Heads up: This post is 20 years old. My thinking may have evolved since then — read it with that in mind.
Birthday card for Jose, picked one that jokes about “Casual Friday” It was my colleague Jose’s bday yesterday, and my boss IM’ed me this morning to get him a cake and a card. The card I picked has an old B&W photo of four men in their underwears and pajamas, and inside it says “Wishing you a birthday more exciting than casual Fridays!” If you haven’t heard me rant about this yet, what happened was, aside from my part-time job working at a computer store, I’ve never had to abide to any “business dress code”. This summer, when I started wearing clam diggers to work, (I ’ve always wore shorts to work in summer since my days at Microsoft.) my manager sent an email to the entire team about dress code. Since I’m the “worst” dresser in the group, I think that email was mainly directed at me, and now… I got this card! LOL… I just brought the card for my manager to sign too! Fortunately, she had a good sense of humor and laughed about it. (I don’t know what she really thinks though.) If u’re intested, here’s the email:
Guys -
Just a reminder about dress code - I have definitely seen us slacking this summer and want to address it because team appearance is very important to me. We sit in an open pit with the people we service and it is in our best interests to be as professional as possible.
In the manual it states: Dress Code: Business Casual. Business Casual is still professional dress - jeans are acceptable only on Fridays.
I want to expand this to clarify that T-Shirts (Logo, etc - not to mean short sleeve shirts), Shorts, Flip Flops, Wife-beaters, and any thing else that you wouldn’t expect to see in a place of business is not acceptable.
I understand that exceptions may need to be made on an individual basis but I expect them to be exceptions and not the norm. Please make sure you are adhering to this policy going forward.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Honestly, I don’t really care. At first I was like… “Shit! I’m in tech yo!! Why the fuck do I have to wear “biz casual”?! But the truth is, I’m fine with slacks and shirts… I was just not happy at having idiotic, completely unnecessary rules applied to a whole team of people! (I brought down the entire team b’coz I wore shorts.)