It’s all about your audience. My sister works for Deloitte & Touche, and they are a very buttoned-down corporate financial environment. You simply aren’t able to be as relaxed as you’d be in, say, the Pixar environment. It’s whatever the traffic will bear, business-wise. The other part of professionalism in the workplace is to not forget your day-to-day manners, such as not talking on the phone with a mouthful of gum or scratching your ahem! while you’re conducting a flip-chart presentation.
I’ve never understood the stated preference for jeans and t-shirts when professional-looking clothing can be just as comfortable. Honestly, I think it has to be a rebellion issue.
What I wear to work is generally a pair of slacks and a matching pull-over shirt. My slacks are often made of jersey-knit or other soft fabrics in a loose-fitting cut, so they’re just about as comfortable as wearing a pair of jammies. I don’t buy tight or complicated blouses, just ones that look neat and pretty but are easy to care for and comfortable to wear. I wear practical but respectable-looking shoes. (Some of the leather shoes they’re selling now look like business attire but are almost as comfy as tennis shoes.)
In my ensemble, I look nice enough to go into almost any business situation but I’m very comfortable. Jeans are actually more uncomfortable than my work clothing because of the heavy fabric and often more constricting. When I buy my work clothing, I look for comfort and unless a person is an unusual shape, you should almost always be able to find comfortable clothes that still look nice.
Part of living in the adult world is knowing what clothing and demeanor is appropriate to a situation. It’s insulting to your host to wear sloppy clothes to a formal function, for example. Nor is it mature to “express yourself” through your dress or cosmetic enhancements in a situation where it is not appropriate. (Anyone who has to express themselves through their appearance by getting a trendy piercing or tattoo strikes me as being a bit pathetic, but I digress.)
I’ve often felt that parents who go to court to battle for their child’s right to wear bizzarre clothing or haircolors are actually doing their children a disservice. In the real world, you’re not respected for it and right or wrong, you’re going to suffer for it in the professional world. In other words, I guess you have a right to have your entire face tattooed or have green and pink hair, but you shouldn’t bitch if a company won’t hire you.
It’s a little silly to be “rebelling” to that extent in your 20s once you join the professional workforce. Presumably you just finished 4+ years of college studying something related to what you would like to do for a living. And now you’re going to act like someone’s forcing you to be here?
I don’t like wearing business attire, and I chose a profession that doesn’t require it. Maybe for women business attire is just as comfortable as casual, but not for men. I can’t stand wearing ties, cuffed shirts, hard soled shoes, jackets, and dress pants. It’s hot and uncomfortable. On rare occasions I have to put on the suit, and I just hate it.
It’s also expensive. A decent suit can easily be $400. If you’ve got to have five of them for the weekday, plus summer and winter weights, and have to replace them every few years as fashion changes, it gets expensive. Then there’s the dry-cleaning costs - add in another $30-40 per month.
I’m very happy to work in a place without a dress code. All else being equal, you would have to offer me a serious salary boost before I’d move to a shop that required business wear.
Okay, I’ll bite. Are we allowed to know what that career is?
And it’s unfair because unfairness works. Everyone who gets screwed over is potentially giving someone else a chance to thrive.
The working world isn’t unfair (or at least no more unfair than anything else), the rules are just different. Is it unfair that if you are tall you are likely better at basketball? Is it unfair that if your mind works logically, you are a better programmer? Is it unfair that if you test well, you are likely to get better grades? And, in the business world, if you can behave in a professional manner, you will have more success than someone who announces their girlfriend gives great head in a staff meeting.
You’re right-- suits are the tool of the Devil. I wasn’t thinking along those lines. I was thinking more about “business casual” which means slacks and nice shirts. That’s the type of clothing that most young people going into the workforce would be wearing (and bitching about.)
I teach high school English, and being that wacky crazy English teacher is actually an asset and works well. Teenagers are not subtle, and being over the top is effective. But there are still a lot of “professional” things I have to do to maintain my reputation, and I do them.
I wasn’t being coy earlier, btw. I just didn’t want to derail the thread into the Topless Texas Teacher tangent or the School Teacher fashions tangents, two recent threads. But this one is established now, so it isn’t as big a worry.
It’s all about the $$$$.
If people prefer to conduct business with a firm staffed with gentlemen wearing ZZ Top-style beards (as they did in the mid-19th century) then ZZ Top will be deemed professional, but in the mid-20th century when clean-shaven was an absolute necessity for men who wanted to be hired and promoted by the top firms, professional was defined differently.
But in both cases, it was the culture of the times that defined the term, not individuals seeking to impose their preferences on the culture. You could probably do certain jobs with a log inserted clear through your forehead, but in this culture, you probably won’t be hired to greet clients in a top-ranked law firm with that particular accoutrement. if you can’t figure out the current definition of “professional” then most firms are probably going to conclude that you have problems figuring out more subtle concepts and will shy away from hiring you, or from promoting you up from the mail room if they were foolish enough to hire you.
