> If a convenience store says "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service", no reasonable worker would refuse service to someone wearing a dress.

Odds are good they will if they disapprove of the dress, or if they disapprove of the someone’s wearing of a dress.

Because the rule is not actually about shirts or shoes, it’s about throwing out people considered undesirable. Those signs were invented to throw out hippies.

Similarly “please wait to be seated”, used to be only in high-end restaurants, lower end ones introduced them so they could ignore / refuse to seat hippies. It’s much easier to make a patron leave when they’ve been standing at the entrance for half an hour than when they’ve seated themselves.

What about when they say “long haired freaky people need not apply”?

I would argue that “no shirt, no shoes, no service” is not rule but rather a concise and simplistic phrase that communicates the spirit of the rule to a broad audience. The rule is that a human must have their feet, part of their lower and upper body covered or else they will be denied entry and/or refused service. The phrase is just a way to communicate that rule in a concise way

That's kind of my point though. Written rules sacrifice specificity for brevity all the time, and it works for most reasonable people most of the time.