I’m curious as to whether you asked about the definition of “clean-shaven” and whether it had a religious exemption? I would presume that the exemption exists unless told otherwise.
It’s not bullshit at all.
Where I work you are not allowed into hot areas (the plant that processes oil and gas) or confined spaces (areas where the atmosphere could be contaminated) unless you are clean shaven. A mask doesn’t fit properly if you have a beard. It not only is a danger to yourself, but to others who might have to rescue you if your protective equipment doesn’t work because of a poor seal.
There are a lot of Muslims here that wear beards, but they don’t get into the hot area if they have one. Sometimes it comes up in union negotiations, but thankfully reality trumps religion when it comes to safety issues like this.
What Uzi said. Except where I work, hot = radioactive (I always thought that was a pretty cool term, as plutonium 238 actually glows red due to its internal energy).
I like beards on a guy(I’m female), and ties seem faintly silly to me. But it’s their company, they can have their own requirements. If I don’t like it, like the OP, I wouldn’t work there, but I wouldn’t whine about it.
A proper, valid shaving profile must include the length of the beard required for medical treatment. [AR 670-1 , para 1-8(c)] So those soldiers with bump problems are not actually allowed to grow any sized beard they wish. They are just allowed to shave it close with clippers instead of with a razor. And if their beard exceeds the limit on their profile they are out of regs. If there is no limit specified, the profile is invalid. [TB MED 287] So these soldiers who think that just because they get bumps, they can grow a huge ass beard are fucking wrong.
Point being that a company could easily tell someone with a shaving condition that he has to shave using clippers and he is not allowed to have facial growth in excess of 1/8th of an inch. Nothing medically wrong with that. But I dunno much about the corporate world or private business.
Target’s corporate office in the Twin Cities requires ties on men and “professional dress” on both men and women. They went back to that maybe four years ago. They have a relatively formal workplace for a Twin Cities company - when most companies are making telecommuniting and flextime arrangements, Target wants you to be at your desk at 8:00 am and leave at 5:00pm.
They believe its working and creating a more professional and efficient office. I think they’ve been unable to hire some good people.
Sound like a bunch of micro-managing assholes. Like Stranger said it separates the yes men from those that may dare to :dubious:.
Tut-tut. My very white boyfriend has severe skin-issues when he tries to shave more than once a day*. And he did get a “special permission” (=an order) to grow a beard in the military. So it’s not limited by race.
My one source (boyfriend again), says that according to the norwegian air defence (what’s that called in english? They stay on the ground and use great big guns to shoot down enemy planes) beards are fine, but stubble destroys the seal of a gas mask. So thats why you can be clean shaven, or have a full beard, but not be simply unshaven or stubbly.
*Although that might be caused by his extemely fast beard. He’d shave in the morning, get sent to re-shave at lunch, and still get told off for being fuzzy by evening.
The Madison Fire Department fired an African American firefighter several years ago in part because he refused to shave, claiming that he got this skin condition. Of course in the main part they fired him because he was a raving lunatic who distributed anti-gay screeds in the workplace and accused the department of consipiring to get rid of him because the fire chief was a lesbian.
And then he ran for Congress. Twice.
Both the air force and many private civilian aviation companies also have rules against beards, and again it’s because of facial hair interfering with oxygen masks. If a man has mustache it has to fit entirely inside the mask for a good seal. I have known some professional pilots with huge fluffy beards, but invariably they fly unpressurized aircraft at low altitudes.
Whereas I would bet that, like where I work now, some anal-retentive micromanager is in a position of power and is more interested in enforcing their own ideas of what is “proper” than in doing the other aspects of their job. I’d say it’s likely that this person is failing to do some other major aspects of their job because they’re more interested in Control over small issues.
That’s what I have where I work. An Assistant Director who is fanatical about small issues, but Og forbid that she should have to deal with real issues! (That shirt is the wrong color! Oh wait, a major personnel issue? I’m too busy for that!)
I once had a colleague who had an electric clippers set to about 1/4" and, every Sunday, he went round and round his head and face with it. So on Monday he had 1/4" face and head hair and by Friday it was 1/2". He was neither bearded nor clean shaven, but it is hard to imagine it would make any difference to a gas mask.
These prohibitions are just a matter of control. My wife once had a job in which she was required to leave her desktop clean when she left every afternoon. There was no public contact, he just wanted control. So she had a drawer into which she swept everything she was working on every afternoon and pulled it out every morning. He also banned slacks on women, but on some snowy day she wore some anyway and he never said a word. He sold the company to the Mormons who removed the dress code and ignored the clean desk code. She is a translator (French–>English) and the Mormons are big on translation.
In the US army it is called Air Defense Artillery or ADA.
I applied for an internship at Disneyland about a month ago, which involved me going over their rather laborious dress code. For women, you can’t have more than one earring on each, more than one ring (ONLY on the ring finger), or any unnatural hair color, hair style, or nail color (other than light red or pink).
For men, they still can’t have beards at all, mustaches are allowed (have to follow very strict, military-esque guidelines), but discouraged. It doesn’t have anything to do with hippies, though, but rather the fact that almost every Disney villain has facial hair. To the wee children, beards = bad guys. Now, if you did or do have a beard and you want to work at Disneyland,they’ll be more than happy to throw you in a “scary” place like the Haunted Mansion or as a villain in a parade.
I turned down the internship, but not because of the dresscode (which, as a frequent Disneyland visitor, I actually support). I turned it down because, well, I can make $8 an hour somewhere else, thanks. Actually, I can make $15 an hour somewhere else AND still manage to pay my rent without having to move to Anaheim heh.
I doubt it. I don’t think anal retentive micro managers make it to positions as CEOs of Fortune 100s - they are done in long before that - you can’t micromanage Target’s 352,000 full time employees. I suspect that for Target - who has a very defined corporate culture - dress was one way to keep people who weren’t going to fit into Target’s corporate culture from taking the job in the first place. They’ve lost a few employees, but very few of those people have skills Target can’t find in someone else.
Someone who won’t follow a rule about a tie might not follow the rules about appropriate use of their employee discount, or appropriate disclosure of financial information. Personally, I think there are better ways, but a tie (beard, business dress, no visible tatoos and single ear piercings for women) is a darn easy way to separate out the rules followers from the iconoclasts before they get hired.
I am a member of one of those groups. Really.
The phone interviewer apologized for the company several times, and gave a strong impression that there were no exceptions. He even said that one applicant wouldn’t even be interviewed without shaving first.
You would be wrong, then, in thinking it would make no difference to a gas mask.
I work at a chemical plant, in an office area, but we’re all required to be clean-shaven because we’re all required to be capable as emergency responders (or, emergency evacuees). So respirators and SCBA gear has to fit.
Once a year, we get to go through the fun of respirator fit testing. Once or twice over the years, I’ve forgotten to shave, or had to skip that day because of skin irritation or something… and failed the fit test. I’ve had co-workers of various ethnicity and hirsuteness also fail because of not being clean-shaven.
I’d be interested to know what the response would have been had you said “oh, I have a religious requirement for facial hair.” I suspect any well trained manager would have immediately backpedaled on the requirement with something like “well, of course, we have an exception for religion, we are an equal opportunity employer and comply with all state and federal laws.”
Don’t tut-tut me. A white guy with a shaving profile is about as rare as this one female MP I saw with a Sam Elliott moustache. Weirdest thing I ever saw, and it wasn’t even trimmed to military regs.
Appologies for the tut-tut. Should have stuck a smiley in, maybe?