He got his start laying pipe for the Atlas Water and Sewer company. Eventually, he climbed the ranks, becoming responsible for a staff of 800 and annual revenue exceeding $120 million. His name is Victor Kipling. This is his weekly column.
Are unisex jumpsuits ready to become the very latest in office fashion? After all, they’re serviceable, practical, non-offensive and, well, one size fits all. How very appropriate for the modern march towards collectivism! Clerks and CEOs unite; you have nothing to lose but your dry cleaning bills. Just think of the advantages – no one will dress sloppily, or provocatively, or provide grist for the daily gossip mill. Yes, the proponents of the bullpen, the advocates of political correctness and the adversaries of individualism and independence are probably selecting your jumpsuit color as you read this…
Yet, and if we really think about it, the office as an institution has always demanded that it’s employees wear a uniform of one sort or another. Maybe it’s the conformity and discipline thing, the axiom that says an uncomfortable worker is a good worker. While I don’t pretend to know the answer, I do know that such uniforms have always been impractical and damned annoying to wear. I mean, it’s not like we’re in the Army and have to be able to know the good guys from the bad. Although, and considering how some offices operate, the wearing of military regalia might not be such a bad idea, after all.
Until fairly recently, the uniforms for every day were pretty standard; dark suits for men and dresses for women; though both were also equally and uncomfortably encased in either vests for the former or corsets for the latter. Women could opt for pearls or pendants, and a religious medal was always welcome. At least they didn’t have to feel like they were being choked all the time.
The only real latitude men have had, if you want to call it that, has been in the type of tie that they chose to choke themselves in. So, and while a sales rep. could be expected to sport a garishly colored nightmare of a tie, an executive hung a more subdued and usually striped (but as equally annoying) cravat around his (probably overpriced) neck. You may accuse me of having a thing about ties, but you can’t deny their utter lack of utility. For some reason, ties impart a faux sense of respectability; a tactic, I might add, that the Nazis used.
What’s most ironic is the advent, a few years ago of the ‘dress down Friday’ myth. I say myth because many of us were in essence suckered into thinking that we would, this one day a week, be able to assert some semblance of individuality. Also, and even more naively, that we could show our bosses that a more relaxed environment led to greater creativity and productivity, etc. Of course, there were the idiots who chose to come in wearing wife beaters and dirty jeans, thereby giving management the perfect excuse to generate but another (and equally annoying) set of rules. So, the new dress down day demanded but another uniform, the unisex light blue button down shirt and khaki slacks. At least the tie was gone, but even this was a short-lived relief.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get much worse, it did.
The new corporate obsession with branding has begun to rear its very ugly head. Many companies now insist that, on dress down days, their staffs wear shirts with corporate logos and/or silly slogans imprinted on them. What’s next, compulsory tattoos?
So, welcome to the neo-casual world, where, though they want you to think about how democratic things have become, branding just goes to show that your ass still belongs to the company store.
Leave a Reply