We have a business-casual dress code and casual Friday’s. My biggest gripe is that women can wear skirts on any day, but men aren’t able to wear shorts ever. 90+ degrees and similar humidity makes wearing jeans suck.
Hey, I said hard, not smart. 
Our former CEO was well known for despising ties, and for having to be practically forced into a suit to have meetings with leaders of entire countries.
Oddly enough, I don’t remember ever seeing anyone wearing inappropriate casual dress. Shorts and tees, definitely. Maybe those who do it all the time don’t feel they have to rebel on Fridays by going overboard.
On jeans and appropriateness of certain people wearing them:
Apparently, a number of people share the opinion of the OP. My boss once told me that I shouldn’t be wearing jeans on Fridays. I’m not skinny, but the jeans weren’t tight or anything. I protested, saying that even the HR lady wore jeans. His reply, “Yes, but she looks good.”
I was so hurt and embarrassed by his statement I never wore jeans again. I don’t even own any now.
I don’t care much one way or another about Fridays, as my company is business casual anyway. The only difference between today and yesterday is that today I have on a cotton shirt, and yesterday I had on a dressier rayon one. I only have a couple things in my closet that aren’t suitable to wear to work any day, as I don’t like to look too sloppy, even on the weekends.
How do assholes like that live to grow old, I wonder?
You could always buy yourself a kilt.
If you need any help to nuke that jerk from orbit, sign me up.
Business casual (for me=slacks, button shirt, no tie) is fine. I don’t like total casual mainly because just changing into jeans after work helps me to relax all by itself. It also makes for a definite separation of off-time from work.
Count me in, too.
I’m a fan of the “Utilikilt, Doc Martens, and metal-band t-shirt” look, myself.
But then, two days a week, I don’t even need to go into the office; I dial in from home and work remotely. Those days, you’d be lucky to get me into my current location.
</technology drone>
There’s a dude at Apple who wears Utilikilts all the time.
Well, more skin at the office, I mean. And I am easily distracted, 'tis true. 
Cisco, the difference between inappropriate work dress and on the street/gym/swimming pool, is that you’re stuck with your distracting coworkers for 8 hours a day and have to see them again and again and, heaven forbid, in meetings. Other places you have other options to avoid them. On the street you can avert your eyes for a few seconds until the offender passes. At the pool or gym you can leave and come back later.
CairoCarol, it’s not the bare flesh itself but what’s on the bare flesh or where the bare flesh is. I get distracted by seeing at formerly unseen birthmarks, vericose veins, or tattoos. Not to mention cleavage, both front and back.
I mention this as a potential violator of casual Fridays. I’m a large man with no fashion sense. I know this, so I respect my colleagues and not subject them to seeing my “smile” when I bend over in a too-short t-shirt or the strange scars on my calves when I wear shorts. Sure, I would be comfortable, but I’m there to work and not impede others’ work, too.
lol i telecommute. I suppose for casual friday I could wear a bathing suit and move the laptop out to the hot tub … but then Id need a cabana boy to bring me drinks=)
I’m sorry, but that makes no sense to me. You might as well condemn a person who is wall-eyed, one-armed, or otherwise outside of the “average” physique, for simply existing. If someone has a birthmark and has the self-esteem not to feel compelled to cover it up because it might distract YOU, with whom does the problem lie? You have made your answer clear - it is the person with the birthmark who has a problem. My perception differs. And by the way, my son has a birthmark on his face. Remind me to tell him not to get a job, okay, because then coworkers might see it and be distracted.
If you scroll back to my first post in this thread and look at the linked photo, you will see that I had a co-worker with lots of tattoos. He was a bit abashed by them, actually … he’d gotten them during his heavy metal days and now wishes he hadn’t. But there they are. And it got damned HOT in our office (Egypt in summer is quite impressive, heatwise). I think it would have been prissy of me to insist that he wear long sleeves (as he did for his job interview) to spare me the sight of, gasp, TATTOOS!
YMOV (your mileage obviously varies).
I think that’s absolutely true. I’ve worked for companies where the dress code is “all suits all the time”, and I’ve worked for companies where the dress code is “no spandex, and men must wear sleeves”, and I think that “casual Friday” absolutely sends the message that “Fridays aren’t for working”.
The company I work for now has four or five “business casual” days per year (usually the day before holiday or long weekend), and I think they’ve got it right. No work IS getting done on Christmas Eve, as a rule, regardless of what we’re wearing. But since we’ve gotta be here anyway, you can at least dress comfortably while you all kaffeeklatsch, debating the earliest time you can reasonably leave.
I work in a law office with the ability of how to dress so we don’t have a dress code. If clients were coming in, more skirts/dresses and ties were seen. If the day was clear, then more jeans & polos. Very easy and doable. What I wear has no bearing on how hard I work.
Anyhow, we hired a secretary who would wear t-shirts and jeans all the time. Well those and the one dress she wore for her interview. Unfortunately, she carried a lot of her prodigious weight in her belly area. When she was walking, talking, moving, or really anytime, her shirts would ride up above her fat rolls. I’m not sure what was worse, Tinkerbell stretched to the limits to cover the belly, or midget Tinkerbell scrunched up above the belly.
