Oh, sure. The Pit’s for venting. I’m just saying I think it’s bad form (though common) to NOT expect people to say you’re wrong.
As to the second generalization, I suspect that people’s attitudes toward that sort of thing have a lot to do with how they perceive their job security. As Manny pointed out, if you have some fairly valuable skills and are fairly safe in your position, you can afford to have that attitude. I suspect many of the people saying “don’t make waves” were thinking of their own situations – and maybe their whole careers – in which they don’t have the kind of (real or percieved) job security where calling bullshit on the boss is a possibility.
It has nothing to do with ego. I have a job to do just like everyone else. Sometimes that job involves getting other people to do something they don’t want to do. Sometimes it involves doing stuff I don’t want to do.
Yes:
Wearing a uniform or dress code at work is, if not accepted, at least is tolerated by the general public. You don’t hear the doctors and nurses complaining, do you?
You are not complaining, you are exhibiting the passive agressive behavior of a child. An adult provides a constructive alternative or deals with the situation as best they can.
You irrational refusal to wear the company shirt does not make you Erin Brockovich.
4.&5. Yes…Especialy if you are being dificult for it’s own sake. I love these people with low-level jobs who somehow think the world and their employer owes them a favor just for showing up each morning.
Company policy is not a Bill of Rights and it is not written in stone. It is the companies expectations as to how you are supposed to act on the job and it is subject to change without notice.
Yeah…your so put upon. It’s like what the Nazis did to the Jews, making you wear the company uniform and all.
As anyone who’s read my posts knows, I hate work probably more than anyone I know. But I have enough sense not to go starting battles with my manager over every little thing I hate about the company policy. Putting up with a certain amount of shit gives me some leverage when there’s something I really want like a raise, promotion or certain time off. It’s a two way street but all too often people think “what’s in it for me”.
As someone else on this board pointed out to me “there’s a support group for your problem…it’s called EVERYONE and they meet every night at the bar.”
yeah, who the fuck is Boyo Jim? He’s just a fuckin’ lowlife worker. He oughtta do whatever he’s told to do and be glad of the opportunity to do so. He’s just a fucking nothing, like anyone else who gets a paycheck. Damn uppity techies, think they’re human or something.
I get a distinct impression that getting others to do something they don’t want to do is a part of your job you enjoy. Which makes all your reasons mere rationales.
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I work at a job where my employer-provided work clothing is subject to being indelibly stained by grease, oil, paint, and chemicals. If items get to looking overly grungy, despite laundering, they’re replaced free of charge.
What do I care that these clothes have the university’s logo on them? It beats paying for my own ruined clothes.
However,if I were a professor and someone higher-up wanted me in a uniform, I’d see no practical reason for one and would therefore protest.
Yeah, a big one. There’s no uniform. There’s no uniform shirt. Kinda makes the rest of the discussion look stupid, not to mention the title of the thread, and the OP itself.
There’s precious little free speech, and limited free thought, in corporate America. If you work for a private company, they can tell you how to dress because their judgment regarding what is in the best interests of the company trumps your right to self-expression when you’re in their hospital, on their dime. And they don’t owe you an explanation.
Which is not to say I don’t sympathize with you. Personally, I’d have snapped at “Can I help you with anything else? I’ve got time!” So yeah, I see your point.
That being said, I think it is professionally counterproductive to “force” your boss to do something you know she finds unpleasant. If she knows that’s what you’re doing – and it sure seems like she does – she will not thank you for it. I am also in the “pick your battles” camp, and I don’t think this is a battle worth picking. And I’m a little suspicious of people who are disdainful of the legions of uniform wearers, like they’ve somehow surrendered their dignity and are less professional or hard working than you. I’m also taken aback by the assumption that anyone who’s managed to ascend to “middle management” – in other words, has achieved some measure of success in his or her career – must have sold their soul to the devil to do it.
My feeling is, you can be an individual on your own time. On your company’s time, you do what they ask you to do so long as it is not offensive or dishonest. Obviously you find this offensive; I gotta tell you, most people wouldn’t. And I also gotta tell you, if I was your manager, no matter how much I liked you as a person, when promotions or reviews came around, I would for sure remember the fact that you went out of your way to intentionally be a pain in my ass.
Then go have some “reasonable discourse” about this with your boss, instead of being a passive aggressive dick about it. You know, a talk where the words “Is this shirt thing optional or not?” come out of your mouth. Instead, you’re going to be a thorn in her side until she says the magic words, that’s real grown up.
Evil Captor, this is a personal thing to me. I have some skills and knowledge in various areas, enough that in some circles I’d consider myself an “expert” in those topics (in other circles, I’d be a rank amateur, there are all sorts of circles, you know?). If you don’t know a damn thing about my area of expertise, I’m going to be pissed off to the extreme if you start arguing with me about my conclusions in that area. I didn’t spend years becoming an expert to have my work criticized by someone who doesn’t know jack shit. Am I always right? Of course not, but you’re not going to find my error because you don’t know what I was doing in the first place.
