There is no chief executive officer so powerful, so self-assured, so overwhelmingly dominant, that he doesn’t get a little knot in his stomach when the issue of the day is (dare we say the words out loud?) “dress code.”
Oh, God.
The young file clerk is dressing like a hooker. Some of the young, junior executives dress up all pretty, with ties and starched shirts, and polished shoes. Other up-and-comers wear plaid polyester, with no socks and a Mickey Mouse watch.
And the human resources department, in order to compete with cool, dot-com companies in Austin, Tex., where there is no income tax and there are many, many bars that stay open very late, have declared Friday as a “casual” day, when everyone can dress almost any way they want.
Of course, if the big boss issues a stern memo, specifying exactly what the corporate dress code is, the memo will travel across the Internet globe in about 16 seconds, subjecting the boss to satire and scorn in 35 different languages.
Many large consulting firms operate on a case-by-case rule; that is, if you’re going to see a dot-com company, whip on the Bermuda shorts and golf shirt; if you’re going to visit a rich guy on his yacht, then boat shoes and no socks are o.k.; and, if you’re on the way to The Travelers to make sense of the IT department, a short-sleeve dress shirt, loose tie and funny, red umbrella are probably best.
All of this is made even harder by the assault of the “fashion” experts in the newspapers and magazines and on television, who tell the workforce that green is the new black; that plaid shirts are now alright to wear with striped ties (assuming ties are now back in fashion), while the wing-tip shoes that you have given up as fuddy-duddy, are now retro-cool – especially without socks.
Magazines for business women will make them even more miserable and insecure than they already are, with advice about how much breast may be displayed at a corporate meeting; about how many pay grades you will lose if your high-heel shoes aren’t high enough – unless you are three inches taller than the boss, in which case flats may be substituted, unless it is Casual Friday.
There will come a day, of course, when an academic study reveals that Americans are spending so much time fussing about what to wear at work, that the gross domestic product has dropped five points – and the Chinese are laughing all the way to the upscale clothing stores. At that point, we may see companies going nude.
I don’t mean Ray’s Sex Emporium on I-91, in the Connecticut Economic Development Sex Industry Cluster. No, I mean actuaries. I mean underwriters. I mean newspaper columnists. Naked.
Casual Friday will be a thong.
The culture already is preparing for the new way of doing things. In response to a recent incident in which 18 middle school boys and girls in the Denver suburb of Castle Rock took naked pictures of each other with their cell phones, the district attorney decided to do nothing at all. No criminal intent. “Kids being kids.”
Today, the middle schoolers. Tomorrow, the corporate accounting department.
There will be resistance to the no-clothes trend, especially from those who are less willowy and well-muscled than Cohen the Columnist. Even as we speak, the governing tyrants of Brattleboro, Vt., are enforcing a new ban on public nudity – which was being practiced by young city residents as a form of vocational education, for when they interview for their first naked job after college graduation.
Vermont, by the way, has no law against public nudity. This is a form of economic development, to entice major Hartford insurers to move to Vermont when they implement the new no-clothes rules.
The naked truth is, work rules that involve clothes are either strict to the point of being comical, or as flexible as linen shorts with no belt.
A job discrimination suit currently wandering through the judicial system in New York City involves a female bus driver who objects to a rule that requires her to wear pants, because the Bible says something about women not dressing like men.
I’m only wearing socks right now. It’s Casual Friday at Cohen Communications.
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Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
