Your Job Sucks | Dress Codes

Introduction

My first official, paid job (other than odd jobs like cleaning houses and mowing lawns) was at a fireworks stand in Waxahachie, Texas. I was fifteen and was only legally permitted to wave signs (a horrible job, especially in 117+ degree summer weather). The uniform there was pretty minimal; I wore any non-ripped shorts that I wanted and a TNT fireworks t-shirt that the company provided to me at no charge. Shortly after that, the uniforms and dress codes became more and more ridiculous--I worked in fast food, for a retail store, and even for two different datacenters that enforced not just dress codes, but uniforms.

Why are uniforms and dress codes such a big deal, though? It’s just clothing, right? And you only have to wear it for a maximum of eight hours a day, don’t you? So why on earth would I be adding uniforms and dress codes to this series on why your job sucks? Well, buckle up, because there are going to be quite a few examples in this one and no uniform/dress code-enforcing employer is going to be happy with this article.

Dress Code vs Uniforms

The term dress code and uniform are not necessarily interchangeable. A uniform can be part of a dress code, but a dress code is not inherently a uniform. I want to clear up my terminology before I continue to use it throughout this post.

Dress Code

A dress code refers to the requirements regarding attire and appearance in the workplace. Typically this is categorized as something universally recognized, such as business casual and business professional. Sometimes, the dress code will specify certain colors or kinds of attire that are permitted--a few even go so far as to specify skirt length, the condition of the jeans that are permitted in the workplace, the size of the earrings that can be worn, and even rules against tattoos. When I refer to dress code, I am referencing your company’s requirements of your appearance from your toes to your hair.

Uniforms

Uniforms are company-required articles of clothing that must always be worn. Typically this uniform will represent either the company or your department in some way. The uniform will have a certain color scheme, the company logo, or something of that sort to ensure that you and other members of your team look like poorly-executed clones of one another. Target has a uniform, for example, even though the uniform doesn’t explicitly require wearing a Target-branded t-shirt. All you have to wear are solid-colored slacks and a red top. I’ve even noticed that some Target department stores are beginning to allow employees to wear jeans--good for them!

Good Reasons for Dress Codes and Uniforms

If you’re an employer who is already fuming at the very notion that someone could possibly question a dress code--let alone on the Internet--I want you to read this section before you start your rampage. I recognize that in some situations, dress codes and uniforms are absolutely necessary. These instances are far more rare than most companies care to admit, however (particularly older companies). I’m going to list a couple of examples here.

Safety Issue

Dress code can be a matter of safety for the employees. For example, I currently work as a technical analyst at a manufacturing facility. The individuals who work the line cannot wear loose clothes like skirts or wide-sleeved shirts. Certain items of clothing could potentially be caught in the production line, resulting in injury (at the very least). The company is consistent with this because it doesn’t permit ties on the production line, either. It has nothing to do with how professional the employees look and everything to do with the nature of the work. This is also true of construction sites and other jobs when there is danger present.

Recognizability

This one is a bit iffy because it greatly depends on where you work. Uniforms can be used to allow customers and clients to recognize an employee of the organization as someone who can provide assistance. This is why I agree with Target’s red-shirt policy. While it can be confusing (try wearing a red shirt into Target), Target tries to mitigate confusion by having employees wear name badges (though, trust me, those are rarely the actual names of the employee). Target gets uniforms right, for the most part; employees are hardly restricted in what they wear and the restrictions that are in place are primarily there so that employees can be readily identified by customers.

Theme and Style

Dress code can often be present to maintain a theme or style for the establishment. For example, you wouldn’t want waiters at a high-class restaurant to wear torn trousers and tank tops. It would be suitable for employees of a haunted house to show up wearing three piece suits and thousand-dollar timepieces (unless, of course, the nature of the haunted house is ‘glamorous one-percenter runs for a political seat’).

