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I remember when I entered the work force back in 1978 right out of college and went to work for Bell Labs. We were required to wear a suit, ties and white shirt
by zw123456 9y ago
I remember when I entered the work force back in 1978 right out of college and went to work for Bell Labs. We were required to wear a suit, ties and white shirt. You were not allowed to hang your jacket over your chair; it had to be hung in the closet. You could smoke at your desk, I am not a smoker but many others took advantage of that. You could smoke in conference rooms during meetings and in elevators and many did so (See Mad Men).
It has been very interesting watching the norms shift over the last almost 40 years. Women and minorities filling the ranks, casual attire, smoking prohibitions (all very good things in my view).
One, funny interesting side story, if you will indulge this old timer. When I was in high school, my father was a budding attorney and of course had to wear a suit, tie and white shirt. My mother was a struggling artist. My father wanted her to wash and iron his shirts to save money and only have to pay for the dry cleaning of the shirts. My mother refused (an early feminist perhaps). They had a huge fight over it. In the end, my Mother relented and agreed to endure the task. However, in classic passive aggressive style, she "accidentally" got a red sock in the wash with the shirts turning them a slight shade of pink. Of course that made them, for that time, unusable ! So he had to toss them. After that he simply had them laundered. Ever since then our family calls this ruse "red-socking-it", which basically means intentionally fucking up to get out of doing something you don't want to do. I think we can all think of times when someone at work "red-socked-it".
- learc83 9y ago>I think we can all think of times when someone at work "red-socked-it". When I worked at Best Buy years ago, they started making us wear earpieces. I hated trying to do my job with constant interruptions in my ear, but instead of telling management I hated it, I pretended to love it. I started talking over the radio constantly, and I'd end every phrase by making a white-noise sound and saying over. Eventually the managers took my radio away, and they thought it was a punishment.
- bitwize 9y agoI'd be doing that all the time. "Copy that, HQ. Bravo Team is go. Repeat, Bravo Team is go."
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoSubject "Charlie" has entered the premises, operation Enduring Prosperity is a go
- gadders 9y agoWhen pissed and sitting in the front seat of taxis, my friend used to grab the microphone of the cabbie's radio and start calling in Napalm strikes. "[fake static noise] AWACS 1 AWACS 1 REQUEST NAPALM ACACIA AVENUE OVER."
- etjossem 9y ago"Golf Squad's pulling up outside."
- DonbunEf7 9y agoI went to private Catholic school. In theology class, the priest would punish chatty students by making them eat a dog biscuit in front of the classroom. I learned which biscuit colors corresponded to which flavors, picked the least-bad one intentionally, and proceeded to slowly savor it in front of everybody. After that, he retired the punishment.
- lr4444lr 9y agoI shudder to think how many you had to eat to become confident about their flavor ranking.
- NTripleOne 9y agoOne of each colour, I'd wager.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoThey don't taste that bad, they're just really hard.
- trhway 9y agowhy dog biscuit supposed be that bad that eating them would be a punishment? After all dogs are mammals like us and have pretty similar biology, tastes, nutritional requirements (with the exceptions for some things which are dangerous to them like chocolate, garlic, raisins, xylitol, etc). Though given the Catholic mindset - holier than thou top of the God's creation - the priests and the likes of course would fancy themselves as highly entitled higher beings.
- learc83 9y agoI see someone never tried dog food as a child. It's not pleasant.
- trhway 9y agothat is my point - why a lot of dog food so bad? Back at the USSR we didn't have dog food, and the dogs we had in my childhood ate what we ate (or a bit better as we, humans, could go on pasta/bread, while cats couldn't and dogs would better get some meat too). Coming in the US i discovered that there is a lot of crap biologically not suitable for consumption by mammals, especially by biological predators like cats/dogs/humans, which is sold under the guise of cat/dog food. Unfortunately for my cat back at the time it took some time for me to learn that.
- artmageddon 9y agoMy goodness, when was this? I worked there for a short stint in 2000, right around the launch of the PlayStation 2(which was an utter nightmare in of itself). I probably would've flipped if I had been subjected to that.
