Southpinellas: Office dress codes can wear you out

Office dress codes can wear you out

By JAN GLIDEWELL

People are always asking me if I have the courage of my convictions.

So, before I write about the fascinating case of Andy Rose and the unbuttoned collar button, I want to go on record.

If any Times executive ever catches me with my collar button unfastened underneath my necktie, I urge him or her to fire me at once ... and I promise to go (relatively) quietly.

Of course, the only time I am ever seen in the office in a necktie is when someone is being married or buried, and I can almost never button a collar on those damn shirts that keep shrinking.

I am blessed in working for a company that assumes that we have enough sense to make our own decisions about what to wear and when. Most of my male bosses wear ties. I assume it's sort of like gang colors or something.

My male colleagues who cover areas where everyone else wears ties usually wear one themselves, probably as camouflage. I used to myself, until I learned that mosthomes I visited thought I was either a process server or selling burial insurance. The last clothing order I got, in 1974, was not to wear T-shirts with writing on them, although enforcement has been kind of lax since then.

I'm a little more, shall we say, informal than most of my co-workers, although on the days that I know big brass are going to be here I always wear long jeans instead of cutoffs.

Andy Rose is the University of Florida agricultural adviser assigned to Citrus County, where male county employees are required to wear neckties except from May 1 through Oct. 1.

I don't know if Citrus County has any requirements involving women and neckties -- although I feel fairly safe in guessing that miniskirts, hot pants and halter tops are probably discouraged equally for male and female workers.

Rose, who spends much of his time in the field showing more than 100 farmers in Citrus and Sumter counties how to improve their crops, not only thinks there is no reason for him to wear ties, but also thinks they present a safety hazard because they could become entangled in farm machinery.

So county officials said he could go without them in the field, but not in the office, and it has become a point of contention for him and interim County Administrator Richard Wesch and Wesch's minions.

Let's talk a little bit about neckties here.

They are basically anachronisms dating back to the days before buttons were invented and they were the only way you could keep your collar closed.

They serve no useful function other than decorative, and many of us find them restrictive and uncomfortable.

They do present a risk around machinery and, aside from occasionally protecting a shirt from a gravy stain or being handy if someone in the immediate vicinity needs a tourniquet, they are useless other than as emblems of conformity.

It has always amazed me how some employers insist that their employees be made uncomfortable while they work. I'll agree that there is a line somewhere (I'm pretty sure my bosses would balk at my working in my underwear, or, worse, out of my underwear) but I think it exists way beyond neckties.

If I'm ever challenged on it, I have at least one necktie (and one tie pin) that many would feel to be obscene, and it would be fun to explore the attendant First Amendment issues there.

Apparently the culminating incident this time wasn't over a tie, but over whether a collar button beneath it was fastened.

There are, to be fair, other issues. Wesch and Rose, for instance, disagree on whether Rose locked himself in his office to avoid being served a written reprimand for dress code violations.

But come on, Citrus. Other counties have things like top officials with gambling problems and judges allegedly involved in love affairs with their bailiffs. Are unbuttoned collars the best you can do?

- Jan Glidewell is a columnist for the Times' North Suncoast regional editions.