Bad (Yet Common) Reasons for Dress Codes and Uniforms

If you ask your employer--particularly your direct supervisor--about the reasons behind the dress code, you probably won’t be given a very good one. You’ll be tossed some sort of regurgitated nonsense that’s likely just intended to get you to stop asking questions. Odds are, your supervisor probably doesn’t really know why the dress code exists, either. It’s just something that has always been done. So here are a number of reasons why you probably have a dress code. I’m going to start with one of the good reasons I listed above, explaining how it can actually be a bad reason.

Recognizability

Recognizability makes sense for a big place like Target, where numerous clients are coming in and out throughout the day and there are too many faces for them to remember, but what about a datacenter? Let’s look back at Infotube, the company I mentioned in my previous post. Before it was Infotube, it was another company called… um… Oniongear. Oniongear did not enforce a dress code and had the same number of clients that Infotube had at the datacenter where I worked. Even after Infotube took over, there wasn’t a dress code for over a year.

Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, I and my coworkers are being asked about our pants sizes and t-shirt sizes. Every single one of us reluctantly gave our information to our supervisor and within three weeks we had itchy polos featuring the Infotube logo and noisy cargo pants that were just as itchy as the polos.

Not only were the cargo pants uncomfortable, but they were light brown. We had to wear this light-brown khakis in a datacenter that was kept at roughly 90 degrees while the technicians--that’s us, the khaki-cargo-pant-wearers--worked on ladders. I’ll remind you, dear reader, that heat rises and humans tend to sweat while they work in temperatures above eighty. The ceiling area could reach temperatures nearing 110 degrees, meaning that while we were running several hundred feet of cable for a few hours, a highly-noticeable pool of sweat would develop around our crotches and asses. It didn’t matter what we did to try to get rid of these pools of sweat, either--clients were going to see a bunch of technicians who appeared to have just pissed or crapped themselves and there was nothing we could do about it.

The reasoning behind the uniforms? Management wanted data center technicians to be easily recognized as employees of Infotube. There are numerous problems with that logic. For one, all of the data center technicians spent most of their time in the office, behind a locked security door (other than when we were out doing busy work for Moe Gasoline). In addition, there were phones in each node of the data center, mounted on the walls by the exits. Customers always picked up those phones to contact the data center technicians (picking up the phone immediately dialed our duty phone, which we each carried at all times).

The real kicker, though is that every single client who would ever need assistance from data center technicians already had a personal relationship with each of us. They knew our names, asked about us, and could recognize who was an employee and who was not. Anyone who somehow didn’t know us would get to know us before even reaching their rack in the data center, because we had to meet the client, introduce ourselves, and escort them into the data center. Part of that escort was actually showing them how the phone worked so that they could contact us at any time.

Ultimately, this means that there was no reason for the data center technicians to wear itchy, uncomfortable, sweat-apparent uniforms other than the company’s already-bloated ego. Recognizability can be a good reason for employees to wear uniforms, but it isn’t always a good reason. In addition, a simple name tag may suffice for some locations, such as small town thrift stores, late night gas stations, and fast food restaurants where employees are already behind a counter to provide a degree of separation.

Appeasing the Masses and Meeting Expectations

This isn’t the same thing as maintaining style as was mentioned in the list of good reasons. When I say this, I’m mainly referring the the expectations customers have not only of employees at an establishment, but of everyone around them. Most older folks don’t like tattoos, don’t like piercings, don’t like long hair on men or short hair on women, and don’t appreciate skirts above the knees or torn attire of any kind. Some people will refuse to do business with individuals who appear to be, in their mind, rebellious or disorderly. Your employer has a choice when it comes to this: they can tell the customer to screw off or they can tell you to cause significant alterations to your appearance while you’re at work.

Some employers think it’s best to simply avoid the conflict and outright ban tattoos, piercings, and certain hairstyles in the workplace. This doesn’t actually benefit the company, though. Ultimately, it just creates an uptight, uninviting atmosphere for the employees and gives those awful customers a place to come and continue to be awful. Those sort will always have some reason to complain. If it isn’t your employee’s tattoo, it’s going to be your prices, your selection of adult diapers, or any number of other things. Your employer will never appease the masses and would be better off trying to appease its employees. In fact, I imagine that if your company does appease its employees, it’ll land the employer a few additional customers and maybe even a plethora of new applicants.

