5 ms·

Actual security issues like not swiping to enter a secured area are one thing, but I'll never understand the obsession with dress codes and small appliances. It

Actual security issues like not swiping to enter a secured area are one thing, but I'll never understand the obsession with dress codes and small appliances. It just feels like power tripping or laziness. There can be problems with some devices and with what people wear (and hygiene in general), but I'd much rather work at a place that addresses those issues only when needed while treating everyone like adults instead of like children who can't be trusted to pick out their own clothes.

mindcrime 5y ago
The small appliance thing is at least a little bit quasi-legitimate. I mean, true, very few modern small appliances are just going to randomly burst into flame, and that's as true whether they are sitting in your kitchen or living room, or sitting in a corporate break room, or at your desk. But... the devil is in the details. From a fire safety perspective, I'd cite two things that cause me to say "quasi legitimate" about this: 1. Putting appliances in random places (like your cubicle) can sometimes lead people to running extension cords to power these additional devices. And excessively long, or poor quality, or "excessively long, poor quality" extension cords can absolutely be a fire hazard. This is especially true when people don't understand "current carrying capacity" vis-a-vis wire gauge and choose the wrong cord for a given load. 2. Space heaters. If you include space heaters in your definition of "small appliance", then there is a fairly real risk. First, it's very easy for flammable materials to simply get too close to the heating elements of the heater, and catch fire. Second, space heaters tend to draw a LOT of current - typically more than can be handled by your generic power strip. And people don't understand this, and will happily plug a space heater into a power strip, which will then melt, short out, and catch fire. On balance, the odds of having a fire caused by most small appliances in offices is still probably fairly low, but the risk is non-zero. And having a blanket ban, instead of trying to distinguish "well, your blender is OK, but the space heater has to go" is just the slightly lazier way to dealing with it.
- tinalumfoil 5y ago
  These are all things people do constantly in their own homes, and are willing to accept the risk. It seems inefficient that people go to work and accept all these risk-averse mandates (no consumer coffee machines -- they might burst into flames!) then go home and fall asleep to their 1500W space heater plugged into the same power strip as the 50" poorly mounted TV they fell asleep watching.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    A consumer coffee maker will not be designed for handling 50 people requiring a cup of coffee every two hours. The other limitations, particularly regarding space heaters and fans, usually come from fire insurance. Your premiums will be substantially lower if you prove your business gets regularly inspected for compliance and that electrical appliances get regularly checked if they are properly installed (i.e. no stacks of extension cords, no damage on the cable from chairs rolling over it or from floor tank lids). In contrast, home fire insurance will often have priced in damages from such unsafe practices, and a no-pay clause for gross negligence - particularly the latter is what any reasonable business will be keen to avoid given the disastrous impact a fire can have.
    - hex4def6 5y ago
      I don't disagree that a simple drop coffee maker is not designed for "commercial" use like that. But there's very little that can go wrong inside of one of them, with maybe the exception of the heating element. That failing wouldn't result in a safety issue.
- jonathanlydall 5y ago
  I suspect that the risk of power strips/cords melting is substantially higher when you’re only on 110V compared to 230V. While 110V might be less of a shock risk compared to 230V, I have to wonder how much of a difference it actually makes in practice, like how much less likely are to die from the lower voltage? Because on the other hand, the lower voltage increases the fire risk.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > I mean, true, very few modern small appliances are just going to randomly burst into flame Assuming that 10 dollar phone charger that Joe from Accounting got on Amazon or the airport store on the last vacation was not a dangerous counterfeit, that is. A sensible IT department will buy original chargers directly from the manufacturer or at the very least name brands such as Anker.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  If a small appliance catching fire is enough to endanger your office, your office is wrong. Go fix it, and stop with the security theater. An appliance consuming too much power should never be a fire hazard. A bad extension chord should not be a fire hazard in any usual space in an office. And by all means, if you have some high-risk area (storage rooms are quite common ones), do make special policy for it. But if you insist on the same policy for every area, you are actually endangering people.
a4isms 5y ago
Dress codes have never had anything to do with treating people like children, they have to do with cultural adhesion. We laugh at pictures of managers wearing near-identical suits and ties, and then we can look at a bunch of techies wearing near-identical tee shirts and hoodies and somehow not see a culture using clothes to signal belonging to the tribe. There will always be tribal signals. It's clothes whether suits or plaid flannel, it's drinking bourbon or craft IPAs, it's playing golf or ultimate, it's being clean-shaven or bearded, it's driving a Tesla or a Caddy. Some of us are not "joiners" and chafe at the idea of carefully selecting our clothes, grooming, music, possessions, and neighbourhood to signal that we want to fit in. But we should at least understand and empathize with why others may find these things comforting.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hyperman1 5y ago
  A long time ago, we had a meeting with a Head Architect. He would be accompanied by a server tech. We sit in the meeting room, and 2 people enter. A distinctive gentlemen wearing a suit and tie, talking in a calm, authoritative voice. Next to him, a hyperactive tshirt wearing creature, think Adam from Mythbuster, talking excitedly about all sorts of tech, while making excessive arm gestures. My colleague whispers a joke comparing him to a monkey swinging from tree to tree. We both immediately knew who was the architect and who was the lowly tech. Wrong, it turns out. Gentlemen spends his time in floor crawlspaces pulling cables between servers, and had dressed up for the meeting. Monkey Head Architect was just his manic normal self. Both were incredibly competent, BTW.
  - cipheredStones 5y ago
    Maybe I've just read too many stories like this, but when you said "We both immediately knew who was the architect" I assumed that you meant the t-shirt guy!
- rurp 5y ago
  I totally understand the reasons people want to dress a certain way and don't care at all if one coworker wants to wear a suit to work and another prefers a hoodie. The issue is when people want to impose their dress code on others, especially for non-client/customer facing roles. Putting a large emphasis on the dress code has downsides as well. The more focus people spend worrying about their attire and judging others, the less focus they have for more substantive matters. It's an easy crutch to dismiss someone for dressing "wrong", a crutch which plenty of lazy employees and managers are happy to latch onto. I think de-emphasizing dress codes encourages a more productive workplace.
dddddaviddddd 5y ago
I enjoy working remotely where I have 100% control of my environment.
walrus01 5y ago
one of the reasons for no small appliances is that some people will bring in a $45 portable 1500W electric space heater and put it under their desk, because they feel cold, and they have totally no idea of the problems and difference that adding a 1500W resistive electric load (vs like a 25W desk lamp) to the shared 15/20A 120VAC circuits in a cubicle farm can cause. those things are absolute fire hazards when used in the wrong environment.
- usefulcat 5y ago
  Bonus points if the person using the heater sits right next to the thermostat, causing the thermostat to think that the ambient air temp needs to be even lower..
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    I worked with a guy who duct-taped glove warmers to the thermostat when they had it set to 70 in August.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  My employer sent a reminder of the guidelines on this topic recently. Specific examples of prohibited items in office spaces include: - Hotplates - Hair dryers - Cooking devices using an open flame, including propane, butane or wood. - Car batteries and chargers. There’s then a list of about 30 items that require a permit. We were joking about the oddly specific nature of the items. I’m assuming some lunatic at one time had a camp chef or Weber Q in his cube cooking up some lunch.
bombcar 5y ago
Part of it can be how you want the company to look to the clients - especially if the clients ever stop by. When there’s no clients it can be a bit silly. But if one department has to toe the line all of them will.
scioto 5y ago
Regarding dress codes, I worked at a three-letter company in the 90s that changed their dress code to allow us to wear shorts, as long as they were "tasteful." And that worked well at the start. But then a couple of the rebels, who were more than happy to be considered rebels, started wearing the moral equivalent of running shorts, which back in those days went above mid-thigh. That lasted about a month, and then shorts were no longer allowed.

