Casual Day

Our office is casual… I mean really casual. I’ve usually worked at places that dress in business casual. I hate wearing ties and suit coats. My favorite outfit is just a pair of kackies and a collared short-sleeve shirt.

But here, it’s a little different. Jeans and tee shirts are norm. Sometimes people come in with holes in their jeans; sometimes it’s shorts. It’s great in the summer months for those that get overheated, but I’m out of my element in this casual world.

When a new person starts in my department, we usually go through some basic company training. As the boss, I also lay down my expectations of them as a worker and employee. This also includes Steve’s Clothing Etiquette Lesson. See, the one thing I learned from being employed is that it doesn’t always matter what the company rules are. If your boss disapproves, that’s all that matters.

So I have three things I ask of new folks in my department.
#1 No flip-flops. I hate ‘em. The noise they produce is like nails on a chalkboard.
#2 No crop tops or muscle shirts. I don’t want to see your belly button. Seriously!

Number three always floors people when I say it. “You need to wear under clothes every day.” And my follow-up to their next question is, “Yes, it has happened before.”

The other day I passed one of my co-workers in shorts, a tee shirt and bare feet. We both laughed as I asked if he’d just been at the beach. I joked that he was pushing casual dress to the edge. He looked back and said, “Dude, you wear slippers at work.”

Damn, I did wear slippers. I admit it; I wear them everyday, even in the summer. At first, I used to wear them because my feet were always cold. The doctor says I have sweaty feet. (Weird, I know, but better than sweaty back or something gross like that.) Well sweaty or not, now I just wear them because they are comfortable.

The slippers I bought are black so that people wouldn’t see them. They did. So then I called them business slippers. They believed that as much as Corey believing that the “waffles were asleep.”

To make matters worse, the office was really cold so I bought a cardigan sweater. I went from the Cool-Reality-Marketing-Guy (ok, that name only caught on with me) to a lame version of Mr. Rogers. Everyone knew me as the Slipper Guy. Even the president of our company noticed them.

I was hoping this would begin a fad. It didn’t. To this day, I’m the only one in bedtime footwear. They’ve even discontinued my brand of business slippers. It’s tough being a visionary.

But hey, at least I wear underwear.