we’ve just had an email (more of that in a bit) drop about office dress codes that made us all giggle

Please don’t wear the following

1. strapless or shoestring tops and dresses

whoops: manager has v thin shirt that’s pretty transparent, underneath she has on a strappy top.

2. Micro mini dresses or skirts

whoops, I’m wearing a mini skirt.

3. Casual or Gym wear

Whoops, guy in office has a hoodie on the back of his chair with a massive nike swoosh on the back

4. Jeans and denim

phew, i think we’re ok there 😆

5. Any clothing with prominent logos

whoops, see nike hoodie

6. Extremes of fashion including unusual hair colour.

whoops, both me and manager, I’ve got a lot of piercings, manager has pretty nose stud in today, and my hair is….bright red!

Mostly we’re kidding, we’re all pretty smart really, but none of us meet customers, we never see anybody (apart from when the sales team show us off to people coming to our offices. Email…the guy who wrote this works on the floor above ours (we’re not quite in the basement, but if they could!) there’s nothing stopping him from coming down here, and having a chat. 😈

Pics ?

Our place has a strict dress policy. Business wear including buttoned up shirt and tie for men and all sorts of dos and donts for the women. The only place it seems to be enforced though is head office. No one would dare try and enforce it anywhere else.

(we’re not quite in the basement, but if they could!)

suspect there’s one person* who’s taking the piss and you’re all suffering.
*Is it you?

shoestring tops

Cheap, or made out of string?

I can see how wearing a string vest might be slightly off-putting for your co-workers.

binners…I think you’re joking, but, replace Moss with a skinny white girl (failure to thrive 😆 ) and the computers with looms in the background and that’s pretty much us…

What’s an office dress code?

shoestring tops

I guess string vests are OK?

ha i got pulled up last hitch for my jeans having worn through.

was like very good but ive been here 45 days – there was no hole when i arrived what would you like me to do about it ? i have some shorts would that be more acceptable ?

Say it’s for health reasons and get a note from your doc.

with looms in the background

All look pretty well dressed to me

haha martinhutch, under my jumper I’ve got my finest damarts thermals on.

😆

I *love* those sorts of e-mails, someone, usually middle management has decided one day to impose their will on everyone else for ‘reasons’.

You could be a dick about it, are these rules in your employment contract or HR handbook? No? then sling your hook. Or ignore it.

We only have one rule here, no shorts when visiting clients, you can wear them to work, but if need to go out, you better have a pair of jeans / trousers in your car / under your desk.

Moustache bloke in IHN’s pic looks about a cheery as me at work

There should only ever be one dress code rule…..

What would Alan do?

P-Jay, yeah I know, as well as the dress code there was a note about not eating at your desk as well, but the staff kitchen is 2 floors above us, and there’s never enough space at the teeny table, and HR and finance look at us funny when we go up there. [sigh] it’s just easier to stay put…

Bins, that is a “strong” look… 😆

Where I work now is pragmatic and the rules are mostly balanced. You can wear jeans etc, but not when meeting clients, you can eat at your desk but snacks only, not hot food etc.

I like it. I’ve worked in places where one of the guys was sent home by his boss for wearing navy blue jeans (black jeans were ok by HR), and another where beach wear was common in the summer, and erm, somewhat distracting 😳

No-one in management seems to care here, but everyone’s too culturally repressed to actually try and push the unspoken boundaries.

My fashion statement is chinos instead of suit trousers. TBH the guys in suits do look better, well, some of them do.. but then I always wear through the crotch of suit trousers which makes an ever growing collection of widowed jackets an expensive folly.

replace Moss with a skinny white girl

Every office has one of those

Any good stories of being picked up on dress code?

As a developer in an old job I rarely ventured outside the IT department, which even had a coded lock to prevent the masses getting to us and asking us to fix their problems.

One day a manager told me my trousers (craghoppers type things) were not suitable for the office. I’d been wearing those type of trousers for 3 years at this point.. eejit, but it did let me know for certain that they wanted rid of me!

I could talk about dress codes in the army but that is just depressing. Yes, you must wear that Jersey Heavy Wool, with a shirt under it, and a t-shirt under that, in the middle of summer – why? because Queen’s regulations!

but then I always wear through the crotch of suit trousers

Forget about dress codes, I think there might be other rules and regulations you’re contravening

We are forbidden from wearing spandex ha ha

“Dress Down Friday” includes no denim but as hundreds turn up in denim they cant really send us all home!

Any good stories of being picked up on dress code?

No really good, but when I joined one of the banks in 2001 I was told that:

Suits should be Navy or Black, Pin Striped ideally.
Shirts should be white.
Ties sombre
Shoes, Black, polish, with laces.
You should shave every day “if you need to” facial hair should be neat and grown in your own time (when you’re on hols, you didn’t have to push out a beard overnight).