Tradition

Tradition is a terrible reason to do anything. Just because we’ve done it for years does not mean that it should be continued. Flogging, sexual harassment, animal consumption, pledging allegiance to Skycloth™, and the celebration of Columbus Day have all been (or still are) traditions, but that doesn’t justify them. Just because your company has always worn suits and ties doesn’t mean that it should continue to do so. Just because men have always been required to have clean-shaven faces and women have been required to have clean-shaven legs in your workplace does not make this right, okay, or excusable in this day and age. If your employer uses this is how it has always been done as an excuse to do anything in your workplace, you were just given a terrible, half-hearted excuse for a policy that probably shouldn’t exist, anymore.

How Dress Codes Change

Silicon Valley: a Dress Code Trendsetter

Over the last few decades, Silicon Valley has had a national impact on workplace attire. People are working from home, joining younger companies, and generally just caring less about how they come across to coworkers and strangers. Though it doesn’t seem like it, we actually do have a more accepting and self-loving culture today than we did even five years ago. Tattoos and hairstyles aren’t as big a deal today as they used to be. Companies and individuals who do still care are mostly older and more traditional. As time marches on, their ideologies will die out completely, carried on only by a cultish few.

Take a look at this excerpt from an article that was written back in 1995:

"I never dreamed I'd be going to work in khaki pants and a sweater," Ahn says.
Bob Hollett, IBM's business unit executive for banking, finance, and securities, still isn't.
"My customers dress conservatively, and so do I," Hollett says. The 22-year employee has made a few concessions. He's wearing loafers instead of wingtips, and sometimes will don a pastel-colored shirt and a "wild" tie. "But all my shirts are still extra heavy on the starch. It wouldn't feel right wearing anything else," he says.

The Chicago Tribune

Just over twenty years ago, the idea of wearing khaki pants and a sweater to work was outlandish and brand new… for some places. Before 1995, when the article above was published, Silicon Valley had already made headways when it came to workplace attire. As early as the 1980s, Silicon Valley workers were wearing button-down cotton shirts and khaki pants--an outfit known as business casual, today. Yet, while we’re all working in outfits that were standard dress for Silicon Valley employees over thirty years ago, Silicon Valley is continuing to dress down, further altering the standard for workplace attire.

Condensing the Dress Code

This year, in April, GM’s CEO Mary Barra condensed a ten-page dress code policy down to two simple words: “dress appropriately”. Seriously, that’s it. No need for long, drawn-out paragraphs or specifics on knee-to-skirt ratios. She cut out all of the nonsense and left the definition up to employees. Just dress appropriately. Don’t show up to work in your underwear, but don’t feel the need to wear a three-piece suit on a 100-degree day, either.

Now, I’m sure a lot of people--particularly employers--will read that short dress code and think it isn’t enough. Don’t worry, so did several people who worked under and with Mary Barra, including Human Resources officials. Those who came at her with demands of specifics were shut down, told instead to work with their team if they wanted to get specific. Complaints were eventually resolved and in the end, there are now nine fewer pages in the employee manual (and, even better, there are numerous employees who are now far more comfortable in the workplace than they were before).

Consequences of Dress Codes

Employers and company-owners are going to wonder why this matters, of course. There’s so much huffing and puffing over dress codes, but how does that affect the company as a whole? Why should the discomfort of the employees matter, so long as the revenue keeps coming in. Well, the thing is, the revenue won’t keep coming in if you don’t get with the times.

