Far be it from me to argue with your dear mother, but if you paid them enough, they’d be able to do it. It would just necessitate taking the whole damn thing apart and essentially cutting new pieces out of the fabric. Only worth it if, for some reason, you really really love the fabric. It will cost you more than a new pair of pants, because material is cheap, and time is not. I wouldn’t do it for my son who didn’t listen to me. I would do it for a stack of $100 bills. 
Mother’s point, which I did not relay well, was not to expect miracles–that it was better to get the whole suit custom-made than to try to get one that was far too big altered to fit. “Taking a 36” waist down to a 32? Fine. 46-incher to 32? Unlikely to end well, son, just buy the material and I’ll find the pattern and you’ll have it a week from Tuesday. No payment necessary, but if you could stop teasing your sister that’d be great."
Your mother was a wise woman.
And I bet you were a terror as a brother.
Not really. I was protective to my younger sisters (though my BABY sister never needed much protection–when she was in 1st grade, I once had to stop her from beating up a boy who had foolishly picked a fight with her), and protected by my older siblings. I was a terror as a classmate, though.
I wore suits when I worked outside the home. As a substitute teacher, I needed every bit of authority I could get–I’m five feet tall, and plenty of kids in elementary school were taller than I was.
Then, when I switched to marketing, I still had those suits.
Construction related. Uni is jeans and a work provided shirt. I can wear that, but it seems sloppy to me (I don’t work in the field, nor see customers.) I dress as I please, dressy if I have a meeting, otherwise just slacks and a nice blouse. If wear a skirt and heels on a non-meeting day, there’re comments. I tell them I have an interview. 
Truth. Taking in pants more than a few inches will alter the placement of the pockets - the side pockets move back and the back pockets move closer together at the rear, unless you’re willing to complete un-stitch them, cut out some material and sew them back together. After a point, you have to acknowledge it’s time to go shopping. (Had to do a lot of my own alterations when I was thrifting, bitd).
When I went from bedside nursing to a psych hospital environment I was excited to wear “street clothes” but I quickly realized that geriatric psych nursing was best suited to scrubs. I usually wore full scrubs, but I could swap them out with golf shirts or a pair of neat jeans on weekens with a scrub top.
Then I was a manager in a clinic for 18 months. I was so excited to wear dress clothes, I wore suits at first, then slowly cut back to dress pants and blouses or sweaters. I downgraded a bit because I was always better dressed than my boss. (To be fair my boss was not only very overweight but had mobility issues (bad knees and hips and rheumatoid arthritis) that limited her shopping ability. But she dressed terribly, cargo pant khakis and really ugly little old lady blouses. When I wore a suit she would get annoyed, usually ask me to take my jacket off, saying “it isn’t a board meeting in here.”
The dress code is certainly something that frustrated me about my place of work.
It’s business casual most of the time, and it is supposed to be business attire for things like meeting with officials. That is not the part that frustrates me. I like looking nice.
The thing that’s always pissed me off is that I’m the only one in my group…wait…the only MAN in my group who apparently gives a shit to look halfway decent. Of course, the other part of that problem is that we have a supervisor who apparently also doesn’t give a shit what her employees look like.
So business casual when in the office or holding classes at ‘home’. To me, that means a nice looking shirt, like an oxford shirt in the winter or a nice looking golf shirt in the summer. Nice looking pants. Leather shoes. Apparently for some, it means cargo pants, a wrinkly-ass polo shirt, and casual slip-ons.
The last fucking straw for me was when I arrived at a conference where we were presenting and found my co-presenter and a couple other from my group. I was shocked that I was the only one with jacket…also the only one with a tie. Boss apparently didn’t notice. I mean come one guys…they COULD make us wear suits. You wanna wear a suit? No, obviously not. At least make a goddamn effort to look professional.
Well that was a rant, wasn’t it? I just want to feel like I’m surrounded by professionals, goddamit.