The first time it happened I was mortified for her…until I realized she didn’t care. Her ‘man’ loved her the way she was. Evidently we were supposed to as well. A lot of the times she wouldn’t pull her shirt back down and stand there in front of me giving me information. It got so I would just stare at her face to keep from cringing at the sight of her belly. She gossiped to the other secretary that I was creepy because I always looked directly at her eyes all the time. Well, duh?
The powers that be decided 3 months of this hell was enough and that we were going to implement a dress code. Of course, they went to the opposite extreme with a list of clothing 15 points long not acceptable to wear to work and 5 points of acceptable wear. I guess it would have been to hard for them to just ask her to dress differently at work.
That same week she screwed up royally and got herself arrested when she attacked her husband and his skinny ass girl on the side (and then the cop who tried to take control of the situation). They fired her, and the dress code got trashed.
Please take a deep breath and calm down. I’m not condemning anyone, especially your kid. Please re-read my post. Did I say anyone should put a bag over his head because he has a birthmark on his face? No. I just said that I get distracted by birthmarks, tattoos, and vericose veins that are usually covered by businesswear. I work with people who have visible birthmarks and tattoos. I get distracted by them. I wish I could not be fascinated by them but I am. I’ve not asked anyone to cover them up; they’re already wearing appropriate clothing for work, so I would be wrong to ask them to. It’s my problem so I deal with it.
I’m just asking to not show off more skin than is usually visible with businesswear. That’s it, plain and simple. Like in the personal example in my previous post, I don’t feel that others should see my ass crack. Like the birthmarks, tattoos, and vericose veins I mentioned, it’s hidden by businesswear. But my casual wear doesn’t always cover it when I bend over. Does that mean it’s appropriate for me to wear those casual shirt/pants outfits that show my vertical smile? Granted, this is an extreme example, but not far from what I (and AngryIrishLass, The Tof, Dung Beetle, and others) have seen on casual Fridays.
Since you specifically mentioned your coworker’s tattoos on his arms, what about bad language or nudity in tattoos. Should body art of a naked woman with major hooters and spread legs be visible, whether on a forearm or shoulder blade? “Ass, grass, or gas, everyone’s gotta pay” on a tricep? A barcode on the wrist? There are non-insignificant numbers of people who’d find one or more of those offensive. Should these be visible at work in an office, casual Friday or not? Does the coworker who this offends have to just suck it up? It would be great to say just do what makes you feel comfortable, but at work most of us have to take other peoples’ feelings into consideration. And many people forget this on casual Fridays.
Digressing here, like your son, I, too, have something on my face that garners a lot of stares and rude comments. I don’t plan to cover it up, or in my case, shave it off. My coworkers make snide remarks about my bushy beard a few times a month, that I know about. Babies stare at it. Adults try not to stare at it. Hell, a child at the mall today rather loudly pointed it out to her embarassed mommy (and half of East Anglia, too). For me, it’s just a little hair. For your son, it’s just a little pigmentation. But people will stare at us nonetheless and say things that aren’t so nice. I have a little insight on what he’s going to face and wish you both well with what’s to come.
CairoCarol pretty much already said what I was going to say, but just to reiterate: this sounds like a personal problem.
Don’t worry, I’m calm First, it seems only honest for me to mention that my son is not caused any problems by his birthmark - pediatricians are the only ones who ever mention it. It’s faint, and it just looks like he needs to wipe his face off. Which I suppose might be a problem when he’s older, actually - 10 year old boys are allowed to look like they washed up carelessly after messily consuming a bowl of chocolate ice cream, in a business setting it might be more of an issue. Whatever, it was too good an example to pass up, but I don’t want to give the impression that my son needs sympathy because he’s disfigured.
Second, it seems like what we’re talking about here has drifted away from casual versus formal. I’ve got formal clothes that show a lot more skin than the jeans and t-shirt I’d happily wear to work if permitted. But whether we’re really talking about casual/formal or covered/bare, I stand by my contention that a mature adult should be able to do his or her job when a coworker’s attire doesn’t match his/her aesthetic values. Man, I have seen some UGLY dresses, ties, and especially shoes out there that would pass most dress codes. Especially shoes. Shoes that make me want to VOMIT. But I get over it.
Third, and this may come as a bit of a shock, I don’t have a problem with places that do business with the public/business clients having dress codes (assuming they are fair and fairly implemented). I recognize that many people DO place a premium on social signals such as the ability to conform to certain norms through clothing. When I become your overlord, the world won’t work that way. Meanwhile, dress codes exist, and I can adhere to them if I need to.
Regarding someone having a tattoo with shocking language or depictions, that also represents a bit of drift. Having a swastika tattoo and having an unsightly wart are not morally comparable acts, and neither are the decisions to display or cover them up.
If you are so squirrel brained that a casually dressed co-worker drives you to distraction, you are not yet ready to be in a working environment. Really people, we aren’t six years old here.
I think casual Fridays are an admission that there really is no reason to have the dress code in the first place. On the other side, I see a reason for having a mild business casual dress code in most work environments- it changes people’s mindset when they are dressed for work.
When I started at my current job, we were allowed to wear jeans. For the summer, they’ve relaxed that to being allowed to wear shorts. While some people still wear long pants, I now wear shorts everyday (except when, on rare occasions, I have to appear in court, where a suit and tie remains par for the course).
I’m happy to dress as casually and comfortably as I can. It doesn’t make me work any fewer hours, or with any less effort.