"Clothes make the man."
- from The Brahman's Clothes

"Eat, my clothes, for you were invited!"
- from the Italian folk tale 'Eat, My Clothes!'

"Only the wisest and the stupidest of men never change."
- Confucius

"Which knot for my tie? Use the Double Windsor for thin materials such as silk, and with wider ties. Hand-knit or woolen ties are too thick for the Double Windsor; use a Four-in-hand when you need a smaller knot."
- from the McKinnon Secondary College information page on ties

September 29th, 2004

The tremendous amount of crap I put up with...

For those of you that have read my essay on Buried Treasures, it will be no mystery on how and why I decided to perform the following experiment. For those of you that have not read the essay and have no intention on doing so, let me summarize.

I had decided that it was time to purge the useless, old articles in the house and clear out space in my storage bin. While I was sifting through the garbage, I found all of my old dress shirts in a laundry bag. There were about, no lie, sixty shirts. Of the sixty shirts I kept about forty of them, getting rid of twenty that were either too small, too ratty, or too disgusting.* The forty remaining shirts were taken to the local dry cleaners to be cleaned and pressed.

After two days, I had, in my possession, forty shirts that were dying to be worn.

Now I don't have to tell those of you who take pride in your appearance what that means. But for those of you who are, for lack of a better term, "less contentious" on the your personal pride in clothing, it meant I should start wearing ties again. I mean, I had a pressed shirt that I paid for... to be cleaned and pressed. It would be an extreme fashion injustice to not wear a tie with it. And if I started wearing a tie to work, I really should wear the right pants, shoes and socks for it as well.

That was when my brain went into overtime.

I decided it was time for a change in habit. Why not wear clothes suited for work to work? The entire novelty of "business dress casual" had worn off on me over the last few years. Why not, for the most part, dress up for work? What would happen if I did?

As I was on vacation when I did the spring cleaning and buried treasure hunt and was given a green light to work from home during the Republican National Convention** and stupidly came into work the Friday before Labor Day weekend, I decided that "dress up day" would be the following Monday.

On Monday morning, the first thing I noted is that it takes extra time to dress up. I really should have tacked on an extra 15 minutes to my routine or prepared the night beforehand. I had forgotten how difficult it is to get everything together while stumbling around in a pitch black room at 5:30 AM. It's really hard to color coordinate ties when the light isn't quite right. I chose simplicity with a white shirt, black pants, black boots, and a blue tie. Fortunately, I shaved the night before and managed to make myself look like a professional.

Also, I had discovered that I really needed to continue my dieting as the largest pair of dress pants were a tad uncomfortable with an undershirt and a tucked in dress shirt. I made the mental commitment to repeat Phase 1 of The South Beach Diet in a week's time. That's usually good for an 8 to 12 pound body fat loss in two weeks.€

The experiment would officially begin when I got to the office.

What I was not prepared for was the onslaught of worker peer razzing that I really should have expected. If you decide to follow in my footsteps in a similar work environment be prepared for the following:

• "Hey! Who's the interview with?"
  
• "Who died?"
• "Early Halloween?"
• "What the?!!!"
• "Nice tie."
• "Uh Huh."
• "What happened to you?"
• "Is everything else in the laundry?"
• (from my boss) "If you are going on an interview, let me drive you so you'll be on time and not miss it."

Swell.

In this case, the truth really can't be explained. They really won't believe you when you say, A) "I felt like it" and B) "What would you do with forty pressed shirts?"

I also had to explain that if I were truly going on an interview I would not be wearing cowboy boots. Some people have no fashion sense but in reality this is also the downfall of most engineers. So much of their brain space is dedicated to logic and hardware that the part of their brain that should be allocated to "Don't wear plaid with stripes" is just atomized. I fortunately don't have a real engineering background. Mine's in marketing where we learn appearance can be everything. After all, it has been said that Einstein used to wear the same color clothes all the time to make certain it would be one less thing to think about.

On the upside to all of this, I discovered something I thought I had lost. It was a very subliminal thing both with myself and with the people I had to deal with. It was a mental switch that had been turned on. I discovered that very much like an actor playing a role, I was now in costume and started to play my role. This is the role of business professional. Unlike when I dress business casual, I started to take my work and my life more seriously. What's more, I think, from the way I was acting, people were starting to take me more seriously.

I discovered that when I was running a meeting I started to address people by "Mister" or "Miss". Implied in this was professionalism for this time period. I'm not fooling around. This is serious. I have a job to do and you have a job to do and I'm here, right now, to see that they get done.

I had a manager when I was working at the help desk who stressed the following formula: PERCEPTION + OPINIONS + FACTS = REALITY. Meaning, a good first impression can go a long way and a bad one can cripple you. If you are going to be the part, dress for it.

There is also a second reason for dressing up, especially in the IT business. This is based on the former hypothesis of acting and being perceived as a professional. If you dress and act like a professional and are perceived as a professional you may be viewed as an asset. Management doesn't like to get rid of assets. People also will take you seriously enough to think that only you can do your job and not some faceless person on the other side of the earth who is getting paid a tenth of your salary.

Dressing up may convince management that there is a reason why you are worth the money you are being paid. Your argument to management is "Do you want quantity or quality? I'm quality. Sure, you can have ten of them for one of me but the one of me produces one pound of quality work instead of ten pounds of crap."

The worker of the 21st century has forgotten the concept of pride - pride in his work, pride in his profession, pride in himself, and, most of all, pride in his appearance. When that is lost, the battle and the war for your own professionalism is lost as well.

In this world, sometimes all you have is a shoeshine and a smile. When you are able to convince to management of the image you are projecting, you are that much more ahead of the game. Today, proper professionalism in the IT community is taken for granted. I'm convinced that this has a lot to do with "business dress casual". When workers no longer take pride in how they appear, they may not take pride in what they are doing. White collar workers have to prove themselves every single day that they are still the right people for the job. And there is a reason why they are called "white collar workers". If you are going to be one, wear one.

I've been doing the dress up thing for about a month now. I've found it really does make a difference. I reserve one to two days in a week when I'll relax a bit and "go casual". It will usually be on a Friday or on a day when I'm meeting free. If I do have a meeting, it's to my advantage to dress the role of "a professional".

The experiment so far has been successful and for the dollar or so per shirt it takes to dry clean a dress shirt and pants, the payoff is priceless.

* - I still don't know what the green stains are under the arm pits. And I think I really don't want to know.

** - Like everything the media does, the scare for New York was blown waaay out of proportion. The media predicted traffic problems, terrorist threats, and demonstration problems in my commuting route. The reality was that nothing happened and because everyone listed to the news the commute to the city was actually the best it was in years. I felt like a fool who was taken advantage of.

*** - I had forgotten that I had already planned on taking that day off to make the four day weekend. I, stupidly, went in anyway.

€ - Look forward to my next rant on Dieting (part deux). Screw Weight Watchers! Do South Beach. Trust me on this one. Read my article on views on dieters and dieting. If you have to choose between Weight Watchers, Atkins, and South Beach, go South Beach. It's better for you.