Dress Codes for work

[BJCooperIT]

As a consultant I have sometimes encountered difficulty adhering to my consulting firm's dress code. My company wants me to appear professional at all times. This means no jeans or sneakers, preferably business suits and dress shoes.

This can be a problem at a client site that is casual. My case in point is my current contract. I sit at a desk that is right in the middle of a laboratory. The people here have a standard to wear pants and long sleeve tops. This translates to jeans/slacks along with simple shirts, mostly older clothes so that the loss of an article of clothing is not a big deal if a chemical is spilled.

Enter me. Suit jacket, silk top, dress slacks, jewelry, perfume, etc. Eyebrows are raised and the first thought they have is "Who is she trying to impress?" Thereafter follows resentment. If I need to have these folks on my side it is a bad start. Some consulting firms allow you the option of dressing at the level of your clients, but some do not. Has anyone else encountered this problem?
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[BJCooperIT]

"Personally, I find the mention of words like "racist", "sexist", "homophobe", and other emotional pejoratives to be red herrings strewn about by those who can't perform according to their job description. At least in the United States."

I take exception that you imply I cannot do my job because I find it offensive to be referred to as a man.

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[palbano]

jtb said
Personally, I find the mention of words like "racist", "sexist", "homophobe", and other emotional pejoratives to be red herrings strewn about by those who can't perform according to their job description. At least in the United States. YMMV.

I know many who would say the same for all those certificates your displaying.

Personally, I tend to recognize each individual by their own actions and statements rather than group them according to some generalization. It may take a few more seconds out of my life to do that but what the hey… the only race I’m interested in being part of is the human race. ;-)

-pete

 

[sleipnir214]

manarth:
German is the odd member of your list of gendered languages. German also has neuter nouns, something neither French nor Spanish support. This gives us ways out of the non-specific pronoun problem that Romance languages do not.

Anyway, German tends to be very specific in use of the gender of pronouns. You match the gender of the pronoun to the gender of the noun it replaces. Which makes it interesting sometimes when you use German words adopted from other languages -- they're all neuter.


All:
There's one thing that should be remembered about words. Words have genders -- masculine, feminine, and in some languages neuter. People have sexes -- male and female. In English, we have pre-empted the word "gender" for use in both places because except for third-person singular pronouns, English doesn't support gender. However, the two classes of categories are different. For example, you cannot infer from the fact that the German word for cat, Katze, is feminine that all cats in Germany are female.

And keep in mind, too, that the last formal education some people on grammar and usage was at least 20 years ago -- at least that's true for me. In my case, the last time it came up was probably 32 or 33 years ago. Since then, I've never been told that use of plural pronouns in the generic sense was grammatically correct and not just expedient or politically correct.

And some people take pride in their correct use of grammar as it was formally taught to them -- the whole "speaking well speaks well of me" thing. They are loathe to deviate from those standards.

Sometimes, too, people are too ready to take offense. A friend of mine owned a sandwich shop near the courthouses in my town. As all the customers, most of them lawyers, were standing in line waiting to order lunch, he would wander through the crowd with a tray of free garlic bread slices. He always offered the garlic bread with the same question: "Garlic bread, Baby?". He'd been doing it so universally for so long that the employees wore that catchphrase on their uniform t-shirts. It used to be fun to watch him say that to a female lawyer who was in the place the first time -- she'd be working up a head of steam to tear into him for what she assumed was his sexist comment, but before she could he would have already turned to a male customer and asked him, "Garlic bread, Baby?" in exactly the same tone. I then derived no end of entertainment watching her trying to lay her hackles back down. In my friend's personal lexicon, "Baby" was a universal term of endearment. Hell, he called the UPS guy "Baby".

So I take a longer view of the sex/gender question. But then, I'm living in Cajun Louisiana. Here, both men and women tend to call everyone (regardless of sex) either "Boo" or "T".


manarth:
<aside>
The existence of neuter nouns in German can make for some interesting constructs. There's one wonderful question in German I will never forget. I once heard an elderly German woman ask a mother about the sex of the mother's baby:

Ist es eine Süße oder ein Süßer?

In English: Is it a sweet [normal feminine noun] or a sweet [the same feminine noun with a masculine article and an artificial masculizing ending appended to the feminine noun].

In short, &quot;Is it a female sweetie or a male sweetie?&quot; The most diplomatic way of asking that question I have ever heard.
</aside>

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[AFTech81]

My company wears uniforms, and they don't actually provide them, rather they give you an allowance each year to get new uniforms. We have no such thing as a casual Friday, and if you get called in after hours, you wear your &quot;civies&quot; into work. Granted that our work uniforms are mainly camoflage and combat boots, but hey that's what you get when you're in the military.


Also I agree with sleipnir214. The military uniform is by far the handiest outfit I have.

Brian
USAF
Network +, Win2k Pro

 

[sleipnir214]

Come on, confess. Your company gave you several sets of uniforms when you started, didn't they?

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[palbano]

>> the handiest outfit I have.

Number one priority in the fashion industry right? LOL

-pete

 

[KornGeek]

The best jacket I ever owned was purchased from a military surplus store. It was warm, comfortable, and had several pockets. Unfortunately, some punks stole it out of the trunk of my car.

I'm still not over the heartbreak.

 

[OhioBreeze]

brevity is saying what you think and letting the world respond in kind. The bar is raised! not controlled by those who choose to exclude. Likeness is not sameness. Inspire to increase - Steve Priddy

 

[BJCooperIT]

OhioBreeze:
Are you implying we &quot;talk&quot; too much here?

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