Dress Code?

You don't have to be a "dinosaur" to see the value of presenting yourself professionally. Clothes are a large part of that, but demeanor is also important.

 

I have no discomfort with it at all. But people who believe that piercings and tattoos and dressing slovenly have blanket acceptance are kidding themselves. I linked to a credible survey. All I see from you is "wah-wah, agree with me!" Like an angry child.

 

I thought we came to an agreement that dressing appropriately for what we cover should be the way to go.

When I've interviewed people for a full-time reporter position and they dress too casually, I make a note of that. Call me a dinosaur if you want, but if you're not going to take an interview seriously, how do I know you're going to take your job seriously?

If you walk in without a tie for a job interview, your clips and your interviewing skills better floor me. If they don't, you have no chance.

 

Interview ≠ job itself. One look at every newsroom I've ever been in has told me that much.

 

Still, the lesson is dress appropriately for what you're doing.

Personally, if no one important is coming to the office and you're not on assignment, I don't care what you wear as long as you're not showing naughty parts. Not everyone is like that. If you're going to interview a public official and you're dressing in a T-shirt, shorts and flip flops, I'm not going to be too happy with you.

For my part, I prefer dressing at least business casual for the most part, except on Tuesdays when I normally am chained to my desk with a paper to put to bed. Still, if I have to go cover something on Tuesday, I'm dressing up.

 

How old must one be to qualify as being a dinosaur?

40? 50? 60?

Just wondering, because I'm about 40 and probably would not hire a man or woman with multiple piercings or tats snaking above his collar and down to his wrists to represent our publication.

 

The thing about this discussion is that people read into it what they will. The example of the baseball announcers, for instance. I did not say which dress code was better. People made some assumptions.

It seems to me, though, that if the announcers were being required to wear suits, at least they got to pick the suits. The station where they wear matching polo shirts, their attire is being dictated to the nth degree, like a Burger King employee. I don't know if I'd think a suit is necessary for that job, but I'd resent it less than being required to dress like triplets working the deep fryer.

People now want to be told that whatever they do is OK. That's pretty funny because the first generation to wear jeans outside the farm was doing it precisely because it wasn't acceptable to the mainstream. Same with the folks who pierced their noses in the late 1970s -- people who were my age or a little older, by the way. They had no desire for an older generation to pat their hands and say, "It's OK, we grok your body art." It would have pissed them off so bad they would have eaten the sushi and not paid [/repo man].

Take it a step further, in the 1990s I worked someplace that went mandatory business casual -- our ties were outlawed. Not all of us were happy about being "liberated." Some of us thought the company really had no right to dictate our attire. We felt we worked better dressed the way we dressed. We did not seek to impose this on everyone, but we thought making a rule outlawing business dress crossed the line.

 

Sirs, Madames,

Re dress code: I've never figured out how some guys wear suits and write like they're wearing wife-beaters.

Re body art: One particularly, long lay-over, I ended coming back with three pieces. I didn't succumb to the temptation to try to hide them on expenses.

I'm in the school of what you do and don't bother telling me how you do it. Acting/looking professional is no substitute for doing professional work.

YD&OHS, etc

 

How many people like that have you actually encountered? I can count the suit-wearing writers on one hand, even going back 30 years, and I can't think of any of those who didn't take great care with their work as well.

 

Dressing for what you're doing is the common sense part of all this. But I still view it as one of the gig's best unpaid benefits that I can wear a t-shirt and shorts while on the job, at least part of the time.

At my first shop, we had a phone jockey who had semi-permed hair, a beard, yellow-tinted glasses and liked to wear long-sleeved dress shirts of very thin material. The lighter shades of these shirts allowed all to view the enormous tattoo of a snake that slithered from out of his waistband and all the way up to the bony bump on the back of his neck, just below his collar.

 

Frank ... well, sure, I can. No doubt, that's part of it. But I'll take today for example. Following the leader in a group on a wet day where if you were inside the ropes, you often had to sit down in wet grass so the patrons could see. I don't mind sitting on my knees when I'm in shorts. You can run to the bathroom and wipe the dirt and grass off your knees, you know. I'd rather look like that than be wearing pants soaked with mud and grass stains.

You're right, though. Standards have changed, even in the decade that I've been in the business. No one used to ever wear jeans or shorts to professional sporting events. Now that seems to be more the norm than the exception. And I'm fine with that. What's wrong with dressing comfortably? I'd love to adorn my wardrobe with lots of fancy clothes, but I'm a journalist, so I'm poor, and I'd rather spend that money on things like bills and rent and such.

 

I was always partial to commando, as in commando-in-chief.