- kej 9y agoIt was sometime around 2005 to 2008. You could always take the earpiece off if you were in the middle of a deep conversation with a customer, and it was handy to be able to call a manager or another department without having to chase them down somewhere in the store.
- learc83 9y agoI was in Geek Squad, so if I was always either talking to a customer or fixing computers. Also like everything else at Best Buy, your experience varied dramatically depending on your managers. At my store, managers expected you to be available over the radio, customer or not. You could get away with taking it off very occasionally, but that was it.
- ianamartin 9y agoMalicious compliance. I love that.
- aanm1988 9y agoDid pink shirts not go with the onions worn on belts? I don't really care either way on the subject of work attire, with one exception. I hate casual fridays. It matters or it doesn't quit with the bullshit.
- dllthomas 9y agoMaybe it matters only a little bit? Casual Friday means more flexibility at the end of the week if events earlier in the week mean I consume more clothing than expected, and also means I am more able to go straight from work to getting an early start on weekend activities.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dasmoth 9y agoI remember when I entered the work force back in 1978 right out of college and went to work for Bell Labs. We were required to wear a suit, ties and white shirt. You were not allowed to hang your jacket over your chair; it had to be hung in the closet. You could smoke at your desk, I am not a smoker but many others took advantage of that. You could smoke in conference rooms during meetings and in elevators and many did so (See Mad Men). Makes an interesting counterpoint to the usual nostalgia about Bell Labs. I'd have guessed the smoking, but probably not that the dress was quite so formal.
- pjc50 9y ago> the dress was quite so formal This was entirely normal for employers large and small at that time. It really was the first startup era (Microsoft/Apple) that eroded it, as the spearpoint of a wider de-formalisation of society.
- Moru 9y agoI remember an older guy that started wearing his shirt outside the pants just like us two young employees. His fellow employees used to snicker at him and calling him young again and such. Well, he must be laughing now, noone uses shirts any more :-)
- knicholes 9y agoFortunately everyone around me at work is wearing a shirt right now!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- optimiz3 9y ago"If you do the job badly enough, sometimes you don't get asked to do it again". http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2013/02/02 http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2013/02/02
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- walshemj 9y agoI am surprised I would have expected a lab environment to be jeans and lab coats. My first job was at a RND place in 79 so similar time and it was all jeans t shirts labcoats and steel toe caped boots / wellies (for working out in the lab space)
- jhbadger 9y agoWhile Bell Labs did do some laboratory science (where they developed the transistor among other things), the majority of researchers there were mathematicians and computer scientists who don't work in a lab.
- jrimbault 9y ago<Nitpicking etymology> A laboratory is the place where you work. From the latin 'laborare', roughly translated 'to work'. A CS grad student would work in a lab. As would a carpenter. The difference between an office and a laboratory is usually that there are specialized tools in a laboratory.
- neaden 9y agoThe origin of words don't dictate their present meaning. No one refers to a regular office or a carpentry studio as a laboratory anymore.
- walshemj 9y agonot sure what your point is certainly BT's eqvielent at martelsham was now for its style of dress we even had an internal slang term the "martelman" to describe them :-)
- jhbadger 9y agoI was replying to the person that that was saying that their idea of lab dress was a lab coat and jeans -- a different sort of lab than what most of what Bell Labs was about.
- linker3000 9y agoAn old engineer friend of mine once told me a story about when he worked for a large, national electronics design and manufacturing firm (probably GEC, Marconi or suchlike) - that would have been sometime in the 1960-70s... Apparently, the R&D lab was full of long-haired, cheesecloth-shirt-wearing, sandaled, 'hippy' types. One day the Managing Director walked in, called everyone together and announced in a stern voice that there was going to be a very important visitor on the premises the next day and so everyone needed to smarten themselves up because they looked very shabby and unprofessional. The next day, the MD walked in to the lab with his visitor...to find that all the engineers in full wedding suits with top-hats, casually soldering, probing, pouring over circuit schematics etc. just like a 'normal' day..! I don't recall what happened next!
- jdc0589 9y agoI've jokingly threatened the "full tux" at every job I've had when those types of announcements went out. I'm glad someone did it.
