![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Today at work it's Hawaiian Shirt Day. Some people say Dilbert is real. Yes, but Office Space is even more so.
You cannot wear jeans or tennis shoes today if you do not wear a Hawaiian shirt. This is their way of enforcing the whole thing because people like jeans days at work. Years ago when we were still in ties and slacks, we got jeans days a lot. Of course it was tied to the billions of dollars we were making at the time ("we just got another billion, jeans day on Friday!"). Now we are business casual, since we were having a hard time attracting talent for a while. The upper suits hate it, thinking we should look more professional, and combined that we just aren't making money hand-over-fist now, the jeans days have been taken away. When one happens, you take it, even with provisions.
Strangely, of the five or six jeans days we've gotten this year, we actually had to go back and ask management if we could include sneakers with that. Never take anything for granted.
My Hawaiian shirt is actually one I bought in Hawaii in 1988, while in the Houston marching band. We were there for Christmas an the Aloha Bowl, one of two Bowl games I've ever been too (the other was the 1996 Liberty Bowl, where I was and alumni filling in for a kid who couldn't make it. Let me tell you, Honolulu for Christmas is a lot better than Memphis). The shirt, red with some flowers on it, was purchased for it's closeness to shirts worn by Magnum, P.I. It's got wooden buttons, but as you can guess, something from 1988 doesn't fit so well anymore. I'm wearing a T-shirt under it.
The whole thing is for Customer Service Week. There's a whole committee to devise fun and games for the week, most of them I'll brand as lame. I was on a "fun committee" once at an old job, and no matter what you come up with, unless it's something free, the participation will be low. People come to work, not to create a great social experience. There's too many variants in people to have one blanket "fun" event. This is work, not a community. Cynical, you bet. I've worked this before, and people just don't buy the forced "fun"
I guess there's something to be said that Customer Service Week coincides with National Mental Health Week.
You cannot wear jeans or tennis shoes today if you do not wear a Hawaiian shirt. This is their way of enforcing the whole thing because people like jeans days at work. Years ago when we were still in ties and slacks, we got jeans days a lot. Of course it was tied to the billions of dollars we were making at the time ("we just got another billion, jeans day on Friday!"). Now we are business casual, since we were having a hard time attracting talent for a while. The upper suits hate it, thinking we should look more professional, and combined that we just aren't making money hand-over-fist now, the jeans days have been taken away. When one happens, you take it, even with provisions.
Strangely, of the five or six jeans days we've gotten this year, we actually had to go back and ask management if we could include sneakers with that. Never take anything for granted.
My Hawaiian shirt is actually one I bought in Hawaii in 1988, while in the Houston marching band. We were there for Christmas an the Aloha Bowl, one of two Bowl games I've ever been too (the other was the 1996 Liberty Bowl, where I was and alumni filling in for a kid who couldn't make it. Let me tell you, Honolulu for Christmas is a lot better than Memphis). The shirt, red with some flowers on it, was purchased for it's closeness to shirts worn by Magnum, P.I. It's got wooden buttons, but as you can guess, something from 1988 doesn't fit so well anymore. I'm wearing a T-shirt under it.
The whole thing is for Customer Service Week. There's a whole committee to devise fun and games for the week, most of them I'll brand as lame. I was on a "fun committee" once at an old job, and no matter what you come up with, unless it's something free, the participation will be low. People come to work, not to create a great social experience. There's too many variants in people to have one blanket "fun" event. This is work, not a community. Cynical, you bet. I've worked this before, and people just don't buy the forced "fun"
I guess there's something to be said that Customer Service Week coincides with National Mental Health Week.
