Today started off warmish at 64 degrees, but the temperature will fall all day until it reaches a low of 38 just after dawn tomorrow morning. Right now, at noon it is 54, so it will be jacket time the rest of the day.
In the bedroom where I dress every morning, the closet is so full of clothes, that I keep the ones that I wear daily on hooks on the back of the door. Right now, those are mostly knit golf shirts. I am so thankful that I don’t have to wear dress shirts and ties all the time like I did in the past. But I’ll be transferring the knits to the closet and bringing out the Oxfords and my other dressier shirts.
I refuse to go totally back to dress shirts, and the number of days where I wear ties every year can be counted on the fingers of both hands. Thank goodness for relaxed work dress rules. I rarely work at my consulting job on Fridays but on the days I do, they normally declare it a jeans holiday. We can wear good clean jeans to work as long as we bring a can or box of food for the local food bank. Works for me! I even volunteer to take the food that we have collected all year to the food bank in December. That is such a good idea.
Now, just in case you think that a dress shirt is a dress shirt, I need to let you know that many of my so called “dress shirts” are plaid. And almost all of the rest of them are loud colors. Just when have you ever known me to not be loud? Well, at least since my teen aged years. So my bright Ban-Lons are put up for the winter, and my long sleeves are out. Yes – they do include some flannel lumberjack shirts for the days I don’t go into the station or the office.
In grade school and high school we wore uniforms of white short sleeved shirts and navy blue trousers. In college the shirts became more colorful but were always dressy, often with button down collars. Quite a far cry from what I see on campus these days. For the women, the restrictions were far worse; they could not be on campus in any kind of pants at all. They were required to wear skirts at all times. Although, as a member of the red-blooded male gender, I’m glad to report that those skirts got shorter and shorter over time.
My first real job in radio at WCOS required the wearing of appropriate attire in the studio; a long or short sleeved dress shirt, an undershirt and a pair of office appropriate trousers. Some of the stations in bigger cities I.E. WABC in New York required a coat and tie, but we didn’t. That was a good thing too because sometimes we did remote broadcasts from pretty warm locations.
The studios of WCOS in the Cornell Arms Apartment Building were heated and cooled from a central heating and air conditioning system. As a cost cutting measure, the building management cut off the A/C on many nights expecting the tenants to open up their windows to keep cool. That was a problem for us because if we opened up our windows, the folks in the nearby apartments would call the security guard and complain about the noise. I have to ask just how could anyone expect us to rock and roll all night long and not make noise. You can’t do it, I tell ya! Late at night when I was alone in a warm studio I would sometimes shuck off the dress shirt and do the show in my undershirt.
Then there was the special case of the little old lady with insomnia on the floor above us who would pound of the floor all night long in protest, or so management would tell us. I pointed out that she kept pretty good time with the music we were playing. Just sayin’!
By the time I went over to WIS Television and the engineering side of the business, my work wardrobe for the next 20 years had settled in on the “Engineer’s Uniform”; a plaid shirt and tan slacks. Yes, it was complete with a pocket protector and an occasional lab jacket if soldering or some other dirty task was to be performed. Last January, at the South Carolina Broadcaster’s Association winter conference, I was walking down a hallway with my old buddy Ken when his wife, Paula came up behind us to announce that we were in proper uniform, plaids and khakis. We both simultaneously turned and responded; not quite – no pocket protectors.
My days as a traveling IT Consultant were the most uncomfortable of my career, dress-wise. Jackets and ties were required whenever we were on a customer site. We could get away from the jackets when on location at a company owned facility. It was a pain to pack all that stuff into a carry on. I refused to check my baggage as that added an hour to the unpaid travel time checking and retrieving my luggage. To say that I was on a first name basis with many of the TSA agents at several airports in the country would be an understatement. My jaw dropped when an agent in San Diego said, “Headed, home, Rick?” as I approached the gate with my ticket and driver’s license still in my hand. I expected that in Columbia, but for an agent in San Diego to remember me was quite a shocker.
It wasn’t all bad. There were plenty of weeks when I worked from my home office instead of traveling, thanks to the advances in cell phone and Virtual Private Network technology. Those weeks were when I wore t-shirts and shorts all day. Some of my co-workers stayed in their jammies all day but I could never bring myself to do that. I also always went out to lunch usually with friends and former co-workers to avoid the dreaded cabin fever. What can I say; the organism adapts to its environment.
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