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It's also important to note where in the US you're talking about. Where I'm from, Atlanta, one of the largest business cities in the south eastern U.S., what yo
by nostrebored 11y ago
It's also important to note where in the US you're talking about. Where I'm from, Atlanta, one of the largest business cities in the south eastern U.S., what you've said is absolutely true. If you're going to work, for the majority of jobs there you're definitely not going to wear flip-flops/t-shirts. A polo would probably be the closest acceptable article of clothing to a t-shirt for most jobs. I've had a coworker get sent home for wearing shorts on casual Friday. However, moving to the west coast, the culture is completely different. I work in the tech hub of downtown Seattle, and most people are dressed in sneakers/t-shirts/hoodies etc., with unkempt looking hair.
My fiancee, who is from the West Coast, jokes that if you're wearing a suit in the South, you probably have an important job -- if you're wearing a suit in Seattle, you probably work at the mall.
- VLM 11y ago"if you're wearing a suit in Seattle, you probably work at the mall." There's a socioeconomic U-shape to the clothing curve for employed people where lower status jobs have dress codes to indicate their lack of individuality and ease of replaceability and interchangeability, and general lack of humanity or humane treatment via strict and formal uniforms. Then it declines into "cubical land" where a local minima is probably the "jeans friday". Then the curve goes back up where there are strong labor markets (programmers in SV, former Apple CEOs who like turtlenecks, etc) and slovenly attire is a very public display of how difficult replacement would be. Something else to keep in mind is the unemployment rate (the real labor force participation rate, not the made up propaganda figures) is about half. And labor saving home appliances mean the half who are not working are no longer standing at a sink doing dishes or hand washing laundry. And a minimal level of social transfer payments mean the unemployed have some money and therefore something to be seen doing. In "the bad old days" the bums down by the river were not well dressed, but they were unseen. Now a days you will be seeing the unemployed half of the population, and they have not necessarily begun to dress up. This has certain trend setting issues. Given "people of walmart" photos I don't feel the need to dress up when I torture myself by shopping at walmart, and that caving in, applied to a very large scale, ends up with very few people dressing up to shop at walmart.
- cballard 11y agoCasual Friday seems like an absurd concept to me. Either you're capable of getting the job done in denim, or you're not. If you cannot, why would you be allowed to wear them on Friday? If you can, why wouldn't you be able to wear them on Monday through Thursday?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- VLM 11y agoI can control what you wear down to the weirdest detail, and you'll cooperate.
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoI'm a computer programmer. The computer does not care what I wear. (If I had customer contact, what I wear would matter.) If you're my boss, and you turn into that kind of a control freak, I may cooperate for the moment, but my resume will be on the street by this evening.
- tommorris 11y ago> I'm a computer programmer. The computer does not care what I wear. Amazingly, the computer doesn't care whether you code it in an office, in a café, or at home in your PJs. Other people tend to care though.
- mcv 11y agoIt's always possible that some business visitor, maybe representing a big customer, gets a tour of the office and gets to see where the programmers are working. Personally I'd think that visit would be more effective if he sees that the programmers are not dressy business people but people hired for their brains, but clearly some disagree.
- golergka 11y agoI think it comes from tradition that you have a lot of official meetings throughout the week, but not on Fridays