Employee Backlash

In 2014, Walmart went in the wrong direction. It shifted its dress code to something deemed more professional--button-downs and khakis or slacks. Employees were outraged for a number of excellent reasons. The most significant reason, of course, was that Walmart’s employees were already making very little money; at an average of $11.50/hr, they were having a hard enough time making it as it was. They were then expected to buy nicer clothes to wear to work, where they would inevitably become dirty, stained, torn, or otherwise unusable. Walmart eventually changed its policy to permit more casual dressing. Then, this year (2018), they started allowing employees to wear jeans. The backlash was absolutely warranted and necessary, but could have been entirely avoided if Walmart’s management had paid attention to its culture and the culture of other companies in the United States.

Low Application Rates

Just so you know, if I ever work for you and I have an experiences that is vastly negative with the company as a whole, I’m going to verbally flog you to my friends, acquaintances, former supervisors, and recruiters. You will be put on blast on every forum in which I am active. Almost anyone in Information Technology will do the same thing. So when I heard that Infotube was failing to replace me after over a year, I wasn’t surprised. They hadn’t replaced the coworker who left before I did, nor did they replace the two who left after me. From what I’ve heard, they are still struggling, nearly two years later, to get solid replacements. I’m willing to bet that the main reason for that is simply word-of-mouth. Good recruiters don’t want to work with the company because of its bad rap, experienced IT professionals don’t want to deal with the job culture described by myself and my coworkers, and the company could never surpass the bad reviews it received on Glassdoor, no matter how many falsified positive reviews it planted on the site.

When I’m looking for a job, I do three things: I research the company from the perspective of employees, I find copies of the employee handbook if it’s available, and I reach out to employees with whom I may have some sort of connection. I do my research. Most career-driven professionals will do the same thing. So when someone like me hears that I have to wear a uniform to perform a job that doesn’t require one, I turn down the interview or offer immediately. That alone is enough to tell me that your job culture is not in line with the sort of culture that I want on my resume. I don’t want an outdated, traditionalist company anywhere on my resume, and it pains me that I have two of them on there (for now--they’ll eventually lose their relevance and be removed).

Employee Retention

If potential employees get wind of your uniform and dress code which reflect a negative and outdated culture, odds are those employees are going to turn down the job. There are a couple of exceptions, here. The one that applies to me is desperation. I have accepted jobs with cultures I knew I would despise simply because I wasn’t in a position to turn down work. The new job was either much better than my old one or I was already out of work. Another reason could simply be a lack of experience.

If you hire an employee who is looking for experience or simply desperate for work, you’re going to lose that employee pretty quickly. I resumed my job search after one week of working at Infotube, but could then afford to be picky and didn’t accept an offer until over two years later. More on that in another post (boy, I sure am setting up a lot of these). If you want to retain the employees you acquire, you need to promote a positive, comfortable job culture. This is especially true in today’s age, as my generation is a lot more picky than previous generations when it comes to things as seemingly-harmless as dress codes.

Morale

Morale, morale, morale. This is just going to be a running theme in this series. Employee morale is absolutely crucial to your success as an employer, whether you’re just a manager or you own the company itself. Employee morale must be maintained and considered when any decision is going to be made. If you can nix any part of your dress code or abolish your uniforms in any way, do it. Let your employees be comfortable at work. Let them wear clothes that they don’t mind getting dirty on your grimy warehouse floor. Let them wear the torn jeans that they’ve had for six years because they’re frugal. Let them express themselves with tattoos, piercings, dyed hair, and unique sense of style. Let them be human beings both inside and outside of your office space. Keep morale high. Is it really that much of a sacrifice to allow employees to wear t-shirts instead of button-downs? Torn jeans instead of dress pants? Tennis-shoes instead of loafers?

Conclusion

Dress code is going to continue to shift, that much is inevitable. Companies that get ahead of this shift, such as those found in Silicon Valley, will be regarded as trend-setters. Those who follow suit quickly will be seen as progressive. Those who drag their feet? Hesitant to adapt. And, of course, the few companies who insist on tradition over comfort and culture will be forgotten or used as examples of what not to do in a few years. If your employer doesn’t adopt a more casual, comfortable dress code, maybe it’s time to talk to some of your friends about the culture at their place of work.