Shorts are certainly more useful here in the summer (okay, they're basically mandatory if you don't want to be miserable some days) than in SF where it's usually sort of chilly.
Seems overly reductive.
Even the New York Yankees have to shave - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Yankees_appearance_po...
I left there 12 years ago and the women could wear pants policy was new then. So it was around 2003-04 when they first started allowing women to wear pants. By coincidence (or maybe not) this is also the time when laws banning smoking in public places (bars, restaurants) first started to be passed.
It was a conservative office. Customers were other business, not the public.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2016/02/women...
California: Anything goes. I've seen people walking around barefoot in the office. I have yet to see anyone completely nude at work tho, though plenty on the streets of SF.
Putting rigid shoes on your feet is like stuffing your nose with cotton - you're completely blocking a very sensitive organ to the rest of the world.
All this just to say: people who walk barefoot every day are not worried of stepping on tacks :)
On the other hand, I've worn work boots since high school, and wouldn't give them up. (Literally! Uniform required penny loafers or better. I got chewed out more times...) Callused soles won't save you on sun-hot asphalt or gravel, and knowing what you're stepping on won't do you a lick of good when 120 pounds of server and handcart run over your toes.
Broken glass is far more common in modern times than it was on the savanna, so it's wise to dress accordingly. You don't have to wear Dr Martens, but a millimeter or two of Vibram can dramatically improve your quality of life.
From personal experience, it takes quite the sharps to cut through 10-12mm calluses.
As a manager, I wouldn't be worried about them being worried. I'd be worried about them suing the company if they injure their foot.
Unless they're encumbered with a 80-pound piece of furniture that they're carrying down the stairs.
As someone who walked barefoot in Chicago for much of a summer: why is this everyone's nightmare legal scenario? Sure, I could be barefoot and step on a tack, but why is that so much more of a nightmare than if I'm not looking and put my hand down on a tack on a desk? (Well, maybe because I put my hand down with less weight than my foot, but that's not the point.) There are plenty of ways to be injured in the workplace, and we are allowed to manage most of these risks ourselves; why is shoelessness so particularly terrifying?
(Incidentally, one of my favourite objections to my shoelessness was someone who claimed that it was unclean (for others, not for me). I wash my feet every day, but almost never my shoes, so which one of those results in more uncleanliness for the places that I walk through?)
The difference might be that shoes aren't as good of a substrate for bacteria as a warm moist foot.
The athletic administration at my college required that I put my shoes back on when practicing soccer on the intramural fields. Their reasoning was that I could get a cut and develop an e coli infection.
Oh, good point. I hadn't considered that.
> The athletic administration at my college required that I put my shoes back on when practicing soccer on the intramural fields. Their reasoning was that I could get a cut and develop an e coli infection.
This is also a good point, but not the issue that was being raised, which was specifically about others' health, not my own.
The claim was that I was tracking in all the dirt from outside on my feet, and spreading it around where it would dirty up others. Since I'd be doing exactly the same (plus all the other dirt from years of wear) if I were wearing shoes, I agree with you that it makes no sense.
I find wearing shoes for the whole day extremely uncomfortable.
But it's unlikely that you could sue anyone if you step on a tack either.
In NYC it's similar in winter -- people keep light flats or flip flops on their desk and trade snow boots for those during the day.
It's not the same for suit & tie jobs, they usually wear shoes. Or if there's a more formal party at someone's house.
We also talked a lot about how I'd never have a boss who'd tolerate lateness. Cut to 20 years later: my co-workers saunter into the office at varying times, when they come in at all.
The world really has changed right from under the generation before mine. My father thought he was preparing me for a good life.
But he was wasting my time.
I'm almost 40. It used to be visible tattoos and piercings meant you were unemployable in most "mainstream" jobs. Same with odd colored hair or other unconventional appearance. I remember the "rule of thumb" was it was ok to get tattoos on your sleeves because you could always cover them up for work.
Tattoos are mainstream now so not so they are much more accepted at the workplace now. I remember I was really surprised the first time I saw someone with a facial piercing working a customer service job, it was at CVS.
I have a theory that the mainstreaming of tattoos comes from the greatest generation. They were the generation who fought the Nazis and came back with markings showing their loyalty to their country and the people they served with.
I am the same age as you. I don't remember any boomer parents with tattoos. I wonder if our kids and grandkids will keep getting tattoos or if it will fall out of fashion
(That being said, I didn't grow up in Texas, I grew up in the Northeast)
Dress code varied --- rarely, but it did --- but rules about tattoos and facial hair did not. No client cared about ink or hair, even when they really wanted people wearing jackets and ties. The companies that cared about this stuff were all east coast financial, but mostly not Manhattan.
I'm 33, in the Atlanta area, and I've never even heard of a company with a policy against beards. I'd estimate somewhere close to half of the men here under 40 have beards.
Since having been moved into a cubicle, however, where I am visible less than half the time, only seen when I go get a free drink from the fridge, use the bathroom, or take a walk outside, I have been dressing much more casually.
Decent shirt, but probably less than business casual, sometimes as casual as a Pink Floyd or a shirt that I got at a concert. Jeans. Sneakers. Summer=shorts. A lot of times, I'll just find a nice casual shirt and wear it for 3 or 4 days if its fairly clean. Clothing is just the last thing on my mind when it comes to getting dressed in the morning. I know I have to do it in order to go out into the world, but I don't really care what it is.
Of course, my supervisor does warn us if corporate is coming to visit for the day, for which everyone tends to be even more dressed up than usual. But that is just the way our office is. I've worked around the United States.. it seems like the East Coast and Midwest are slightly more strict in wanting people to dress business casual, and be clean-shaven, while the West Coast and Mountain areas are more lenient, and doesn't even seem to mind a mustache or beard, though either should be somewhat groomed.
East Coast/Midwest: tattoos should be covered. West Coast/Mountains: tattoos are okay as long as they are not offensive.
Just today, I walked into Walmart, and a guy who looked like the manager is loaded up to his neck in tattoos. I don't remember ever seeing that when I lived on the East coast.