I saw a woman who came to an interview in an outfit that was covered in cat hair - years later, I still remember how terrible that looked. Like it or not, there are certain expectations of how you look at work.
At the risk of being obvious…
…there’s a huge difference between 2 ink stains and 20. If you’re not going to get new clothes, then I’d suggest keeping only the ones with the least noticeable staining. Donate the rest to some 3rd world charity, where the receiver will be so poor that he truly won’t give a shit that his shirt has ink spots on it.
Also, try hair spray.
wolfman has abandoned this thread, but leaves an indelible image.
This trick works only on some inks, not on all of them. And the reason it works is because alcohol is a solvent. I don’t know if hairspray has alcohol in it any more. At any rate, dabbing rubbing alcohol on the stains might or might not get them out.
Pfft. That’s the new Nike logo.
There’s looking neat and then there’s doing something completely pointless for the sake of looks. With many clothes now coming in wrinkle-free fabrics, neatness to me seems more a stylistic choice than hygienic support. I don’t even know what the bad thing about being untidy with your clothes is. Its not like a room or a desk, where messiness can trip you up or cause you to lose things. This is literally the clothes on your back, designed for nothing than to cover up your nakedness. How do wrinkles affect the function of clothes at all? It doesn’t! So it means little to me if you spent time on making it look pressed, it says more that you’re willing to waste time doing something pointless
I think food stains are dirty in that they promote bacteria and germs. Of course micro-organisms live in everything, but lets stick to the obvious here: food is a germy mess, and old, spoiled food on your clothes are not only unsightly but harmful. Ink is not. Ink is a color, it does not represent dirt or grime. If a guy accidentally stains his clothes with ink, it doesn’t mean he’s a dirty bacteria trap, it just means he had an accident, which could happen to any of us. Hundreds of dollars is a lot of spend to get rid of what is essentially a minor cosmetic defect. I cannot fathom that people SHOULD care that much about drops of ink, but unfortunately they do and they are objectively wrong about it
As with face tattoos and outrageous facial piercings and hairdos, I invite you to wear all the ink-stained, wrinkly clothing you want - that way, everyone you encounter will know exactly who they’re dealing with. 
I’ve volunteered for three different charities and I think all three sent unsellable clothes for fabric recycling rather than transporting them to countries without domestic clothing industries. Apparently door to door collections are often scams, so watch out for that. All three were very stringent too: any stains or holes and the clothing was recycled. Today, in fact, we recycled half of our good, checked, clothing, simply because we were running out of space. Our donors are not aware of this in the most recent shop. We’ve received breadknives, stained jockstraps, tampons, curtains with piss on them, jeans with puke on them… The most heart rending one was a batch containing ripped wedding photos, a pamphlet on domestic abuse, a chequebook, late bills and kids toys.
I really doubt anyone would have rotting food on their clothes. I’d really like you to propose a mechanism through which a bacteria adhering to a stain on a person’s clothes after they’ve been washed would infect someone. Far more harmful is turning up to work with a cold, that transmits horrid germy pathogens through a known mechanism and should be the target of more ire.
I think there’s no reason to go that far. You’re not that likely to get sick from licking the ground but we can all agree that its germy. Old food, leftover food, food in places where its not supposed to be is dirty. There’s just no equivalent to ink, which is simply a colored dye.
This whole discussion, but particularly the OP’s apparent belief that being good at one’s job absolves one from social conventions, reminds me of something I read long ago. The nudist on the late shift. Do a find on the word “attaching” to skip to the part about the nudist.
Its just ink! It doesn’t rise to the level of public nudity. There is a line, we’re not saying there isn’t. We just don’t believe ink and wrinkles crosses it
Agreed on your first point. I’m not trying to be snarky, I was just making a point that there is an area between wrinkled mess and starched creases in one’s jeans (blecccch). As far as the functionality of clothes, of course the wrinkledness or stainedness doesn’t have an effect; nobody’s talking about that.
The topic is what is and what is not acceptable in the work place. Obviously that’s going to vary from manager to manager, and whatever they say goes. If your manager and you don’t care, I don’t think that anyone here is having a problem with that. Any place I’ve workd, I imagine my manager *would * care, but I’ve never had the chance to find out, because *I *care and wouldn’t wear clothes that are stained by ink, food, or anything else. That isn’t a burden / doesn’t offend me because I share the same sensibility.
