True, but the put no small number of people in them. 
I am inclined to agree.
Years ago, I had a very lucrative job in sales. I was required to wear a suit and tie, and to exercise judgment in dress, as I was dealing with corporate liasons and bigwigs in general. I did so.
We sold lots of stuff, and lo, there were fat profits and much rejoicing.
One day, the department was reorganized for no apparent reason, and there were new management.
We salesmen ignored the management, and went about our business, which was to make money for the company, and fat commission checks for ourselves.
Management hated being ignored. Soon, there were meetings to attend. We attended the meetings. It cut into our sales time, but we had no choice.
Soon, management concluded that more training was necessary. We attended the training sessions. It cut into our sales time, but we had no choice.
Soon, management concluded that “teambuilding exercises” were necessary. We saw no point in this, as we did not work as a team, but as individuals, each dealing with various corporate liasons… but we had no choice.
One day, word came down from above. Sales were down. This was bad. FIX IT.
And we rejoiced, because the only way to increase sales was to cut the crap and get back to SELLING stuff.
Management disagreed. Plainly, further training and more meetings were necessary. They were scheduled. Sales time shrunk ever further. Sales continued to drop, and management continued to try to fix the problem by cutting sales time yet further.
The beatings will continue, until morale improves.
I quit working there, because I found the situation intolerable; my attitude being that since I was working for commission, these chumps were stealing MY MONEY!
The place went out of business a year later; the building was bought by the city, and is now a police station.
The lesson I took away from the situation was this: Do not work for a jackass. Anyone stupid enough to cut his own throat simply because he wants to play at being a big indian chief will certainly screw YOU sideways on the way down.
A boss who wants uniforms for a reason is one thing. A boss who wants uniforms because he’s the boss and he wants it is a jackass.
Act accordingly, Boyo.
To the OP: it sounds like your immediate boss is a reasonable and decent person. Why don’t you try, I don’t know, talking to her about the uniform issue? It sounds quite likely that she has a higher-up breathing down her own neck about it. You are probably not the only one who hates the uniform idea, and it’s entirely possible that upper management never even thought about making a distinction between employees who deal directly with the public and those who don’t. Maybe she can provide some insight into the thinking behind the uniform decision to which you have not been privy until now. But do you really want to get confrontational enough about this relatively minor issue that it will disturb your work environment, and possibly get you fired? It may be a stupid and annoying rule, but you’re the only one who can decide how much of a headache you are willing to take on by disobeying it.
I think most dress codes are reasonable, but uniforms are silly in most professional situations. If clients are having problems knowing who the employees are, that’s one thing, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the issue. Heck, IBM doesn’t even require suits for all employees anymore, nor do many other employers in extremely conservative fields (such as law, my own field, and investment banking – one investment banker friend still wears his suits, though, on the grounds that he paid too much money for them to sit in the closet. But then he’s a formal kind of guy anyway; in the nearly 20 years I’ve known him, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wear jeans).
But here’s a little anecdote from more formal days - a good college buddy of mine got a programming job at IBM right out of school, in 1990, when they still required employees to wear blue or gray suits, white shirts, lace-up shoes in certain colors, and neckties in certain colors. And have conservative haircuts.
Not long thereafter, my 23-year-old friend had a stroke (totally out of the blue, due to a previously undiagnosed birth defect) and had to have emergency brain surgery. Of course, this involved shaving half his head. Poor guy; he had to go through a lot of rehab, and his speech was slurred for quite some time afterward (although he eventually made a full recovery). His one consolation was that while the hair was growing out on the side of his head that had been shaved, he had quite the rad coiffure – with the blue pinstripe suit, of course.
(By the way, the law firm where I work has no specific dress code beyond “business casual”; management trusts employees to know what that means, and to know when more formal dress is required, such as for client presentations, meetings, or conferences. Thank God. On the other hand, we have a “Fragrance Policy” - don’t ask.)
I’m of two minds about this. I don’t think just being asked to wear a polo shirt is bad, if some leeway is allowed in the rest of the outfit. On the other hand, while I recognize the need to look professional, I detest dress codes that go into minute detail and say thou shalt wear this, but thou shalt not wear that. I hate slacks the way TYM hates polo shirts, because I’m not tall and the ones off the rack always fit me like a scarecrow, apparently being made for men who are at least 6’.
Man, every time I read one of these things hearing so many whining posters complaining about management being the root of all evil, I am so thankful that I’ve managed to weed so many of you out of being employed by me over the years. I’m sure many other managers similarly rejoice. One of the things you learn early on in interviewing is to figure out what a candidates attitude has been towards past employers. If everybody they’ve worked for has been a jerk, the odds are it wasn’t the employer that was the jerk. Sadly, you can’t see you’re your own worst enemy.