- Declanomous 9y agoI've always thought it was a bit ridiculous when we get an email that basically asks us to construct a Potemkin Village because so-and-so is coming around. I have naturally curly hair, which isn't unruly, it's just very curly. People with straight hair often seem to think that my hair could be 'neater' if I 'did something' with it. Case-in-point: One time the new head of the board was coming in, and HR specifically asked me to comb my hair. I told HR that was a terrible idea, yet they insisted. So I come to work the next day with combed hair, and I look like the main character of Eraserhead[1]. My hair is a giant poofy frizzy mess. HR comes by, sees what my hair looks like, and freaks the hell out. They kept asking me to comb it better, or do whatever I could to fix it. They were not amused when I told them that the only thing I could do to fix it was to take a shower and let it settle naturally. So I met the new director of our board with hair that looked like I stuck my hand in a electrical outlet, all because HR felt that curly hair on a guy wasn't normative enough or something. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraserhead#/media/File:Eraserhead.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraserhead#/media/File:Eraserh...
- toddmorey 9y agoAunt in the family would intentionally break a dish when she was asked to help clean up after a holiday meal.
- magic_beans 9y agoWhy not just say a firm "no"!
- brewdad 9y agoBecause it's more fun to damage the "special" dinnerware? Some people...
- dllthomas 9y agoThat's straight out of a Shel Silverstein poem...
- cheetos 9y agoWell, did she do the cooking or not?
- ganley 9y agoIn my family we call this "protective incompetence."
- cafard 9y agoAn acquaintance worked for IBM in sales when he was just out of the Navy--I'd guess about 1965. He said that one day somebody came into the office in a suit, but with a shirt that was blue rather than white. This made everyone uncomfortable.
- brewdad 9y agoI interviewed in an office once (mid 90s) where dress code required a collared shirt and tie. Managers were required to wear blue shirts and grunts wore white. I didn't take that job offer.
- microtherion 9y agoI'm reminded of Andrew S Tanenbaum's FAQ: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/faq.html http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/faq.html Why do you work at a university? When I was in college, I worked at IBM one summer to earn money. One day I wore a shirt that wasn't the right shade of white. My coworkers informed me of my transgression and made suggestions for improving matters. In great detail. That's when I figured out that maybe the industrial experience was not for me.
- petercooper 9y agoThere's a whole sub-Reddit about this: https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/ .. when I discovered it, it sucked me in for a few hours reading stories :-)
- yawz 9y agoI love it! I'm definitely going to use "to red-sock something" from now on :).
- jtap 9y agoA couple years ago I was asked to dress up for the company Christmas party that was to occur later that day. On my way home to get dressed, I called up a local costume store and rented a Santa Claus costume. Showed up dressed like Santa Claus. Everyone loved it though. Told my boss that he should have chosen his words better.
- jobu 9y ago> Ever since then our family calls this ruse "red-socking-it", which basically means intentionally fucking up to get out of doing something you don't want to do. My kids try this shit all the time - either fucking it up, or just doing the job so half-assed that it needs to be redone. Whenever I catch this I treat it as a "teaching moment". I make them redo it a few times until they do it perfectly. Seems to help, but I hate how much time it takes almost as much as they do.
- Cerium 9y agoBack when I was going to college one day the American Studies professor asked the class if anyone knew the word "sabotage". I was shocked, it is such a common word I thought there would be an answer right away. Since nobody felt like giving a definition, I did. "Yes professor, that is when you throw your wooden shoe into the mill-works". Silence. Everyone looks at me. The professor responds: "Yes, He is correct..."
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoRe white shirts: A former boss had a gig with the LDS (Mormon) Church. First day he shows up in a suit and tie - but his shirt wasn't white. His boss pulled him aside and said, "I respect your courage, but not your wisdom." Yeah, my boss wasn't happy staying in that environment (even though he was LDS).
- laughfactory 9y agoMany nice people in that religion, but as an ex-Mormon myself, I can unequivocally say that's very reflective of the whole church. They are very dogmatic about a lot of things. In hindsight I don't understand why anyone would tolerate it, and can't believe I did for so many years. Now when I see people wearing "Mormon" attire (men in white button down shirts, women in shorts to their knees) I just shudder. It's not modesty or respect for God, it's willingness to be micromanaged by your religion.