It might be time to exercise your right to bare arms at work.
You could want to loosen the ties that bind you and set them aside for weddings and funerals.
Perhaps it’s time to loosen up a bit, dress-code wise.
And these ideas terrify me. I’m a man whose wardrobe generally would’ve fit into 1950s corporate America. I grew up believing an office job required you to wear slacks, a white shirt and tie to work every day. I have an office, so I should wear office attire, right?
Back in my days covering sports, I followed the advice of my first editor: Try to fit in with the people you’re covering. Don’t overdress; don’t under-dress. That generally meant khakis and polo shirts. An exception was Sundays covering the Browns, which required a shirt and tie to fit in with the surprisingly fashion-conscious (and surprisingly fashion-judgmental) pro football players.
When I moved into news, I followed suit with the people I covered. When in a courtroom, I wore a tie because the lawyers did too. If I were at a school, I tended to blend in with teacher attire, generally pants with a decent shirt.
Then I took a job in management, so I followed the lead of the bosses around me. The men wore slacks, shirts and ties. They’d have a jacket at the ready in case a member of the public showed up deserving the respect a suit coat seems to suggest. Women wore pantsuits or dresses, but I’ve never liked how they looked on me.
This served me well for the last decade. I’d “cut loose” on casual Friday, wearing a polo shirt, but otherwise I wore a steady stream of light-colored shirts with dark-colored ties. (There is one Smurf-blue shirt I wear with a tie occasionally, when I’m braced for some teasing.)
Recently a new publisher started here with a different style. I don’t know that he wore a tie to work yet. (To be fair, our past publisher didn’t wear ties to work either, but it’s less expected out of a female leader.)
Most of our guests from the corporate offices don’t wear ties either. I see the other bosses in the building relaxing their clothing choices a bit, with more short-sleeved shirts and fewer ties.
I don’t know if I’m ready to unknot this self-imposed noose of a tie just yet. If the clothes make the man, the clothes are making me unsure.
I’m resistant to change, but I can’t help but wonder what impact a relaxed style might have on our work. A 2010 Ipsos study showed just 34 percent of employees wear “business attire,” while 40 percent wear more casual attire. The remaining 26 wear uniforms.
The study found 55 percent of people thought business attire made you more productive, but I question if that’s really true in an office fueled by creativity. And two-thirds of respondents thought senior managers should be dressed up more than their employees.
A more recent study by Master’s College in California came to no solid conclusion: “Casual dress has equally positive and negative effects.”
I have to rely on the experiences of my wife, who recently moved from wearing dress clothes to work each day. She found employees and customers at her nursing facility felt more comfortable talking to her when she wore her polo and tan pants to work than when she wore a smart jacket or pantsuit. Perhaps Hillary Clinton should try a knit shirt so people like her more too.
I don’t want to ditch all formality at work, of course. That Ipsos study found just 21 percent thought flip-flops were appropriate at work, and 24 percent thought shorts were appropriate. I don’t honestly believe beachwear is right for an office setting. Fortunately, our air conditioning is so powerful some days, you’re more likely to want a parka than sandals, so that’s not a practical concern here.
As I think through the people who come through our doors at the newspaper, I notice more and more of them are wearing more and more comfortable clothing.
Whether it’s a golf shirt or a nice soft cotton long-sleeved shirt with a pattern, the world’s becoming more comfortable with casual dress. It remains to be seen if I’ll match the world’s comfort when it comes to wearing comfortable clothing at work.
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