Everyone knows it’s important to look professional when you’re a member of the working world. After all, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Furthermore, the clothes make the man. Or woman. Okay, I’m finished hurling clichés at you. I’m talkin’ about dress codes, man.
The summer after my sophomore year I worked at a Hallmark store. ‘Twas the summer of the paper cuts, as I lovingly remember it, and it’s really quite amazing that I didn’t end up with some sort of lethal greeting-induced blood infection. One time I cut myself on a ‘get well’ card… I almost choked on the irony of that. And I’m almost positive that approximately half of the smell receptors in my nose have been permanently disabled thanks to the candle room, a.k.a. Nasal Assault and Battery. What’s that you say? Nine hundred candles, each with scents strong enough to fill a warehouse, gathered together in a room with no ventilation? I like the way you think- make it so. [Insert evil laugh here].
The dress code at Hallmark was fairly straightforward: no flip-flops and no jeans. Since we were on our feet all day, either catering to or avoiding customers, depending on your individual sales technique, sneakers were the obvious choice for footwear. Slap on some khakis and a tee shirt to prepare for the inevitable air-conditioner breakdown and I was ready to go. We were also required to wear aprons. No, I don’t know why. Apparently a nametag with a brightly colored bow on it was not enough to indicate that I was, in fact, an employee.
On one hand, the aprons did have rather large pockets, which were useful for carrying small items that you needed or wanted to keep with you, i.e. stray greeting cards, jelly beans, hamsters. On the other hand, they were aprons. I was doing nothing related to getting dirty or baking. Although it would have been nice to have a wooden rolling pin to perform some durability testing on the countless ceramic figurines we sold. What? No, I didn’t leave Hallmark with any neuroses. Certainly not any involving collectable figurines [nervous tic] or the cretins who collect them.
My next place of regular employment was Kohl’s. This stint pretty much solidified my long-held conviction that I am not meant to work in retail. However, when you’re stuck in a small town for the summer, you gotta go where the cash is. And also where your roommate can give you a glowing recommendation. Kohl’s showed a whole training video about dress code, but when you deduct the bad writing and cheesy actors, it basically boiled down to no sneakers, no jeans and no sleeveless shirts. I worked at POS, which does not stand for what you think it does, although it should. POS stands for point of sale, and that means I was a cash register monkey for those of the non-retail persuasion.
Working at Kohl’s hot and boring, complete with angry customers, standing for eight hour stretches and minimal bathroom breaks: a lot like I imagine hell to be like. I got paid to be there, but that’s really the only difference that springs to mind. I understand the whole professional image thing, really I do. But when my job description is to stand behind a counter to be berated by customers who don’t want to pay twenty two dollars for a pair of cute baby overalls, what does it matter what I have on my feet? At least there were no aprons. And our nametags were upgradeable: you could earn different colors and stars based on positive customer comment cards. Yes, it was a psychological ploy straight out of kindergarten, but I fell for it. Sadly, I left Kohl’s with the same nametag with the same number of stars I started with: bronze plastic and zero. Yeah, I don’t know why either. Huh. I also left with my very own Kohl’s charge card and probably about half the money that I earned… these two facts may or may not be related. I left because as it turns out, “working at Kohl’s” and “taking organic chemistry” are mutually exclusive states of being. Thus ended my retail experience. I hope. I really, really hope.
Now that I’ve graduated from college and entered the real working world (at least on a temporary contract basis), I can report that dress codes thrive here as well. However, there is some leeway. For my interview, I played the young urban professional role. Apparently I didn’t screw anything up too badly, because here I am, employed. I wasn’t entirely sure of what to wear once I started working, so I played it safe with my good ol’ khakis and a sweater. I hadn’t seen anyone wearing either jeans or prom attire, so I went for the middle of the road and hoped I wouldn’t be flattened by the fashion police.
As it turns out, there’s sort of a caste system clothing spectrum here. At the ‘my boss’ level , people wear business casual. Traveling down to the other end of the scale, we come to the ‘lab rat’ category, which is where I fit in. If I had to categorize the attire that I see people in the lab wearing, the descriptive title would be ‘this is what I woke up in and/or found at my feet this morning.’ Pretty casual. For example, the guy who trained me generally wears basketball shorts and a tee shirt, as well as some lab shirt that is supposed to discourage static electricity but doesn’t.
I decided to ask him what the dress code was during one of our many periods of down time. He looked at me, slightly accusatorily, and then down at his outfit. “Why?” he asked. “Are you trying to tell me something?” I assured him that his dye-stained cotton shorts looked fine, and that I was just curious. And also that I figured I’d like his answer better than my Docker-clad boss’s. I did. His speech could be summed up in four words: wear pants and shoes. Beyond that, it apparently didn’t matter.
I had been wearing sweaters with two to three shirts underneath them. To say the lab is cold would have been an understatement back when they kept the doors to the outside closed. Now, though, the lab is under construction and doors are opened for half of the day. They must be building the new section out of ice blocks, because I can’t think of any other reason for it to be so cold. Let’s put it this way… if they made clothing that you could plug in, I would buy it and wear it, fire hazards and burn risks be damned. My new favorite accessory is my headphone ear muffs, which help to block out the frostbite and the noise – the construction workers have evidently signed a contract requiring them to work at a noise level of 140 decibels or higher.
Mostly I just follow my co-worker’s leads. The day I saw a guy wearing a hooded sweatshirt was a very happy day- and possibly the beginning of the end. I’m just waiting for the green light to bring in a 100-foot extension cord and a space heater to wear around my neck. I don’t dress to impress. I dress to survive.
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