2001-07-12~~12:36 p.m.
The dress code...

I slept upstairs in the bed last night. It was wonderful. Like a slumber party. I have been so lonely down on the couch since I hurt my knee. The sleep upstairs was considerably worse than the sleep I have been getting on the couch (where I can’t toss and turn and wake up in pain every 20 minutes). But, gosh, it was SO fabulous to lay and talk and giggle with my husband.

His company is moving tomorrow to a new location. Yesterday they got their instructions about how they are supposed to pack and label their things. They are also allowed to wear jeans today, even though it isn’t Friday, because it is a “packing day”.

To this, my husband’s response was, “We should wear shorts.”

His boss replied, “YOU know what shorts would be appropriate and I know what shorts would be appropriate. But ALL these people do not know what shorts would be appropriate. Do YOU want to be the judge of that?”

Now, my husband is obviously a married man. He is not going to be out judging wet T-shirt contests at the local bar. Shorts judge is about as close to that as he is ever going to get. So, “Yes. Yes, I should be the judge of that.” says he.

Of course this isn’t actually going to happen, but it was fuel for our discussion of the discrimination that exists in the workplace with regard to dress code.

The standard at T’s office is business casual. (For which he is actually quite grateful since he spent SO many years wearing a tie everyday.) Most of the men wear Dockers and such with polo shirts. Shorts are not permitted. So I said, “What about skorts? Can the women wear skorts?”

“Well, yes.”

Okay, so tell me. What is it about a little flap of material on the front of a pair of shorts that makes them suddenly “appropriate”? And if a skort is, in fact, appropriate for a woman, can the men wear them too?

I was thinking that they wouldn’t so much be the skirt+shorts=skort like the ones for women, but maybe more of a kilt+shorts=korts. They wouldn’t be hard to dummy up just to give it a try. I offered to baste a handkerchief over the front of a pair of his nice shorts so he could wear it to work and see if it would fly with the superiors. But even the men who don’t have someone to baste for them could rig up a pair with a handkerchief and a stapler.

But then I started thinking about how there would still be a need for someone to judge the appropriateness of these garments. I know men. I know how men like to fix things. Can’t you just see men skipping the basting or the stapler in favor of just slappin’ a hanky on the front of their shorts with a whole bunch of duct tape?

Now *that* would just be ridiculous.

-Alice