mindcrime 5y ago

The small appliance thing is at least a little bit quasi-legitimate. I mean, true, very few modern small appliances are just going to randomly burst into flame, and that's as true whether they are sitting in your kitchen or living room, or sitting in a corporate break room, or at your desk. But... the devil is in the details. From a fire safety perspective, I'd cite two things that cause me to say "quasi legitimate" about this: 1. Putting appliances in random places (like your cubicle) can sometimes lead people to running extension cords to power these additional devices. And excessively long, or poor quality, or "excessively long, poor quality" extension cords can absolutely be a fire hazard. This is especially true when people don't understand "current carrying capacity" vis-a-vis wire gauge and choose the wrong cord for a given load. 2. Space heaters. If you include space heaters in your definition of "small appliance", then there is a fairly real risk. First, it's very easy for flammable materials to simply get too close to the heating elements of the heater, and catch fire. Second, space heaters tend to draw a LOT of current - typically more than can be handled by your generic power strip. And people don't understand this, and will happily plug a space heater into a power strip, which will then melt, short out, and catch fire. On balance, the odds of having a fire caused by most small appliances in offices is still probably fairly low, but the risk is non-zero. And having a blanket ban, instead of trying to distinguish "well, your blender is OK, but the space heater has to go" is just the slightly lazier way to dealing with it.

