We live in an age when many workplaces that in the past would have required employees to dress up either have no dress code at all or at any rate allow the wearing of jeans and generally casual clothes. However, it is still common even in such places for people to be expected to (or to expect themselves to) dress up at least to the level of “business casual”, if not to put on a suit and tie, when meeting clients. I was wondering if anyone here works somewhere where “jeans allowed”/“no dress code” applies in practice even to client meetings? Do any of you have personal experience meeting your company’s clients for the first time and scoring deals while wearing jeans or other totally casual clothes?
Just for the record, I used to have a (very small) side business as an immigration consultant. In general, my clients were the people who needed residency permits - typically other young ESL teachers in a certain country, not people for whom one would expect to dress up. I did have a few “corporate clients” in language schools that I cooperated with, in the sense that they referred teachers who needed residency permits to me, so people who knew me and didn’t pay me directly. However, once I did have a meeting with a true potential corporate client to offer my services, I.E. the managing director of another language school. Out of personal principle, I did not dress up above the level of the best clothes that I would wear on a normal day; I wore jeans (and probably a collared sweatshirt or polo shirt; this is also what I would normally wear to a job interview). Although I did not get the contract, they did ask me to prepare some potential materials for instructing teachers about residency permits, so perhaps they gave me some serious consideration. Interestingly, I now teach in this school and I get the impression that the director, with whom I have remained familiar, appreciates me.
I work at an advertising agency. I’d guess that 90% of the people in my office wear jeans on a regular basis when they’re in the office. It’s not uncommon for me to be in the office wearing a sweatshirt (with a t-shirt on underneath), jeans, and sneakers, if I don’t have a face-to-face client meeting on that day.
When we meet with clients, what we wear varies depending on the clients’ dress code. My main client is pretty old-school and formal, and we wear business attire (e.g., suit and tie) when meeting with them.
But, most clients are business casual now, and when we meet with them, it’s not uncommon at all for members of our teams to be wearing jeans – I’ll typically be wearing a sportcoat, a dress shirt (but no tie), nice jeans, and casual shoes (but not sneakers).
I work as a distillery consultant. I make it a point to wear a collared shirt when I meet clients but that is normally over cargo pants and flip flops or shorts and flip flops unless I’m on location then I’m wearing boots. I’ve signed hundreds of thousands of dollars of work this way. This includes jobs working as an expert witness, though with one of those I did have to assure the client I would wear a suit to court.
My company is weird, I am based in the DC which has the pretty typical DC dress code. HQ is in Vermont and they have absolutely no dress code whatsoever under any circumstances. Most client interactions happen here in DC, so it isn’t really an issue.
Yes, but I’ve lived for most of my professional life in Europe; we tend to see American etiquette as absurdly outdated. The only places which have detailed dress codes are American companies, and they tend to run in trouble if any of the worker’s reps have a backbone (from “if people have to dress a certain way, you need to either provide clothing, give a clothing allowance, or pay above minimum wage” to “nice gender-based discrimination here on page 3, paragraph 5…”).
I tend to dress up some when I’m meeting clients in Corporate Central, but even when working for one of those companies that still means nice jeans and a good top (blouse, tunic…, just not a T-shirt). If it’s at a factory, it’s nerdy T-shirts time. Clients are the IT department in Corporate Central, which in turn is in the company’s largest factory? For the first meeting, the T-shirt will be one of those whose nerdy motif isn’t terribly in-your-face (this one would work, for example).
I work in a government organisation. Only a few years ago I wore ties and dress clothes to work. Plenty of guys wore suits. On Fridays everyone dressed down. Our dress code now is, in its entirety, “Dress appropriately.” I only wear business clothes when I am doing interviewing, because most applicants come all dressed up and I figure they will feel more comfortable if I am. The rest of my meetings I wear what I usually wear which often is jeans.
I work in a brand agency, albeit in the UK, and it sounds like our dress code is similar. If clients come to us, then unless it’s a new business pitch, many of us will be in jeans. If we’re going to a client we know, then even if the clients tend to wear suits and tie, we wouldn’t - we’re a creative agency, they don’t expect - or want - us to look like them.
If it’s a new business pitch at the client offices, for a formal company (think bank or law firm), then we’ll maybe ditch the jeans - or opt for black - but ties are a rarity. Maybe the CEO or client services director will wear one occasionally, if only to make themselves look like the grown up in the room.
It may not be obvious from the forum names, but the General Questions forum is for questions with factual answers. Questions seeking personal experiences generally belong in our In My Humble Opinion forum. It’s no biggie. I’ll move the thread for you.
Moving thread from GQ to IMHO.
Again, welcome, and we hope that you enjoy your time here.
Law office. Suits are required obviously in most cases, but its become common place to dress down when there is a day where no Court or meeting is expected, only office work is done. Its also become acceptable to meet clients in the office while dressed infomally or casually, less so when we go to meet. Hell right now, I am wearing jeans and shirt and joggers for shoes. Will meet a client in half an hour.
