It may not be that the tie or collar is too tight. I am a woman and as such, I have never had the opportunity to wear a tie.
But, when I was in high school, I had to wear my ROTC uniform every Wednesday for 4 years, complete with the ugly little Velcro tie tab. I hated that thing. It didn’t even go all the way around my neck but as soon as I put it on, I felt like I was being choked. I started wearing my summer uniform as soon as possible and wore it as late as possible.
To this day, I rarely wear anything tight around my neck. I hate turtlenecks. I mostly wear V-necks. The guys at work assume I’m doing it so they’ll stare even more at my chest. I really do it because I hate feeling clothing on my neck.
I have no problem with lightweight necklaces but I can’t wear chokers or heavy, bulky necklaces either.
It’s really just a comfort issue with some people. I’m sure I’m not the only person who hates having stuff around their neck.
I don’t know where you’re teaching, but when I wasn’t allowed to leave a school (it’s kinda long story) I figured they needed me a lot more than I did them, and I wore shorts for months, teaching at a HS. This was in the CA desert, so it really was pretty warm, but no one said boo.
I also worked at a HS in Orange County that had a teacher who seemed every day to be in a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and Topsider (no socks). Then there was my roommate who taught third grade in jeans, button down shirt, and his hair past his shoulder blades.
I also fail to see the hatred for neckties, and I have absolutely no problem working in a full suit every day. I’m with robardin, that a suit and tie means “work,” and a polo shirt or t-shirt is “free time.” And I’m a guy in my 20s, who had long hair in a ponytail all through college. But now, in the real world, wearing a suit is what a professional should do.
Not only are ties not uncomfortable when tied correctly with a well-fitting shirt, but I feel awkward being at work without one. On days when I’m doing something manual, and am told to wear jeans, it’s a full day mindfuck.
Interesting to notice the East Coast vs West Coast divide in the responses.
There is a huge difference between dressing for the beach and dressing in business casual. We wear polo shirts or dress shirts, khakis or jeans, and some form of loafers. That’s a far cry from beach clothes or a rock concert shirt.
However, at least the business casual clothes can be used in my non-work life. Sure, my usual day off clothes consist of T shirts, shorts, and flip flops: The temperatures here are over 100 degrees from May until October. But, the business casual clothes can still be used for going out to dinner, church, social events, and for daily wear in winter when the temperatures cool down.
Of course, every adult should have some dress clothes. There are certainly occasions when you’ll need them. But, it is certainly expensive to maintain such a wardrobe. Also, when my business casual clothes begin to wear out, I can still wear them outside of work. Business clothes that start to wear out don’t have a use.
Just in case I wasn’t clear, we didn’t made fun of the guy for wearing a tie. He’s not the only one who does so, and nobody notices either way. Trying to make a weekly “Ties on Monday” ritual was mocked because it’s quite dorky.
I’ve worked in IT for over 20 years. The first 3 years was an insurance company and suits/ties were required every day. The next 5 years was a manufacturing company and ties were required most days. After that I went to software companies and have worn a tie fewer than 10 times in the last 15 years. I’m in jeans & a rugby shirt today. If I have to visit a customer I’ll go with nice trousers and a corporate logo’d button-down shirt, but still no tie. When I had to do it every day I made sure to get good shirts so it wasn’t too much of a hardship but I’m still happier without them.
Here (in the UK) I refuse to take up golf because I won’t partake in an activity that has a stricter dress code than my office.
I’ve always heard that during tough economic times, the dress code gets more rigid at work. It will be interesting to see what our dress codes are in a few months.
This is partly it. I am also a “Tech type” – right now I have a computer screen full of xterms running and two Emacs sessions (one compiling and one debugging different C++ applications), and an SQL analyzer in the backgound. I am also (a) in a corporate East Coast environment in a non-technical firm (financial services), and (b) in the position of being a senior team/product lead.
To advance my career I need to NOT think like a technical person, at least not all the time, as a significant part of my role is to understand and communicate with non-technical people in terms of what really matters to the company: making money. But I still need to be hands-on familiar with the code base and platform to be able to lead the technical teams. I’m naturally very technical so it’s an effort for me, especially on the communication side of things, to read and re-read what I write, and think and re-think what I say before I say it, depending on the audience.
“Putting on the <X> hat” is a common metaphor for mentally shifting one’s POV, so in that light, having a different wardrobe is a big help for me. Robardin in jeans and a T-shirt can daydream about baseball championships, play cards, ride a motorcycle, try new ways to grill meats, play with his kids, etc. But robardin dressed-for-work is a Serious Guy.
No doubt this is partly the local culture – by reputation, the “East Coast”, particularly NYC, is still more formal than elsewhere in the country. Comments about people “looking unprofessional” are not frequent, but everybody’s heard them, hopefully about someone else. You don’t want that career-limiting label, especially in an economy like this, so you quickly internalize that attitude early on, or else move on/move out.
That’s why I asked “where do you see yourself 10 years from now?” If you don’t see yourself still working at the company you do now, why is that and how realistic is it? People who automatically say “no way, I won’t be a corporate ladder climber!”, but who are (say) 25 years old and working in a corporate environment, and also have no plan for what they will be doing differently… Will quite likely find themselves ten years later in the exact same role (if it hasn’t been eliminated in some way), paid the exact some money, if they’re lucky, but more bitter than ever.
I made the decision ten years ago to climb the corporate ladder, to work in financial services in NYC instead of striking out for the West Coast to hook up with a dot-com or something. The money was good, the work was interesting, I got to stay in my hometown near my extended family, and I could see a career path ahead of me. My part of the firm is run by people savvy enough (many of them ex-developers themselves) to value having technically proficient people rise to a management role like this, instead of pushing a pointy-haired non-technical manager who doesn’t really grasp the scope or difficulty of technical projects.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, purely technical people can in the worst case be viewed as interchangeable code monkeys that can be outsourced to consultants or offshored to India. More critical technical people that require a local presence – networking or sysadmin folks, for example – are backroom banditos who max out fairly quickly.
Just to clarify also – I don’t wear a tie most days, and even our East Coast, financial services dress code doesn’t require one any more (though it was required as recently as 12 years ago), though it is “encouraged”. Yet most of the clothes I’d wear casually are NOT allowed, including polo shirts and loafers – dress slacks or “pressed khakis” and collared dress shirts are required. Which to me is doubly annoying: come in dress slacks paired with a polo shirt and you get comments about going golfing; but come with a jacket and tie on the dress shirt and you get comments about “going interviewing”.
At least you might have until last year. I have observed that many people have started dressing more formally as the economy has gotten worse. Putting their best face forward I guess.