tinalumfoil 5y ago
These are all things people do constantly in their own homes, and are willing to accept the risk. It seems inefficient that people go to work and accept all these risk-averse mandates (no consumer coffee machines -- they might burst into flames!) then go home and fall asleep to their 1500W space heater plugged into the same power strip as the 50" poorly mounted TV they fell asleep watching.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  A consumer coffee maker will not be designed for handling 50 people requiring a cup of coffee every two hours. The other limitations, particularly regarding space heaters and fans, usually come from fire insurance. Your premiums will be substantially lower if you prove your business gets regularly inspected for compliance and that electrical appliances get regularly checked if they are properly installed (i.e. no stacks of extension cords, no damage on the cable from chairs rolling over it or from floor tank lids). In contrast, home fire insurance will often have priced in damages from such unsafe practices, and a no-pay clause for gross negligence - particularly the latter is what any reasonable business will be keen to avoid given the disastrous impact a fire can have.
  - hex4def6 5y ago
    I don't disagree that a simple drop coffee maker is not designed for "commercial" use like that. But there's very little that can go wrong inside of one of them, with maybe the exception of the heating element. That failing wouldn't result in a safety issue.
jonathanlydall 5y ago
I suspect that the risk of power strips/cords melting is substantially higher when you’re only on 110V compared to 230V. While 110V might be less of a shock risk compared to 230V, I have to wonder how much of a difference it actually makes in practice, like how much less likely are to die from the lower voltage? Because on the other hand, the lower voltage increases the fire risk.
mschuster91 5y ago
> I mean, true, very few modern small appliances are just going to randomly burst into flame Assuming that 10 dollar phone charger that Joe from Accounting got on Amazon or the airport store on the last vacation was not a dangerous counterfeit, that is. A sensible IT department will buy original chargers directly from the manufacturer or at the very least name brands such as Anker.
marcosdumay 5y ago
If a small appliance catching fire is enough to endanger your office, your office is wrong. Go fix it, and stop with the security theater. An appliance consuming too much power should never be a fire hazard. A bad extension chord should not be a fire hazard in any usual space in an office. And by all means, if you have some high-risk area (storage rooms are quite common ones), do make special policy for it. But if you insist on the same policy for every area, you are actually endangering people.

a4isms 5y ago

Dress codes have never had anything to do with treating people like children, they have to do with cultural adhesion. We laugh at pictures of managers wearing near-identical suits and ties, and then we can look at a bunch of techies wearing near-identical tee shirts and hoodies and somehow not see a culture using clothes to signal belonging to the tribe. There will always be tribal signals. It's clothes whether suits or plaid flannel, it's drinking bourbon or craft IPAs, it's playing golf or ultimate, it's being clean-shaven or bearded, it's driving a Tesla or a Caddy. Some of us are not "joiners" and chafe at the idea of carefully selecting our clothes, grooming, music, possessions, and neighbourhood to signal that we want to fit in. But we should at least understand and empathize with why others may find these things comforting.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hyperman1 5y ago
A long time ago, we had a meeting with a Head Architect. He would be accompanied by a server tech. We sit in the meeting room, and 2 people enter. A distinctive gentlemen wearing a suit and tie, talking in a calm, authoritative voice. Next to him, a hyperactive tshirt wearing creature, think Adam from Mythbuster, talking excitedly about all sorts of tech, while making excessive arm gestures. My colleague whispers a joke comparing him to a monkey swinging from tree to tree. We both immediately knew who was the architect and who was the lowly tech. Wrong, it turns out. Gentlemen spends his time in floor crawlspaces pulling cables between servers, and had dressed up for the meeting. Monkey Head Architect was just his manic normal self. Both were incredibly competent, BTW.
- cipheredStones 5y ago
  Maybe I've just read too many stories like this, but when you said "We both immediately knew who was the architect" I assumed that you meant the t-shirt guy!
rurp 5y ago
I totally understand the reasons people want to dress a certain way and don't care at all if one coworker wants to wear a suit to work and another prefers a hoodie. The issue is when people want to impose their dress code on others, especially for non-client/customer facing roles. Putting a large emphasis on the dress code has downsides as well. The more focus people spend worrying about their attire and judging others, the less focus they have for more substantive matters. It's an easy crutch to dismiss someone for dressing "wrong", a crutch which plenty of lazy employees and managers are happy to latch onto. I think de-emphasizing dress codes encourages a more productive workplace.

dddddaviddddd 5y ago

I enjoy working remotely where I have 100% control of my environment.

walrus01 5y ago

one of the reasons for no small appliances is that some people will bring in a $45 portable 1500W electric space heater and put it under their desk, because they feel cold, and they have totally no idea of the problems and difference that adding a 1500W resistive electric load (vs like a 25W desk lamp) to the shared 15/20A 120VAC circuits in a cubicle farm can cause. those things are absolute fire hazards when used in the wrong environment.

usefulcat 5y ago
Bonus points if the person using the heater sits right next to the thermostat, causing the thermostat to think that the ambient air temp needs to be even lower..
- Spooky23 5y ago
  I worked with a guy who duct-taped glove warmers to the thermostat when they had it set to 70 in August.
Spooky23 5y ago
My employer sent a reminder of the guidelines on this topic recently. Specific examples of prohibited items in office spaces include: - Hotplates - Hair dryers - Cooking devices using an open flame, including propane, butane or wood. - Car batteries and chargers. There’s then a list of about 30 items that require a permit. We were joking about the oddly specific nature of the items. I’m assuming some lunatic at one time had a camp chef or Weber Q in his cube cooking up some lunch.

bombcar 5y ago

Part of it can be how you want the company to look to the clients - especially if the clients ever stop by. When there’s no clients it can be a bit silly. But if one department has to toe the line all of them will.

scioto 5y ago

Regarding dress codes, I worked at a three-letter company in the 90s that changed their dress code to allow us to wear shorts, as long as they were "tasteful." And that worked well at the start. But then a couple of the rebels, who were more than happy to be considered rebels, started wearing the moral equivalent of running shorts, which back in those days went above mid-thigh. That lasted about a month, and then shorts were no longer allowed.