In this case, I place myself in the position of the Hospital Administrator, spending 30 years in the industry, working my way up through the ranks, learning the ins and outs of the job. I make a couple of decisions, and some guy who’s spent a few years working with electronics is going to assume I’m an incompetant boob? Fuck that. I make decisions in an effort to give better service to our customers. We study our customers, survey them, analyze the results and come up with a plan to fix whatever problems we’ve found. Just because Boyo Jim thinks it’s stupid doesn’t make it so. It might be the wrong decision, but all Jim thinks about is “I hate company shirts.” not whatever information brought management to the decision.
I don’t know, I thought the America was all about capitalism, getting rich and being able to create your own little empire. Surely you can tell those within your empire how to dress (yesssss I am joking!)
I can’t see what the big deal is personally. While I haven’t had to wear a uniform since I started working (ok once but it was a fleeting thing) I did have to wear a school uniform from age 11. Uniforms can be a good thing for several reasons.
a) You don’t have to do the “what will I wear today” thing.
b) It gives you something to hate and that unites you with those around you.
c) Your own clothes feel ever soooo special when you put them back on.
d) You get to feel all rebelish-like when you deviate a teensy bit from the uniform.
Suck it up. They are not trying to castrate you or do some mind altering voo-doo on you. It’s clothes. That’s all, just clothes.
Believe me it can be freeing not having to think “What am I going to wear tomorrow?”
Boyo Jim shouldn’t need to have this talk with his boss. She, as the manager, should make it clear to all employees whether or not this is an option. I’m all for letting everyone have input into goals, etc. heck, I do it with the people I supervise. However, if there are company policies that must be enforced then it’s my job to make sure those people I manage know what they are. She needs to get off her ass and say one way or another. It’s her job. From what I read of Boyo Jim’s posts it sounds like he would comply with it if it is mandatory. His boss needs to let it be known whether or not this is voluntary or mandatory and it doesn’t sound as if she’s done this yet.
I agree that Boyo Jim’s manager ain’t exactly lighting up the management ranks with her performance here. However, she seems like a nice sort of person, and Boyo Jim has stated that he enjoys working with her because of her ‘inclusive’ style of not giving direct orders. When it’s things he likes, the inclusive style makes him “very happy”, when it’s something he doesn’t like, he’ll take advantage of her style until she becomes the ‘direct order’ type. That’s a childish and confrontational way to act.
Having employees who don’t interact with the public, or mingle with outside representatives, wear “uniforms,” or “company shirts,” is surely a sign that programs for hiring the developmentally disabled have been implemented for middle management positions.
Life is too short to play “dress up.” I wouldn’t want to wear a “company shirt” either, so what I’d do, if I were stuck in a similar situation, would be to ask what the ROI was on the shirts. In a corporate structure, no middle manager could get away with squat without a well defined ROI statement. Don’t mess with the bottom line, so if there is no ROI on X, don’t do X. Simple. Well, maybe I don’t have the right mind set for this sort of thing, but I don’t see what benefits company shirts will truly provide compared with the expenses of providing them.
I think Boyo Jim mentioned that he worked for a non-profit, so ROI may not be God there, but it is probably still damn important. How much will these shirts cost per year? Clothing wears out and will need to be replaced, so the “uniforms” will be an ongoing expense. Many non-profits are short of cash, so paying for “uniforms” where they aren’t needed doesn’t, to me at least, seem in the best interest of the organization. Maybe, just maybe, if there are just a few employees, and the “uniforms” are dirt cheap, middle management could cobble together an ROI on the shirts.
Find a way to fight the bastards where they are weakest. The ROI gambit may not work in your situation, but there could be other ways to expose their soft lily white underbellies.
So…let me get this straight. You have to wear a shirt with a company logo on it. Said shirt can be any color you like, pretty much any cut you like, with a variety of fabrics, necklines, etc. The only real requirement about the shirt is that it have the logo put on it. Is this all correct?
I’m sorry, that’s not a fucking uniform, and it’s sure as shit not some corporate Borg assimilation process designed to squash all individuality and independant thought. If they were out to squash your individuality, they wouldn’t be giving you choices about what kind of shirt they wore. They’d do it like the first clinic I worked for did it–they’d ask you what size you wore, then go to the box with that size and hand you the requisite number of shirts from a pile of identical ones.
You’re being a whiner here, and whiners are weiners. Since you’re also taking advantage of your boss’s management style to deliberately be a pain in her ass instead of just talking to her about it, you’re also being more than a bit of a passive-agressive dick.
You think there’s no dress code for professors and professionals?
Stop by the nearest university on an ordinary working day, and probaby 90% of the professors will be wearing khaki slacks, oxford cloth shirt, and corduroy jacket with suede patches on the sleeve. If a tie is worn, about 75% will be wool knit.
Go to your nearest law firm, and all you will see is men and women in suits. Even the janitors wear suits – alright, that last is an exageration, but the interns do – after all, they don’t want to be interns forever…
No, it shouldn’t always be dismissed as whining. In this particular case, though, his argument essentially boils down to “I don’t waaannnnaaaa. I’m too speeeciaaaal to wear what everyone else is wearing.” And that’s just whining.
(yesssss I am joking!)