After hearing me complain about the complainers, it may be surprising to hear that I side with Boyo Jim. If he’s doing great at the job he’s doing, he’s dressed non-shabbily, and he’s reasonabley identifiable as an employee to those he needs to be, I don’t see a problem with his need to not wear a logo. And it sure seems that he fits all those criteria. Personally, I enjoy occassionally labeling myself with whatever company I’m at. But everybody has his own quirks; and if this is something that’s important to you, then by all means, tell the boss, “Look, I’m doing a great job, I’m doing things here beyond what you’re paying me to do, the shirt won’t improve my performance, and not wearing it is important to me.”
From: The_Pot@yahoo.com
To: kettle@aol.com
CC: “booka”
Subject: Re: Your blackness
No one was talking about investment bankers or hiding incompetance with flash and style either.
While I think the clothes thing is a non-issue (probably because the subject of clothes is the least agrivating aspect of my day) it is amazing to me how incompetant most managers are in corporate America. I have been working as a management consultant for a number of years and the act of even hiring one of these firms IMHO makes you incompetant. Someone who has been working in an industry for 15 years needs to call in a bunch of 20-30 somthing kids with fancy business degrees and pay their firms 4x as much as an emplyee to help them do the shit they have been doing for years - buying supplies, managing HR, figuring out where to buy real estate, operations, IT, you name it. Half of these managers, I could walk into a conference room with a presentation full of pie charts and bubble graphs and 2x2 matrices and in a week have the entire staff wearing superhero costumes. (You see, a Gartner Group study a few years back showed that productivity could be increased by 10% if employees were allowed to wear uniforms that embodied their inner self…)
Master Wang-Ka, If I can interupt your Glenn Gary Glenn Ross Pacino rant for a second, maybe Boyo needs something to remind him that he isn’t the boss. I understand pointless metrics for performance (ie why do I get evaluated on billable hours when I have no control over what I bill?) but Boyo seems to have a real problem with authority. Sometimes those people need to be subtley reminded because insubordination is infectious in an organization.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating running the office like a 18th century British frigate. But I’ve managed people who for some reason or another felt that they were above the rules. Ideally, you try to win them over with your professionalism and respect. If that doesn’t work, you apeal to their desire to be a team player and to get the job done. If all else fails, you WILL do it because I TOLD YOU SO or I will have you FIRED!.
I don’t know about you guys, but for me, as horrible as the images of people jumping to their deaths from the WTC were, they were made even more saddening because so many of them were wearing blue chambray shirts and khaki pants.
I’m not being a smartass “I wouldn’t be caught dead…” I mean that part of my saddness was the banality of “corporate casual” in such a horrific context. (In reverse, I have the same problem with Civil War re-enactors: the reality was skinny young kids in blue wool uniforms blown to bits, not fat middle age men drinking gatorade). Also, being over-anylitical, I see the 1950’s worker’s clothes picked out of the Salvation Army bin by 1960’s hippies, and, as the 1970-80 turned the quest for self-realization into one of self-gratification (with help from people like Lee Attwater who turned obsolete trappings of “cool” into components of very uncool strategies), finally, what started as blue collar utilitarian clothes had become white-collar pretense. (As I admitted, I do over-analyse this stuff).
I’ve worked places where the big boss wore the same blue chambray shirt with the embroidered logo as the lowest-paid worker. The thing was - the pay and benefits were certainly not alike. That’s one thing that bugs me about company uniforms - it’s a false sense of egalitarianism and “leisure:” but the ones doing the work get precious little leisure, since what passes for wealth is actually wide debt at the bottom and concentrated capital at the top.
My advice to you Boyo Jim is to do whatever the fuck you want, but to be sure you always do so with a wink and a self-depreciating smile (just look how far that got Ronald Reagan). And if those summer DJ gigs are done outdoors in Madison Wisconsin, I’d say just enduring the humidity there is already performace above and beyond the call of duty.
Um, would it change your mind at all if I told you that I think that there’s nothing sexier than a man in a dark grey suit with a light blue shirt, especially if he has blue or grey eyes?
I’m rather torn on this issue. It doesn’t seem that necessary that somebody that doesn’t work with the customers directly should have to wear a uniform, unless it is safety-related or simply the most practical alternative ( I don’t think we’d see many Navy divers stamp their foot and pout, “I do not want to wear that diving suit! It itches!” ) but on the other hand, uniforms can have potential advantages. They can give a group of people a sense of cohesiveness. Why do sports teams wear uniforms? Most fans can recognize famous players, so its not as crucial for telling each side apart. The uniform gives a representation of someone who represents something that is a part of a greater whole. Naturally, some people feel that it is an affront to their individuality. I agree with posters who have said that it is rather immature to rely on clothing to establish your individuality.
