Thursday - Causal
Jan. 19th, 2006 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on the drive into work, I was thinking about casual Thursday and how it came about at my office while I was out on maternity leave.
When Thursday rolled around my first week back at work, I noticed that I was the only one who had bothered to dress in Standard Office Casual and that everyone else was dressed in Friday Office Casual (it looks just like Standard Office Casual, except that blue jeans replace the nice slacks).
"Is it Friday and no one told me?" I asked.
"Oh, no, we forgot to let you know. We get to wear jeans on Thursdays and Fridays now," Sarah, one of my co-workers, informed me.
I felt cheated. We are an Internet-based company; dressing up at all has always seemed silly to me. As long as we type and talk professionally, the clients have no idea what we are wearing. Personally, I can type and talk professionally while wearing my bathrobe. Allowing people to wear jeans at the end of the week is a wonderful low-cost perk that the modern office introduced in the last 20 years, and it's my favorite low cost perk right after getting out early the day before a holiday while still getting paid for working a full day.
At lunch, Sarah confided to me how the perk got extended by an extra day.
We are a small office with only a hand full of people. One Wednesday, the office manager was complaining that he needed to run by the dry cleaners but that he wasn't sure that he had the time. That evening, he called everyone at home and said, "We've been working hard. As a treat, you can wear jeans tomorrow as well as on Friday." It turned out he never got the chance to go to the dry cleaners and had nothing to wear himself the next day except for jeans.
A new dress code was born.
Once we achieve Casual Wednesday, I'll be 3/5ths of the way toward a more comfortable and contented work place.
When Thursday rolled around my first week back at work, I noticed that I was the only one who had bothered to dress in Standard Office Casual and that everyone else was dressed in Friday Office Casual (it looks just like Standard Office Casual, except that blue jeans replace the nice slacks).
"Is it Friday and no one told me?" I asked.
"Oh, no, we forgot to let you know. We get to wear jeans on Thursdays and Fridays now," Sarah, one of my co-workers, informed me.
I felt cheated. We are an Internet-based company; dressing up at all has always seemed silly to me. As long as we type and talk professionally, the clients have no idea what we are wearing. Personally, I can type and talk professionally while wearing my bathrobe. Allowing people to wear jeans at the end of the week is a wonderful low-cost perk that the modern office introduced in the last 20 years, and it's my favorite low cost perk right after getting out early the day before a holiday while still getting paid for working a full day.
At lunch, Sarah confided to me how the perk got extended by an extra day.
We are a small office with only a hand full of people. One Wednesday, the office manager was complaining that he needed to run by the dry cleaners but that he wasn't sure that he had the time. That evening, he called everyone at home and said, "We've been working hard. As a treat, you can wear jeans tomorrow as well as on Friday." It turned out he never got the chance to go to the dry cleaners and had nothing to wear himself the next day except for jeans.
A new dress code was born.
Once we achieve Casual Wednesday, I'll be 3/5ths of the way toward a more comfortable and contented work place.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 07:05 pm (UTC)