from one of my nieces.

Though I don’t always take off my tie as soon as I get home from work. I like how it feels around my neck.

85

Exec Dir of nonprofit wildlife care facility, so I set the non-policy, same for men and women, every day 24/7/365. My only demand is closed-toe shoes, and clothes cannot be torn or threadbare. Pants of any kind, including jeans, are fine. Shorts in the summer are fine. We have logo-imprinted T-shirts and polo shirts in our gift shop, and we provide some for the staff. Cover-ups are at their discretion. And we wear plastic name tags. That way people know us from the visitors.

I dress pretty much to this standard most of the time, as my duties around the campus include patient care, physical plant maintenance, and administrative tasks in my office. But when I have meetings with dignitaries or major supporters or others out in the community, I usually go with the stereotypical khaki “critter guy” outfits probably originating with Marlin Perkins. No tie, thanks. And I’ve thought perhaps I should dress this way more often, since our facility is open to the public and you never know who may drop in.

One day I came to work dressed for a morning meeting. Had hardly gotten out of my car when in came a state wildlife officer behind me. “What can I do for you?” I asked. “Got a hit by car Sandhill Crane, thought you might want the carcass” he replied. This isn’t really so strange. We save, and distribute to institutions all over the country, such specimens for scientific research. He jumped into the bed of his pickup truck and took the lid off a box. Out jumped a very much alive, 4 foot tall, grey plumaged bird with a wing fracture and (as it turned out) a concussion that made him think it was dead. It flapped the wing, covering me with a spray of bright avian blood. Then it made a break for the open tailgate, and I grabbed it. It hooked a talon into the middle of my shirt and ripped a 10 inch tear in it, also running a furrow across my chest. I wrestled the bird under control and carried it into the clinic. Anesthesia made it tractable. The shirt went in the trash and I never got the blood out of the slacks. My chest healed ;).

Another time I was foolish enough to dress up, and sat safe (I thought) in my office. I heard one of my staff shouting from the yard. Staff shouting in the yard is a very, very bad thing so I ran outside. “Rattlesnake, rattlesnake!” she was yelling. I ran inside, grabbed a snake hook and a snake box, and ran back outside. By this time the reptile had crawled into a clump of saw palmetto. Now rattlers are natives, and they have every right to live with us, especially out in our countryside setting. But in the front quadrangle, where staff, volunteers and the public frequent, rattlers are not acceptable. So I dived into the bushes to find it. Eventually I located 5 feet of venomous beauty, captured it, then took it almost a mile “out back” and released it. Of course, my new shirt and slacks were now sliced into tatters by the sawtooth edges of the palmetto petioles. Another total loss.

Then there was the time I had to jump in the lake for the escaping alligator. And… Well, you get the idea. Now I am back to jeans and a T-shirt, with a change of clothes in the office closet.

86

I work in a law firm, which most people think of as a quite conservative environment, dress-wise. But we have no dress code, and many of the attorneys are former nonprofit legal services employees, and lefty activists in their spare time, so things are less conservative than they might be otherwise. And many of our clients, at least in my practice group, are on the blue-collar side of the spectrum, and sometimes don’t feel super-comfortable around people who are super-dressed up. The attorneys do tend to wear suits if they are going to court (which isn’t all that often).

I am not an attorney, but if I have client meetings scheduled, I tend to dress at least business casual, depending on the weather (hell if I’m wearing a skirt if it’s below zero outside!). Dresses if the weather is decent, slacks and a blouse and cardigan if it’s crappy outside. I don’t do heels, though, because of a really screwed up left ankle - dress shoes are a problem with custom orthotics, and I figure if I wore flat shoes for my own wedding, I’d hope nobody would ever give me crap about avoiding heels for medical reasons. If I don’t have client meetings scheduled, I tend to dress more casually, and plenty of people wear jeans in the office, especially on Fridays. One of the attorneys tends to wear his with well-worn cowboy boots, but then most of his work doesn’t involve meeting with clients, so really, who cares?

87

Jeans and an untucked polo shirt - wouldn’t want a job where I had to wear anything fancier. I do own a few ties, but have no idea where they ended up when we moved a couple years ago. (Well, somewhere in one of the boxes in the basement, I suppose…) And I haven’t owned a suit since the '70s.

88

I work as a temp, and I wear the same uniform at all the companies I work at - slacks and a nice top, and my nice black leather sneakers (maybe some jewellery, but almost never make-up). I haven’t yet had a complaint about not looking professional enough, and I always feel dressed appropriately (and comfortable).

89

I’ve just moved from a very creative nonprofit where people put real thought into their clothes every day, to a college campus admin job where people actually wear sweats more days than not. It’s frustrating because I miss dressing for the day, but I don’t want to stick out as the snooty girl. I miss putting a nice outfit together every morning, but I just wear jeans and a sweater and call it a day.

