I’ve worked in a couple of places that had dress codes that didn’t make much sense to me, or some of the coworkers I had at the time. When I worked in a call center we rarely saw anyone outside of people that worked for the company. Yet, we had a dress code. At that job the dress code changed a couple of times. At one point we could wear jeans. That evolved into “smart casual” and jeans only on Friday. That evolved into fancy office dress clothes and suits. I can’t even imagine what it was like after I was gone.
The next job I had was in a radiology center doing billing. There the dress code was understandable, we could either wear nursing scrubs or casual clothes. I chose to wear scrubs. I had a bunch of them, some with cats, some with Disney characters, a tropical one and a couple of solids. I loved wearing scrubs, they wore well and washed even better. And they’re just colorful and fun. I found that scrubs are even better than uniforms. Scrubs enable people to wear clothing appropriate for the workplace while still enabling them to wear things they like according to their own personal taste. I wore uniforms in high school and hated them. Everyone looked the same – blue slacks or plaid skirt, white blouse and a blazer. Scrubs are nothing like that.
When I left the radiology center to go to my last job I thought I’d be able to wear scrubs again, since I’d still be doing billing. As it turns out, scrubs were actually not permitted there, which I always thought was odd. At first we were allowed to wear regular clothing as long as it was decent. The problem was that not everyone agreed upon what was appropriate or decent. So, someone suggested we get polo shirts. Instead of letting us wear polo shirts, they actually bought us uniforms. Our uniforms consisted of black slacks and button down short sleeve shirts. How I hated those uniforms. After I lost a good portion of my weight following the Lap band surgery my scrubs no longer fit. I wasn’t allowed to wear them at work, so I gave them to someone else. I no longer work in billing now but still think of scrubs. There are times I contemplate getting another pair to wear around the house even now, but for the time being have just worn sweats. Have you ever had to dress according to a dress code at any job? How did you feel about the clothes you had to wear?
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Yes–almost forty years ago pants suits were in but we were not allowed to wear them (micro minis were never an issue) only skirts and dresses and certainly not slacks much less jeans. Times changed along with administrators (teaching).