10/06/2014

Dress Code

The "Dear Abby or Ann Lander's wannabe" in today's paper had an article about a guy forced to enforce the dress code at his place of business.  That part of my life is one of those life lessons I tell stories about.  Here is my side of the story.

I was an instructor at a call center.  It is obvious that there was never any customer direct contact and in my opinion, there was little need for a dress code.  They specified Business casual and jeans were only on Friday and in the summer, shorts on Casual Friday.  There were several small parts of the code and that's always what got me in trouble.

The first area that was a problem was sandals.  You could wear them unless it left the toes open.  Not sure what that was all about but I did send a guy and a girl to HR when they wore them into my class.  Both were returned to the class and said they chose to not enforce that rule on casual dress days.  OK, from then on, I would not send people out of the room for even flip flops.

One female student came into the class one day and was wearing a blouse that was unbuttoned way beyond my tolerance.  She was spectacular in my opinion but rules are rules.  I sent her to HR and they told her to button up until no bra showed and sent her back.  That was the final straw.

I went down to HR and marched into the Director's office.  I told her that I was no longer going to be the clothes Nazi and so long as my students showed up with anything covering their privates I would teach them all. 

In High School, there was a bunch of the guys that thought that dressing like the hippies was OK.  They would take a sweat shirt and cut the sleeves off and cut it down the front.  These were worn inside out and over shirts and looked a lot like vests.  Some of the guys didn't ever wash those vests and they could look bad.  One teacher we had said that no longer would she tolerate them in her class room.  I bought a new white sweatshirt and made it into a vest.  The next day when I went to class she handed me a note and told me to go visit MR. Moore the vice Principle.  When I got there, I showed him the note and he looked me in the eye and said, "Take the God Dammed thing off Dennis, you know the rules."  Oh by the way, Mr. Moore was the husband of my Third Grade teacher and we were on a first name basis over that and a few other reasons.  He was right.  I took off the vest and threw it away.  There were a lot of other reasons I could get thrown out of school for and clothes was not that important.  He like my mother just looked at things plainly and if it wasn't right, it wasn't right.

I guess that most of my displeasure with the rules came from my time in the Military.  There was a dress code specified and in most cases a uniform of the day.  As an officer, I made sure the NCO's were aware of their responsibility to supervise their men and it was really up to them to make sure the soldiers could do their jobs.  If a soldier was digging a sump for the kitchen, why did it matter to me if they took off their fatigue jacket.  My concern was that they didn't get sunburned and then not able to do their duty the next day.

Now moving on to my next topic.  One of my Facebook friends found a flyer on her desk that said the world is coming to an end she needed to get prepared.  I told her that she needed to make sure that her boss and the HR where she works brings this to an end.  It can be a form of harassment and not an appropriate thing in the workplace.  Lets say that only the gay people in a business got the fliers.  Is that appropriate.  Not in my book.  Moving on...

Just when I am so tired of hearing the bickering about who did what in the races for political offices, there is a scheduled symposium that is going back to look at the campaign between Dr Bill Roy and Former Senator Bob Dole.  One's dead and the other doesn't look too good.  Why on God's green earth would anyone want to go back and look at mudslinging 101 in a past election.   I think it is appropriate to look back at the problems in the Lincoln Presidential election to point out the fact that the politics and mudslinging of today isn't new.  To look at a Senatorial election is just ludicrous. 

I for one will be glad to have my phone stop ringing for thinly veiled surveys that really want money not my opinion.  I will vote but it will be my vote and nothing they can do at this time will change my vote.  If almost 82% of the people don't approve of the current office holders, why do they get re-elected in droves?   Probably because there is some stupid idea that it isn't my Representative or Senator that is at fault.  Not me, I want to turn them out until we get a group in Washington that will start fixing the problems not being just a part of what's wrong.  I VOTE!

MUD



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