If anything, I think things like uniforms bring out people’s individuality more, since they gotta do more than sit there and be a lump on a log to be noticed.
I have to wear a uniform for two of my jobs. Granted, I do interact with the public, and with my Crossing Guard uniform, the details of it are very important (bright dayglo vest and white gloves for visibility). I consider it fitting a role, just like an actor does.
We’re getting uniform shirts at one of my jobs. I’m part of the TV services department at a community college. We’re often in places that are off limits to students or the public, and are places at times that are odd and look to security like we might be feeelthy theeeeves. Needless to say, I’m glad. We’re supposed to look nice, but I’m not real keen on getting my very small nice wardrobe messed up when pulling cable for three hours.
On the other hand: Ardred’s work now has “store shirts”. They’re light denim with the company logo (in pink, no less) on the pocket. It’s retail, to be expected, right? Only, the employees aren’t going to be trusted with the care of said shirts. They are to leave them at the store and they will be washed once a week. Each employee gets ONE shirt. Ardred works upwards of 30 hours a week at this job. That’s one nasty shirt.
I guess what I’m saying is that it can go both ways.
Dysfunctional organizations foster insubordination, along with mediocrity, and ultimately, lower productivity and profits.
Ego. It does things to otherwise normal people.
I think you have a problem with authority as well. 
If I might summarize the comments of those posting against my OP:
- It’s silly and wrong to be against the idea of a uniform shirt, period.
- It’s wrong to express verbal opposition of company policy to your manager.
- ANY company policy that does not force one into commiting illegal acts is aok, and there are only two legitimate reactions. Carry it out without question or complaint, or quit.
- Expressing verbal opposition to company policy to a manager is likely to result in being punished or fired.
- We are all cogs or drones, and easily replaced. Any expression of opposition to this undeniable fact is stupid and pointless, and will and SHOULD result in replacement by a new cog or drone.
- Insisting that a manager explicitly spell out the terms under which a policy applies is obstructionist. A reasonable employee will assume it applies in all situations and act on that assumption.
Have I missed any salient points here?
Joe Stalin would be almost proud of these rules. He’d be positively beaming if we substituted “die” for “quit”, and “executed” for “punished or fired”. The Ayatollah Khomani(sp?) would be equally pleased.
I thought most of you lived in America, the land of free thought and speech. I do, or under these rules I would have turned into a homeless wino decades ago. If the CEO asked me, I wouldn’t hesitate to repeat eactly what I’ve posted in this thread, minus some – but not all – of the FUCKS. Never ever has a manager of mine even hinted at punishing me for objecting to a policy. Not carrying it out – yes.
Maybe that makes me damn lucky, and given to unreasonable expectations – like that that there is room for reasonable discourse on decisions made that affect my work environment. That is my world, and I rather like it. I had no idea so many of the rest of you have totally fucked-up workplaces where you feel constantly threatened.
That really sucks. I was angrier before, but now I just feel bad for you.
Mrs. Gibbons?
Speaking as someone who consciously asks myself about any potential job whether or not I have to “dress up” (i.e. not wear jeans): You either have some reading comprehension problems or a maturity issue.
Your overreaction to opinions contrary to yours, in which “suck it up and wear the stupid shirt, it’ll make your boss happy” equates to “We are all cogs or drones,” is somewhat revealing.
Order one of the company shirts in any size. When it arrives, get a pair of scissors and cut out the logo. Discard remainder of shirt.
Got to your closet and choose a shirt of your choice. Apply the logo to your shirt using generous amounts of duct tape.
You are now a team player.
The sum total of my OP rant is, “I am very unhappy about this new policy. I am going to say so to my boss. She will have to give me explicit directions about when I must where these shirts”. Everything else is merely an explanation of why I feel the way I do about this policy, which really aren’t even subject to debate (at least by the rational).
These are some of the comments I’ve gotten:
And I’m the one who is overreacting?
…and Osama bin Laden would be almost proud of you for ignoring these rules…yadda, yadda, yadda… :rolleyes:
Start your own business, make your own dress code, be your own dictator.
I’m neutral on the matter since I am my own employer, and I dress accordingly to the duties to be done that day and/or night.
And I’d agree if you were referring to Jammer, Cheesesteak and Msmith537. Maybe usar-jag. But you piled “those posting against my OP” – several dozen people – into one big dronehood-advocating heap, which seems rather unfair since most of them were saying things like “Oh come on, it’s no big deal.” That hardly warrants invoking Stalin.