And I was asked, in a sit down meeting in the bosses office that undoing my tie and top button wasn’t acceptable.

They’re a bit more relaxed now, you don’t have to wear a tie I’m told – incredible scenes on day 1 I imagine.

Last place I worked suddenly introduced a new dress policy & decided all men should wear shirts & ties, because of ‘reasons’.

Our comments about ties being potentially dangerous due to frequently having to work on development projects on the shop floor with moving equipment were batted away with ‘well, just take your tie off every time you go down the shop floor’.

The womenz were allowed to wear whatever they wanted as far as we could tell.

One bloke refused to wear a tie, gave many reasons why it was unnecessary & a poorly thought out set of dress code rules. This was ignored.
He handed his notice in over it & left.

I went on a shopping trip & started wearing ‘comedy’ ties to work.

It says ‘please don’t’, not ‘you must not’.

So it’s unenforceable, also ‘unusual hair colour.’

Define unusual, could be a discrimination case right there.

Can you legally enforce different rules for ladies and gents?

Can you legally enforce different rules for ladies and gents?

You can if i ever win the lottery.

“Freedom Dress” here.

Apparently that doesn’t mean:

Which was awkward.

No offensive smells.
No offensive stains.
No offensive holes.

Today i meet all our dress code requirements. Hopefully i will tomorrow.

I work from home. As a minimum I try to ensure I’m wearing at least a t-shirt and pants.

No offensive smells.
No offensive stains.
No offensive holes.

Hmm not sure I’m compliant with all of these.

Any good stories of being picked up on dress code?

Worked for a large corporate soon after leaving Uni. Got to work an hour or so before 9am. Hadn’t put my tie on before i left the house. I’d got it out my bag and put it on my desk intending to put it on before 9am. Pretty much everyone who walked past my desk on the way to theirs commented on my casual look! At ten to nine I was invited into a senior managers office and advised that I might want to put my tie on 🙄

Any good stories of being picked up on dress code?

I used to work at a place where there were over 1,000 staff employed, all but about 15 of whom were in what one would traditionally call “white collar” jobs – i.e. office / desk based activities. The dress code for men included collared shirts and ties.

I was one of the 15 (working in the basement, well away from the suited-and-booted) and had to work with various machinery for which the risk assessment / safety regulations very much stipulated that ties must not be worn, due to the real risk of strangley death. So we didn’t, but we would respect the general spirit of officeyness and wear reasonably smart trousers, shirts and shoes

So, the edict came down – we must wear collared shirts and have ties with us, to be worn when not engaged with the machinery. Without exception, we all purchased the most foully obnoxious ties and teamed them with the clashiest of shirts. For good measure, we would try to wear the combo as badly as possible as often as possible – shirts with at least two top buttons open, ties with a knot hanging somewhere near the solar plexus, ideally skewed to one side.

After not a very long time, da management suggested that, if we would stop taking the p*ss and start coming to work looking reasonable, they would make an exception to the tie rule.

Incidentally, literally no customers of the business would visit this site.

Dress code? Having worked from home for a while that just means wearing trousers

Any good stories of being picked up on dress code?

One of my instructors arrived one morning not wearing a fleece, outdoory trousers and Salomon trainers.
Instead he though he would make an effort in nice shirt and chino’s.
He was lobbed in the river at lunchtime.

😆

Before I finally managed to escape the world of work by being old enough, I worked in an office. One day, the Ubermanager decided it would be a good idea to have a competitive “fun” day between the different sections of the department, one aspect of which was a prize for the “silliest hat”.

I managed to convince a female colleague in another department to lend me a pair of her pink knickers to wear on my head.

I didn’t win the prize.

Then somebody found out who she was and it was all over the building.

She never talked to me again…

Instead he though he would make an effort in nice shirt and chino’s.

What are nice chinos? Sounds like just cause really.

Can you legally enforce different rules for ladies and gents?

With a few exceptions, no. Hence cases of men attending workplaces in skirts to make a point. There have been a number of tribunal cases on this subject, so there is precedence.

I’ve been pulled up for wearing safety boots and jeans/shirt in the office instead of a suit, tie and shitty shiny shoes.
I did ask if he thought it would be sensible to wear such a get up whilst i was paid to spend most of my working time crawling around assorted CNC machines. Some of them while running.

He did.

Glad i was a contractor.

What are nice chinos? Sounds like just cause really.

We thought so.

I also had the opposite at university – a (weekly) Mountain Leader training field trip to Snowdonia had a good proportion of the 10 of us forget waterproofs, hats, boots, headtorch etc. Tutor was (rightly) livid and left us with the phrase “…and next week, make sure you are properly bl**dy dressed!” 😈

He hopped in front seat of minibus next week to find driver in Tuxedo, lass behind in little black dress and me suited and booted next to her…the others were in similar attire…

“Well, you told us to be properly dressed…” 😆