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Sunday, January 09, 2011

Back to the Future

The other week, I was reading through the company policy for dress code. You see, I have a bunch of training coming up this month and it says right on the page that we are expected to meet the dress code requirements. I figured I'd better know what they were. (For those of you unaware, my company was bought by another and we've had a bit of adjusting to do.)

Some of it made sense like covering tattoos or not allowing jewelry to be worn in piercings other than the earlobe. The tattoos because you never know what might offend a customer and the piercings... Well, let me tell you about the time I went to Waldenbooks and the boy behind the counter had a piercing under his bottom lip. He wore a thin bar in the hole, and because he couldn't move his bottom lip to talk, he was incomprehensible when he spoke. I kept leaning in and going, "Huh?" It's just common sense to not wear something that makes it impossible to speak clearly.

Some of the dress code stuff made me shake my head and go WTF? No jeans, not even on Fridays. Shirts must be tucked in. Men must wear ties if meeting with someone from outside the company. Socks/hosiery are a must. Um, our headquarters is in Atlanta, GA and they expect women to not go bare-legged with a skirt or dress in the summer? Seriously? I live in Minneapolis and I never wear socks in the summer.

There was a bunch of stuff like this and it left me wondering why this dress code was so old fashioned. NWA was pretty conservative when I first started, but even they loosened up more than this.

I kept reading in a kind of rapt horror. Then I saw the tell-tale sentence: No wearing Walkmans in areas where it would be dangerous to do so.

From this, I'm assuming this dress code was written in what? 1980 and apparently hasn't been updated since. Please send me back to the future.