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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. … Having to dress like a man…
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I take it you’re not a male. I hate the Severe Waitron look as well. If I knew who you worked for, I’d be happy to tell them that the asexual all-black look is not appealing to me as a customer.
Where I work, (An international Fortune 50 enterprise with ~300,000 employees) the dress code is effectively “At least pretend to care what you look like” and we have no requirements about styles, colors, etc., unless your business unit deals with the public in person. In my group, we all dress decently, but in what could probably be called Business Really Casual. We are free to, but exercise the judgment not to wear t-shirts, shorts, etc.
The official corporate policy: …you’re asked to use good judgment in dressing… This includes presenting a neat, well-groomed appearance and showing courtesy in your actions.
I knew someone in California who was working for NASA, and one day, a memo was circulated that said “Big boss will be here on Thursday. Please wear shoes.”
I currently work in a “business casual” environment. Here, that means khakis/slacks and a collared shirt for the guys. On Friday we can wear jeans. Shoes cannot be flip flops or sandals. I am classified as “senior mid management” and I dress as above. Some guys do wear suits, some (even women) wear ties. Beyond the minimum requirements, whatever floats your boat.
In the past I have worked in environments from full suit and tie required at all times to jeans (shorts in the summer) and a t-shirt. I believe one should dress to at least the level of your clients/customers. If that doesn’t apply, then I dress in a manner to make my staff feel comfortable. The youngster in the OP made a point that is fairly common among younger workers. Many of them are not comfortable “dressing up” if it is not specifically part of the job.
This is where I’m at. I don’t want a promotion within my current company. The only promotion available would very quickly Peter Principle me into a situation where I’d suck at the job. Also, it would put me behind a desk on the phone all day talking to people who don’t want to talk to me (“care coordination”) and disciplining people with much more experience but less work ethics, which would give me the screaming horrors.
When I was hired, I was told scrubs. A couple of nursing managers later, and I see more business casual around the office, but no memos have gone out changing the dress code, and most of my work is done outside the office anyhow. So I continue to wear scrubs. I could wear business casual, since most of my nursing care isn’t messy, but that might get people thinking I want that desk job.
I know this is horribly un-American of me, but I dress to *avoid *promotion.
Not just the public, but other coworkers. This only counts if you’re actually not crap at your job, but coworkers and middle management do unconsciously react to manner of dress. There’s, like, studies and stuff. (Which I’m having a hell of a time googling because my search terms keep bringing up school uniform debate stuff.) People will defer to the better dressed person in the room, regardless of actual job title or seniority. In many work environments, this means they’re more likely to do you favors, prioritize your project, cover for you when you’re sick, or do other things which are likely to help your long term career.
What I find interesting is the improved treatment I get when I show up to visit people in the hospital while I’m wearing my scrubs. I’m careful never to wear scrubs that could be mistaken for employee scrubs (I wear patterns instead of ceil blue, for example), but just the cut of scrubs means staff members talk to me and treat me as a fellow medical professional, not an irritating family member asking questions. I’m certain it’s entirely unconscious, but it’s a very real effect. Just telling someone I’m a nurse doesn’t have the same effect as *showing *them I’m a nurse (with $30 worth of rather unattractive clothing that can be bought at Walmart by anyone!)
Whatever. I’m much more comfortable in shorts or jeans than a suit. Most of it is because of what I’m used to. Also, the enviornment that I live in just isn’t suitable for dress clothes. They make no sense.
As for the whole “casual is much more comfortable” argument: man, I really wish guys would learn to buy clothes properly. If you’re not comfortable in a suit and tie, in dress slacks and leather shoes, you just plain don’t know what you’re doing - you should admit it and seek help.
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It’s not just how comfortable something is. As a woman, I can buy no end of comfy stylish dress-type things. But it’s always more hassle than casual clothes, because nicer clothes tend to stain easier, are more expensive to buy, clean, and maintain, and tend to rip, tear, or run. I hate wearing dry-clean only clothing, because I have to dry-clean them. It also takes more time to shop and more money to buy dressier clothes. I prefer to use my extra cash on things I enjoy, not clothing I hate wearing. Especially when there’s absolutely no reason to, other than the company has decided they have a dress code for no work-related reason.
Luckily, I’m an engineer geeky type, and one of the great benefits of that is that we generally get a pass as far as what we wear to work.
And, adding to Athena’s point, I absolutely refuse to wear pantyhose. I swear I think it’s a plot by the Man to keep us down. No way am I going to wear something I MAYBE get one use out of that tears and looks stupid because someone thinks I should. My legs are pre-tanned and my bare legs are not horrifying. Deal With It.
(I will wear trouser socks or tights, at my own discretion. They don’t tear like pantyhose do.)
I think that works to a point. In management consulting, we were always told to dress a step above our clients. If they dress casual, we dress corporate casual. if they dress corporate casual, we dress in suits. I guess it’s good for intimidating the client’s worker drones and middle managementy types who think the hot shot Manhattan consultants with our suits and laptop bags actually know what we are talking about.
