Issue Two

Recently I was unfortunate enough to work (briefly, believe me, very briefly) at a place that had dress down day. After reading all of the company policies and procedures, I thought I had all of their rules and regulations down, but I guess I missed the policy of dress down day. I found out about this retro occasion in an odd way. It was a Friday and I arrived at work dressed like I usually dress for work–to kill and to-the-nines. My boss, who looked as if she just came in from milking a cow said to me, "Oh, I forgot to tell you, Friday is dress down day." I paused for a moment and looked around at the rest of the cowhands, who just yesterday I called my co-workers and said, "Thanks for the invite but it’s a little too collective for me." And I thought to myself, oh the beloved Friday. TGIF. Payday. Let’s do happy hour. Let’s leave early. Let’s take a long lunch. It’s Friday!

Isn’t Friday crowded enough?

What irks me is, most places have a casual dress code anyway. How low can you go from casual? If the dress code is casual which makes clean and different colored jeans, khakis’ and open collars acceptable, then what is the next level? I’ll tell you: It’s sweat pants, stained holy jeans and the horrific brown shorts coveralls! Dressing down from casual is a nice term for ‘come as a slob.’

A suggestion to companies who have the dress down Friday: End the dress down day and let people wear whatever they want every single day. The code should simply be: neat and clean with no holes. This sort of code keeps the office looking less like a Saturday in the barn. And even if one person decides to dress lower than low, his or her surroundings make him look good. This will surely help the appearance of the office. It works on the theory that if you want to look beautiful, surround yourself with beautiful things. The dressed down person won’t be obvious because the other people who are dressed neat, clean and hole free surround them.

For those of you who don’t have the causal dress code and you must dress up to the nines every single day–keep it that way. Obviously you are in a profession that calls for that type of code and why is Friday any different from any other day of the week? My point here is if I need your services on Friday, don’t insult me and wear your khakis or your open collar just because it’s Friday. I expect my suit and tie people to be suit and tie people all the time.

Now–about that day you’re allowed to wear Buffalo Bills attire to work.