If you’re sincere in your question, Diamonds02, all you need to apply is a reductio ad absurdum: Why don’t more firms allow their workers to go nude in the workplace, or allow workers to blast non-stop music at high-decibel levels, or to roll themselves in honey and granola before reporting to work? The answers to these questions should provide you with the answers to yours as well.
Whether you like it or not, everything you do and say gives strangers a certain impression of you. I’m a public librarian - I dress professionally. No suit required, but I do have to look like what I am, which is a professional person. Dressing professionally gives me some authority. It’s hard enough to get little kids, drunk homeless guys, and soccer moms to respect me when I’m dressed properly - they’d try to run right over me (even more) if I wore my raggediest jeans and a halter top. It shows respect to the job, the profession, and my co-workers.
Personally, I think we should dress like lawyers, because we want the profession to be more respected. We should wear suits. Because people notice what you wear. (Then again, you don’t want to be the only one in a suit, either.)
Just from my personal experience, I had the impression that nice clothes were less comfortable, and it was because I rarely dressed up. I had maybe two nice outfits at any given time, and they weren’t particularly comfortable. They usually didn’t fit well, and they were often rather uncomfortable fabrics because I bought what looked nice, never planning to wear it day in and day out. The shoes were never broken in ('cause I hardly wore them) and I often didn’t have the right weight socks to make them fit right. So I had the attitude that dressing nicely meant being uncomfortable.
When I grew up and had to aquire a professional wardrobe, I learned fairly quickly that buying uncomfortable clothes was a waste of money, because they just languish in the back. More suprisingly, I did somehow manage to aquire some clothes that were comfortable. It took forever to get over the guilt and get into the habit of exporting poor choices to the Goodwill or the thrift store, but now everything in my closet is a) comfy and b) snappy-lookin’. 
And, after many pairs of uncomfortable, treacherously slick, and embarrasingly loud shoes, I finally found a pair of brown oxfords and a pair of black oxfords. I’m golden. 
Not a rebellion issue with me - I grew up in a T-shirt and jeans, so anything else tends to feel weird. However, I didn’t bitch, and when I was in a position where I couldn’t wear jeans, I wore as nice a clothing as I could. However, I’ve taken to shopping the clearance sections at Wal-Mart because even slobby clothing is expensive as hell; I can’t imagine how much I’d be forking out for nice clothing if I had to wear business casual or business attire. As much as I love my job, I could certainly use a pay raise, if only so I could afford new clothing for my job.
~Tasha
I work in law libraries and intern in a major metropolitan public library at the same time, so I wear a dress shirt, tie, and slacks every day. A lot of my work is physical, so there’s no need to wear a suit (especially since I travel around and don’t have an office or a constant base of operations), but none of the male public librarians I see even wear ties.
As a Registered Nurse, I need to convey a trust-worthy image at the patient’s first sight. Body language, uniform, ID badges ablazing first impression. The first words out of my mouth “Good morning, my name is Cyn, I’ll be taking care of you and your baby” have to be understandable, not garbled, drooly, wet sounds around gum. My coming into a room gnawing on a bagel or slurping a paper cup of coffee might convey a sense of I don’t have my shit together this morning, running a little late, do I want my IV meds administerd by this person? Profanity has no place in my conversation, as I am building trust with each passing minute, my personal life has no place in our conversation, as I am here to learn about patient needs and I come to work ready to work, not fill my own immediate needs.
If I were less professional-acting, yes, I wouldn’t magically lose my skills, but I would instantly lose patient/staff trust.
Another thing that’s often claimed about suits is they make the wearer look more “respectable”, the wearer will be treated “better” than someone not wearing a suit…
that doesn’t work with me, if two customers come into my store at the same time, one in a suit, one in casual clothing, I help the casual customer first, both customers get equal levels of customer service, but since suits piss me off, the customer wearing the suit gets waited on second…
Honey, you don’t just have issues, you have a subscription.
Heh-heh. That was beautiful. And so accurate.
snerk Love it.
I work as a research assistant in a medical center, and I wear business-casual clothing - khaki-level slacks, simple tops like polos, sweaters, etc. But over top, I wear a white “lab” coat, and my ID badge. The latter is because hospital rules require it and so my patients know who they’re dealing with, but I admit the former is because it makes people feel better. I get less reluctance to answer personal questions - and when you’re asking people about their bowel movements, what STDs they’ve contracted, etc., they want reassurance that you’re competent - and patients are more comfortable overall. Plus I even get weird “competence” effects like lost people in the halls being more likely to approach me out of a group of employees, asking for directions.
I don’t consider it trickery - I am competent. In our hospital, most everyone from doctors down to the most minor tech wears a lab coat or scrubs, so I fit in when I wear a lab coat. So yes, I am treated “better” when I wear a lab coat, but that’s to the benefit of the patient. I need to know accurate information about their health, and reluctance to share that information with me could in the worst case lead to problems for the patient, or even for the research itself.
Maybe he works at a store that sells men’s suits?