90

Our office doesn’t have a dress code, unless on rare ocassion when it does. (I did a thread about one of those). Jeans are fine, my boss’s favorite shirt is tie-dyed, usually no one cares.

91

I’m not even required to get dressed at work. I just wear a t-shirt and gym shorts, same things I always wear at home.

92

I work at Payless. We’re supposed to at least dress business casual (no sneakers which I find amusing since it’s a shoe store).
I tend to dress more on the business side of business casual. I frequently wear a dress or skirt and I always wear our shoes and accessories because it’s a great way to get customers interested in them (and because I like them). I’m not required to wear anything the store sells. It’s not even suggested. I applied at Payless because I love their products so it’d be silly to not wear them.

My two coworkers tend to dress more on the casual side of business casual. My boss is usually more dressed up than I am but like me, she does it because she likes to, not because she has to.

93

You really need to start an “Ask the…” thread.

94

I work in a restaurant and we have a very strict dress code: black dress slacks, black socks, black shoes, black tie, white (ironed, unstained) long-sleeve button-down button-collar shirts. I hate, hate, hate it. I love clothes, and dressing nicely (though being ‘dressed up’ in my case/sphere does not include suits, pantyhose, etc), and will soon be looking for a job which will allow me to wear my own clothes. Having to dress like a man is almost as bad as looking like a slob.

95

We’re casual, which is fine. Unless we go to our parent company for meetings, then it’s the business side of casual. This sort of sucks, because I go there often and it means maintaining two wardrobes almost. Given that I’m on public transport I prefer casual just because you get stains and stuff occasionally, although I’m happy to dress up.

My husband is suit and tie any day he goes into the office and doesn’t work at home, but he’s quite senior and it’s expected. The game with him is whether or not he wears a tie, which is a weird dominance game men seem to play, at least here. No tie but a suit means I’m too senior to have to wear one. In summer he often ditches the jacket, but it gets very hot here.

96

In all seriousness, our code is “have a shower and wear some deodorant”. General wear now (summer) is shorts, t-shirts (and I mean band or webcomic/geek t-shirts) and slops or trainers. That’s guys and girls, mostly (sometimes we’re talking short-shorts) although they do wear skirts/dresses as well. Management wears shoes, jeans or chinos and a polo shirt/nice dresses.

It’s at about the level I like, considering that it’s what I wear when I telecommute anyway (about half the time). Some days I might wear a buttoned shirt and jeans or cargoes, but I’m the only one in my team who does.

Nope. I wouldn’t work for a company where it mattered.

97

I used to work in offices, and started back far enough that dresses and hose and heels used to be required for women (Thank Og back in those days a modest heel was considered OK and we didn’t need the [del]stilts* four inch and higher heels that seem fashionable now.) Since it was part of the job and part of the reason for the decent pay I tried to conform as much as I was able to, but…

I always felt like I was in a costume. In drag, if you will. Never comfortable in above the knee skirts, hated how the pantyhose felt, how easily they ran. I was never comfortable walking in heels, and having a wide foot made trying to purchase them a complete and total nightmare (my foot can’t physically fit into a “medium” width shoe). I never “got” fashion, and probably wound up looking frumpy or awkward much of the time. I can’t wear cosmetics due to extremely sensitive skin, so I had to put up with being drawn aside periodically and “encouraged” to “try harder” with my looks despite years of battling horrific skin problems and doctors’ orders to stay away from cosmetics. I hated the expense of purchasing and maintaining clothes that never felt comfortable and I was miserable wearing.

Now, I work in a job where the advice to new employees is “don’t wear any clothes you love, you will get dye/polish/glue/other stuff on them sooner or later”. I can wear jeans, low/no heel shoes, t-shirts, and flannel every day. I finally feel comfortable in my work clothes. No one gives a damn I don’t wear make up, if anything, it makes me look more like a serious tradeswoman.

When I do feel an urge to get more feminine I can wear the long, loose, flowing skirts in wild colors and patterns I actually like. And sandals without the goddamned pantyhose.

98

Dear, don’t you understand? All women know how to sew from birth, you’re supposed to be able tailor your own clothes! After all, you’re just working for pin money…

[/sarcasm]

No, really, I remember when that was a seriously held attitude among many. I think it really does go back to assumptions that men couldn’t/shouldn’t sew and needed someone to do the adjusting for them whereas sewing was “woman’s work” and they should just do the alterations themselves. I remember my mother going on rather bitterly about the circumstances in the distant past.

In other words, yes, you’re correct. It’s a hangover from past cultural norms.

99

I work in IT for local government in the UK. Dress code is either undefined, or unenforced to the point that anyone wears pretty much what they want.

I always wear a shirt and tie (even on dress down Fridays), or I don’t feel like I’m at work.

100

Ditto. The big boss ( AKA, country manager ) might wear a jacket on occasion but most everyone else is in casual attire. The last time I wore a suit and tie was for a colleague’s wedding.