When I worked at a software startup last year, we pretty much just dressed as we pleased, so long as we weren’t meeting a client. Most of those guys were Ivy League and MIT types. One of the founders looked and dressed like Zak Galafranakis on meth.
After a few hours of working with someone, anyone with half a brain can tell if you are an idiot, regardless of what you are wearing.
I’m off to court in half an hour, so will wear the appropriate garb: grey slacks, white wing shirt, white tabs, long-sleeved black waistcoat, and black gown. It’s mandatory in the Court of Appeal and the Queen’s Bench, so yes, some pressure.
I’m a dude but my problem is what I was saying about buying off the rack clothes. I typically have zero choices at department stores (60" chest) and at men’s warehouse where I’m typically forced to shop I get 1-3 choices (20" neck) and I think I have 1 shirt that isn’t dry clean only. I typically don’t even get to chose the color of my cloths since it’s a “Well, I’ll take everything you have”. I’ve even had times where I had to buy full suits just to buy a new pair of dress pants since they had none in my size.
Since I’m on the topic of suits why is it common to only have a 12" drop from chest to waist I’m pretty fat right now and I have a 44" waist so to buy a suit that I can even put on the jacket I have to get the pants totally recut. Before I took the current job and was in shape I had a 36" waist and even tailors looked at my like I was crazy trying to get things to come close to fitting.
I work in the IT dept for a fairly large health care company, and that’s more or less how I dress, with a few tweaks. I generally wear undershirts under tucked-in polo type shirts, a belt, and during the winter, some button-downs, and usually wear some variety of casual shoes I don’t wear t-shirts or sneakers though, and I’m always clean shaven and well groomed.
The dress code is kind of ambiguous- it’s not supposed to be t-shirts or sneakers, but every so often, it relaxes to the point where HR sends a nastygram and it tightens up for a while after that.
Managerial types tend to wear slacks/khakis more often than not, and some wear dress shirts, but it’s not a consistent thing.
One thing I’ve noticed after about a dozen years in IT and having worked at some engineering environments before that, is that whatever the dress code is, about 30% of people will make it look like crap while staying within the letter of the law. I usually look better in plain old casual than a lot of these guys look in business casual.
I was a consultant for a while and absolutely hated it. The vast majority of the time, we were doing work in our computer lab, so we weren’t even in with the other people in our own office. Yet, for some reason we had to dress on the formal end of business casual, and would get the stink-eye if we wore stuff like casual buttondowns with our slacks, or stuff like that.
At the office, it’s basically act like you care what you look like - we don’t really HAVE a dress code. But I mainly work at home so this morning, I was wearing my black Sigfried and Roy Mirage Hotel sweats that have white tigers leaping around on them and a glow in the dark bright orange tank top. With a grey plaid flannel - it’s cold here.
Last place I worked was fairly casual, khakis and polo shirts type place. We were technically allowed to wear jeans on Fridays, it even said so in the handbook. But if you did you ran the risk of getting the hairy eyeball from the boss and a nastily worded email asking why you were so casual today? I don’t miss that place at all…
Most of my jobs have almost required scrubby clothes. People would come in for their first few days of work and be told that their shoes, in particular, were way too nice and they should get ugly work shoes that they didn’t care much about.
Current job has a uniform, so I go to work looking… professional, in a way. I have to wear a chef jacket (which is too big), an apron, a bandanna on my head, ugly work shoes, etc. But not super classy.
Back when I had a job where I really got to choose what I wore, I dressed up. I don’t know if it would be exactly business casual. It was mostly fairly casual dresses, sweaters, colorful tights, and that kind of thing. But it wasn’t jeans and t-shirts. Something like this would have fit right in. A suit, not as much. It was by choice and really had little to do with ambition or advancement. It was just that I worked in a restaurant kitchen for my evening job and had to wear my most disgusting clothing and wanted to dress and feel and be treated like a human being when I could.
My last job was as a graduate assistant in an office setting. They wanted business casual, which I hated since I wasn’t going to be seeing anyone other than my co-workers anyway. I feel massively uncomfortable in dressy clothing. It’s not as bad as it was before I lost weight, but it’s still bleh. I don’t look good in most slacks, I think.
My current job is as a research assistant. I work from home most of the time, and went to my last meeting in a Ramones t-shirt and jeans. I like this a whole lot better.
I work for a government agency. Our dress code (males) from Labor Day to Memorial Day is shirt/tie and slacks (Dockers, khakis, etc.). If we are meeting with outside folks, we are expected to at least put on a sport jacket. Fridays are slacks casual. Despite the tie dress code, a lot of folks don’t. There’s no real enforcement as long as you don’t show up scruffy. But I look at who gets the promotions and the bonuses, and, well, the people who dress more professionally get treated more professionally.
Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the dress code is dialed down a notch. Still with the slacks but now either a button-down (no tie) or a polo style shirt. Fridays are jeans casual. Most people take the summer dress code to mean “jeans every day.”
Truth is, I like wearing a tie. I’ve got a whole closet full of neat ties. Makes me feel professional. I sometimes will wear one during our “non-tie” season and will get some ribbing. Even the sport coat gets “what, you got a job interview?” ha ha.