5 years ago, would have been figuratively shot even for thinking about this.
I was a DOD employee for 26 years. For 16 of those years, I worked in an industrial setting, so the main clothing restrictions had to do with safety - like steel-toed shoes on the production floors. When I first started there, I dressed in nicer clothes, but after the first grease stain, it was much more casual, and washable.
The other 10 years I was a cubicle denizen in a secure facility. We were expected to dress professionally for meetings or presentations, but otherwise, as long as you didn’t look like you were headed to the beach, you were OK. At least until a Marine was put in charge of the organization. He declared no jeans, no sneaks, no t-shirts, tho he didn’t go so far as to demand ties and skirts.
Some folks decided if they couldn’t wear jeans, they’d wear loud, plaid pants and such. It was silly for a while. Sillier still, because the head Marine was based several hundred miles away from us and rarely came on site. Anyway, I just switched to black jeans and black sneaks, and since I rarely went to meetings, it never became an issue. Goodness knows, my attire didn’t affect how I did my job, tho the silly rules did lead to a lot of wasted time with folks bitching about it.
My first real job was in a supermarket in the late 1970s. I was a “bagger”. Job duties included bagging groceries, general clean-up, bottle sorting, and shopping cart shagging in all sorts of weather.
Even for this sort of work we were required to wear a dress shirt - tucked in, top button buttoned - and a necktie at all times. And no jeans, ever. No sneakers either. The rare dress code violators were sent home.
Probably not the same level as a customer meeting, but I had a former boss call me up one day and ask if I could come in that afternoon and interview for a position he had open. I told him I wasn’t really dressed for an interview, and he said “Don’t worry about it, we’re pretty casual around here.” So I showed up for the interview in jeans and whatever shirt I was wearing that day – and he was wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.
(And no, I didn’t get the job, but it wasn’t because of how I was dressed.)
I work for a Silicon Valley tech company (in the NYC office) where most people work remotely. Around the office people may wear T-shirts, jeans and sneakers. But for client meetings or conferences, I will generally adjust my wardrobe to what the client wears. Usually at a minimum, a typical “Mr Midtown” look of dress pants and dress shirt from Brooks Brothers or Thomas Pink or some such place (maybe with a fleece vest or sports jacket if it’s chilly). I may dial it up to a suit with no tie or dial it down to jeans, shirt and a sports coat.
Last time I went in for an interview I had adequate notice and I was still told to just wear “a button down and jeans”. I was flabbergasted. I’m relatively used to a more casual office (golf shirt and jeans), but wearing it to an interview? I was stunned. I ended up getting the job too.
The only other time I was too casual for an interview was just like in Shoeless’s situation. They asked if I could come right then. I said I was in no where near interview ready (hadn’t even shaved!) but they said they didn’t care. Didn’t get that job, but it wasn’t a good one anyway I don’t think.
We have a ping-pong table in the common area. When a client is coming in we’ll get an email about keep noise down in that area (since it’s right next to the big conference room); there’s nothing about dress a bit nicer.
I usually wear chinos/khakis/Dockers M-Th & jeans on Friday but when there was a MNF (Thursday edition) football game I wore jeans & a jersey. The only comments were positive ones. My boss wears jeans more often than I do.
In academia (staff), the men still wear ties every day. Women have a little more leeway, but it’s still business casual at minimum. Our particular division grants one “jeans” day a month, but only if you have no meetings. Hilarious, because most of the faculty are in jeans on a daily basis.
I’ll confirm that most of the faculty wear jeans. I guess I never noticed what our support staff wear.
My wife used to work for a translation company whose owner enforced a dress code despite the fact that the translators never met the clients. Come winter days with temperatures south of -20, she simply wore slacks. He made comments but never did anything about it. The company was later sold to the Mormon church and they apparently didn’t care. Imagine someone more uptight than the Mormons.
Yes, very similar. Generally, clients do sort of expect us to look a little more “creative” than they do , and our creatives, in particular, tend to dress a little funkier than the account executives. (I’m a strategist, so the expectation for my attire is somewhere between “crazy professor” and “cool older guy.”)
In the particular case of my main client, their expectation (explicitly told to the head of the account when we started on the business) was that we were to be in business attire whenever we met with them at their offices. Interestingly, on the rare occasions when we’ve met with them elsewhere (either at our offices, or at a “neutral site”), they dress in business casual, and have no issue with us being in casual attire, either – it seems to be part of their culture that “in the office, we wear suits.”
I worked in a Silicon Valley company. I wore khakis, but I was always overdressed. People wore jeans or often shorts.
I noticed that sales people who called on us used to wear suits, but in the past 5 years or so stopped and wore more casual clothes. Not jeans, but khakis.
When I started at Sun Microsystems in 1997 we got a handout about how Scott hated ties, and had to be convinced to put on a suit when meeting with the premier of China, so you can see what the culture was.
, and our creatives, in particular, tend to dress a little funkier than the account executives. (I’m a strategist, so the expectation for my attire is somewhere between “crazy professor” and “cool older guy.”)