I wear a nose stud and have for the last 24 years. I would really like to not have to take it out every damned night but I’ve checked with every employer I’ve had to make sure they’re cool with it. I’ve never encountered one that had a problem with it, but if they did, I would defer to their wishes.
Can the “dirtiness” of a food stain be operationalised? In my opinion, the only way to do so is to aggregate subjective opinions of dirtiness and even in that case there will be individuals whose opinion deviates from the norm (food stains are fine, ink stains are not). There isn’t really an objective way to disprove such a claim. Another way to think about it is that one is no more likely to get infected by a coworker eating an egg mayonnaise sandwich three feet away than if one’s coworker has an egg mayonnaise stain on them three feet away (assuming the egg mayonnaise hasn’t been left to fester in either scenario). The discomfort comes from social conventions.
I was fine with ignoring this thread until YogSosoth started saying ironing one’s shirt is pointless and a waste of time.
Yes, you can buy quite serviceable wrinkle-free shirts, and they definitely seem to outsell the “must-iron” shirts, but I still prefer to iron my clothing. It calms my mind and gives me an opportunity to mentally preview my day while preparing my clothing for it. Yes, my shirts have wrinkles at the end of the day, but they are wrinkles that I have earned. I don’t expect anyone’s shirt to be perfectly pressed at 5pm, but if it is a wrinkly mess at 8am I will file you under the category “Slovenly”.
That’s the reason I wear polo shirts; the knit fabric doesn’t need to be ironed.
What do you do for a living? Where my father works, if he came in with a wrinkled shirt, he’d look like a complete rube. Some types of clothing you CAN’T find in wrinkle free, and you have a type of job you can’t wear it.
And yes, in some cases “the clothes make the man”. That’s just a fact of life. People WILL judge you by your appearance.
(Of course, I’m a total clothes horse, so maybe I don’t understand. But c’mon, it doesn’t kill a person to find something that’s unrumpled, unstained, and clean. If it’s that much of a problem, choose a profession where you’re expected to get dirty. If not, stick it in your juice box and suck it. If that makes me “hopelessly backward and judgemental”, so be it.)
I don’t think its necessary to parse it down to that fine a point. Dirty things, as is commonly know, would definitely include old food in places where there shouldn’t be old food. I wouldn’t consider ink dye to be always on that level. As an organic product, it would also be more likely to have organisms in it than something inorganic like ink
I earned my work lines on those shirts from the day before! A new shirt shouldn’t be wrinkled, but as you wear it, wrinkles will pretty much be burned into the fabric of the shirt. I have some old shirts, one from maybe 3 or 4 years ago, that I still wear. I’ll keep it clean, keep it smelling nice, but I don’t expect it to look new every morning. Ironing it simply is a waste of time to me
I think standards have changed since your father’s time. People used to wear suits to go out to ball games, to watch movies, or whatever. Its much more casual now, unless you’re going to a wedding or funeral it wouldn’t be odd to see someone wear shorts and a tshirt. As to your question, I work in administration as a lower level manager. There are standards, but “business casual” can mean anything from slacks and a buttoned-up shirt to a polo with black pants. I know people will judge me, but my contention is that they shouldn’t, because what they are judging me for is whether or not I choose to participate in an activity that’s a waste of time and adds nothing to my productivity.
Sure, if you’re a construction worker, wear a hard hat because its a safety issue. If you’re a TV host, wear something nice because more than anything you’re presenting a look, if you meet with clients often, wear something that will impress them. But I sit in an office working with other office drones. There is simply no need to have ironed clothes. And I would guess that for 99% of people, ironed clothes are simply that: a choice, one that adds nothing to their work productivity and would not hinder them in the least.
What is says is “Social conventions mean nothing to me”, and from that, a lot of other data can be inferred.
I went from a job where I wore a suit or at least a tie every day, to an ad agency where the “suits” put on guess-what to go meet with big clients, but the “goatees” and the rest wore jeans and nice, clean, but unironed, shirts.
Now I’m a teacher, and I’m chuckling. Because one day last week I ran out of “slovenly” shirts and wore an upscale dress shirt. Man, did my students give me crap when I showed up in…** a tucked-in shirt**!