Maybe work clothing is a big deal to you (me too, frankly); but in posting it online you’re essentially asking for other people’s opinions, and you response seems awfully thinskinned.
You are correct that I overgeneralized about the responses to my OP. I apologize for that – there were numerous measured responses against my OP that were neither as shrill nor as extreme as the ones I quoted in my last post.
At the risk of again overgeneralizing, most of the measured respnses fall into two general categories: “making a mountain out of a molehill”, or “bummer, but don’t waste your time or energy over the bullshit that you can’t do anything about. You’re lucky, it could be a lot worse”.
As to the first, I can’t deny that is certainly a defemsible position, but we are talking about a matter of greater or lesser emotional intensity of various posters, and we are in the Pit. Consider the subject matter of some other current Pit threads.
Blue light on the alarm clock
Here I pit Baseball game attendees
Pitting wedding ceremonies
Aretha LIP-SYNCS the National Anthem?
I don’t intend this as a criticism of any of these threads, just as examples of the odd emotional hot spots we all have that are not especially defensible to those who don’t share them.
As to the second over-generalization ;), I consider speaking my mind a beneficial emotional exercise. I feel better about myself, I learn something about how to express myself more clearly and effectively. This uniform issue may be out of my grasp, but there’s others that aren’t. I’ve shot down several goofy ideas in the workplace with simple questions like, “How exactly do we implement this?”. or “What do we do/say when x happens? How about y?”. And sometimes people come up with reasonable answers that I hadn’t thought of, and then I shut up. Other times it’s clear no one’s given thought to the potential problems of a new thing, and we either drop the idea or somebody takes it back to the drawing board. It’s a shame that an idea may well be more or less likely to be implemented because of who backs it, rather than how good or bad the idea is, and it’s pretty clear that’s the case with this uniform thing.
The grapevine says “they” decided that every staff member who works on the ground floor of the building is going to be “branded” with some form of uniform, as they are the most likely to come onto contact with members of the general public, but by the folks who’ve been squeezed into uniforms over the past six months, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s true. Sure as hell sounds like a TQM idea, but I don’t really know. My boss hasn’t said where the idea came from, but she has made several comments that it’s not from her, and she points to some of the especially ugly or otherwise unpleasanr uniforms that some other departments are doing, saying thins like, “I won’t let THAT happen to YOU.”
The only way a dumb idea gets quashed is when respected people step up and call a spade a spade. It DOES happen, and I have been a part of the process from on a few occasions. And if I fail this time, it does not mean the effort is not worthwhile.
msmith537 and Bill H. both make some valid points; the organization has to have a head. Someone’s gotta be in charge, true, and sometimes, the people in charge have to make decisions that are not popular. Anyone who’s ever had to moderate a decent-sized message board knows that.
…which is what brings us to the difference between “leadership,” “management,” and “incompetent egomaniac in a suit and tie.”
“Leadership” is necessary if a business is going to succeed. This means sometimes making unpopular decisions, and firing people who can’t get with the program.
“Management” is necessary if a business is going to be of any size. Sometimes, you can jolly or chivvy people in the direction you need them to go, and if not, well, here’s your severance check, nice knowing you.
…which brings us to the final category. LOTS of people have stories about this one, and I shared mine above; I’ll not repeat it. But this is why I brought up the reasons why one might want one’s employees to wear a uniform. Whether or not those reasons are acceptable or not is up to each and every employee to decide for himself. Just as a boss has the right to fire me if I won’t get with the program, I have a right to tell him to go to hell and take a hike if he wants me to start wearing a uniform, and I don’t think his reasons are up to snuff.
I personally wouldn’t have a problem with the shirt with the company name, myself, if it was comfortable, available in my size, and reasonably attractive. I would, on the other hand, have a problem with having to go out and buy five gray flannel suits with offwhite shirts, black socks, lace-up dress shoes with leather soles, and a buncha skinny black ties, for much the same reason as I would not want to have to wear a polyester uniform in the company colors and a stupid hat and a big colorful button promoting our newest Bonus Combo Meal – Ask Me!
…and ever since I shopped at a store where the employees had to wear buttons that promised me $10 if the employee failed to end every sentence with the words “Thank You For Shopping At Dehumanization Mart!”, I have had a bit of a problem with certain policies that someone up high thought would be a neato idea, if you follow my drift.
Me, I figure if Boyo’s boss is such a nice person, he could talk to her, explain his feelings, and work it out somehow – “I will do it if you order me to do so, but know that in doing so, you are harming my morale.” I’d figure that two reasonable people could work this out.
I could be wrong, though.