If I’m the owner of a company, and I feel that white employees should wear a suit and tie and black employees should wear monkey costumes to protect the compamy’s image, am I breaking any laws?
If I kill a patient during surgery, can’t I just say that I felt my coworker attire was sloppy?
You are quite lucky you’re not in Silicon Valley. Around here this guy would laugh in your face, give you a hearty “fuck you” and wander off to work in a place where people cared about skill, not dress.
I’m okay with dress codes for people dealing with customers day to day. I’m okay with not letting people wear clothes that are distracting or offensive. But beyond that…
I’ve worked for the top computer companies, which make billions of bucks and are world famous for innovation. Some of the best people have long hair. Some wear earrings. Some wear shorts to work. Lots wear T-shirts. Nobody wears a tie. (Include the CEO). It works out just fine. Even the EDA salesmen have given up wearing suits on calls, since they stand out too much. No one around here ever made a decision based on dress.
Exactly how often do your programmers talk to external customers? I haven’t conducted any experiments, but when I program, I don’t see any decrease in efficiency from not wearing a tie. I’ve given papers in ties and not in ties, and I don’t see any change in audience attention (or in feedback scores.)
To quote Scott McNealy, “the purpose of a tie is to keep soup off of your buttons.”
That was some time ago before the City (London) started dressing down.
We had no problems at all, which was interesting.
This is not the first time you posted something like this.
Where do you work that men want to wear skirts, and are forced not to wear skirts?
You misunderstand me - you’ll act sloppily because *you’re * dressed sloppily. It has nothing to do with your co-workers. According to this philosophy, you should dress well to work even if you work alone and never meet clients.
I don’t recall another post like this. Cite?
That’s not the point. The point is that women are equal to men. They should receive equal pay for equal work. If men and women and equal, why is it appropriate for a woman to have pieces of metal dangling from holes that have been drilled into their earlobes, but inappropriate for men?
Sloppy is very subjective. If I’m performing surgery on someone, shouldn’t I decide what my dress code should be because I decide what sloppy is to me? If I have stains on my uniform, but I don’t consider it sloppy, might I still work sloppy?
Society’s expectations for what’s ok to wear is different for men and women. What’s the big deal if dress codes recognize this fact? At my job, female employees must wear skirts. The dress code also requires appropriate underwear.
I’d have turned any job there down. I hate wearing skirts so much that the last time I wore one, it was because the friend who requested it had a life threatening illness. That’s been about five years.
My company ditched the dress code. We were told that we’re all adults and we can figure out what we can and can’t wear to work on our own. It’s been good for morale, which is good for productivity. I wear jeans every day, and it doesn’t make me less of a software engineer. My boss’s opinion of my work is that I ‘kick ass and take names’, so there ya go.
I see something like an ‘always wear a skirt’ policy as an indication that the employee is not seen as a person in their own right, but a labor-machine owned by the company. If they’re going to be that controlling about what I can wear, I can only imagine they’ll be just as bad when it comes to everything from bathroom breaks to exactly how many lines of code I can produce in a day. Right now, I have total freedom about that. Day by day progress isn’t measured as long as I get the deliverable done by the deadline, and even the deadlines can be changed if they’re unrealistic.
You don’t think it’s odd that your company feels the need for gender identifiers?
I’m not a huge fan of dress codes, but I do see their usefulness. My company is formal every day, and I think that’s because far too many people fail to differentiate between “business casual” and “barbeque casual”, and I can understand not wanting to deal with enforcing a more ambiguous code.
But when you get into gender-specific requirements, it gets tricky. I’d rather see a rule about what *kind * or earrings can be worn by everyone, than a rule stating that men can’t wear earrings. A tie is just part of a suit IMO, and I don’t really see a way around it, but I also wouldn’t have a problem with the company insisting that women wear hose with skirts (they’re comparably uncomfortable, after all!). I can see the practical application of these rules, in that they result in a more polished, professional look.
I simply wouldn’t work for a company that insisted I ALWAYS wear a skirt. I don’t consider pants less professional or polished than a skirt, so I can’t see a practical reason for it, so no.
I understand this, but given the culture and standards in the larger world today, do you think the vast majority of customers in, say, a grocery store really gives a rat’s patootie whether the clerks are wearing blue jeans instead of Ugly Grocery Worker Slaxx ™?
I think people in general feel the need for gender identifiers. We all get used to it after a while. Also, in my company female employees are allowed to come early and change from pants to skirts on very cold days or put on hose on very hot days. The dress code applies only while you are at work during hours.
Well, one would *hope * that the company dress code only applies during working hours. And ooh, I get to come in on my own time to change?!?! Yippee!!!
Sorry, but you make that sound like they’re doing you a favor. They emphatically are not. Where are you located, if you don’t mind my asking? Is this a cultural thing?
And who checks to make sure the employees are wearing underwear?
Nobody, but if a female employee wears a sheer blouse with no bra or a short skirt with nothing on underneath, people would notice.
I wonder, are the men allowed to wear kilts? 
Yes, you are.
But you’re not breaking any laws if you insist that men cannot wear skirts but women can, and that women may earrings but men may not.
You may not personally agree with this. You may personally feel that the word “equality” implies that no employer may make the slightest policy differentiation between men and women. But that’s not the current state of the law.
Please, explain to me, exactly which law am I breaking?
Oddly enough, I was thinking about barbeques in just this regard. If you have “business casual”, then it crosses the minds of many younger men that the older guys are wearing Dockers-type slacks a polo shirts–just what their older male relatives and inlaws wear at picnics and barbecues…so why shouldn’t the younger guys be allowed to wear what they normally wear at barbecues…jeans! I suspect that this is where a lot of the missteps originate.
Me? I’d be happy even having to wear a shirt and tie, if I could still get away with jeans or jeans-type pants (i.e. cords). I can never find slacks of any kind that fit well, and things always fall out of my pockets. Are slacks now being made for a taller average man than used to be the case, or is it just the way they’re cut generally? I have bought slacks and suits from expensive men’s shops that seem to have 14 inch zippers with the crotch of the pants about halfway down to my knees. And yes, I did get help from the salesman. Are they really supposed to be like that now?
I work at a place that occasionally escorts customers around the premises, and so I have to wear a button-down and slacks, dangit. In spite of the fact I would probably be a more efficient programmer in a T-shirt and jeans, due to the reduced physical discomfort, I can still see the reasoning behind it. Here in the sheltered and highly conservative hinterland, seeing a programmer dressed as a programmer would probably scare the customers away. Certainly seeing a man in a skirt would.