Is Business Casual?

Is Business Casual?

Key words:  business casual attire, office attire

860 words or about two pages

                I’ve tried looking the other way and pretending it’s not important.  I’ve even tried to convince myself that there’s an improvement going on which gives people more freedom.  It doesn’t work; I just don’t see the world as either liberated or more productive with the emphasis on “business casual” – whatever that means.   I’ve  stood in the shoes of both sides of this issue, and let me tell that even though clothes may not make the man (or woman) they just might make the attitude.

                In a board dinner of my finance industry constituents—proudly one of the last great groups still sporting suits and ties, we were talking about those of us with home offices.  I related the story of my father, who at one point in his career was an innovator in the field of association management and often worked from a home office,  would put on his dress shoes, starched shirt, suit trousers and tie to go downstairs to his basement office. 

                I asked my dad why he did this when he didn’t have to.

                “First, you have to know a little bit about the history of the necktie,” he said.  I was a teenager, so I rolled my eyes and pretended not to listen (but the conversation still resonates).

                “It had its origin in the bandages military officers wore draped around their necks to use to help their wounded troops.  To me that’s a symbol of servant leadership—something good to remind myself of everyday,” my father told me. 

                He told me this during the 1970’s, when fashions were in an uproar—folks wearing such notables as leisure suits and Nehru jackets, and not wearing such notables as undergarments.   The clothes in the window at Brooks Brothers stayed the course however.  

                A few years later I became a military officer in fact, and the etiquette training to us in those days:  officers tied only the Windsor knot, and always wore Class A’s (military coat and tie) in airports and other public places.  Nowadays, soldiers of all ranks shuffle through the airports in dusty fatigues.  I do still see marines in their dress uniforms on planes.  They look proud, but of course, there are only a few of them. 

                “Secondly,” my father told me, “if I’m dressed for business, then I’m less likely to get involved in some distraction-- some fix-it errand or unrelated project.  Getting the newspaper in the rain would even be a risk in my starched shirt.  Nope I’m stuck here at the desk alright unless I go out to make a call on a customer—and then I’m already dressed and ready.”

                In my first full-time job after the military, I was a YMCA Program Director.   When not teaching or coaching actual programs, we were required to be in coat and tie, ostensibly for appearance’s sake.  But we staff knew it was really to keep us from shooting hoop, sneaking in some pick-up racquetball, or at the very least doing a few pull-ups or something.  Not a bad management strategy for productivity although I did lose some time to changing clothes several times a day.

                My question to the business casual proponents is this:  what’s to be gained by dressing for work like you’ve dropped by the office in between moving furniture and mowing the lawn?  Unless, of course, your day at the office is actually viewed as an interruption to those tasks.   And perhaps that’s it:  work for so many nowadays may not be a profession or a calling, but simply a way to finance runs to IKEA.  

                Our mothers always told us there’s nothing wrong with looking nice, and fair enough if those wearing business casual look nice and are wearing “smart casual” (and what does that compare with exactly:  stupid casual?).  But good luck trying to write some kind of office standard out of it.  There’s nothing wrong with looking nice by wearing a coat and tie either--seems easier.   

It looks to me like the big advantage for casual is comfort, and that may be true if one is unable to buy comfortable dress clothes that fit.    I’ve also got to believe that a few nice business dress combos are more economical than the equivalent amount of casual clothes needed for workable combinations.   For example, I finally quit buying the ninety dollar rubber-soled pretend dress shoes and went  to the latest generation of leather-soled “real” dress shoes.  Yes, they cost twice as much, but last three times longer, and are actually much more comfortable.

Comfort I can understand, a casual attitude toward our careers—and this may be reflected by our dress—I can’t.  I wonder too how much of the casualness is due to management’s paralysis—induced by political correctness—in setting anything but the lowest of standards.   I guess we’re all supposed to be casual and  pretend that there’s nothing we should even notice about front line employees with tattoos covering half the head and fish hooks and miscellaneous tool piercings decorating the other half—just the nuts and bolts of business, when  it’s, oh so casual. 

                ©Copyright 2013 John P. Harrison.  All rights reserved.