don't knock it till you try it: office fashion

If there's one thing I hate about having a job, it's the clothes. Getting out of bed day after day to cobble together an uncomfortable, ill-fitting corporate costume is one of the mundane indignities that mars an otherwise-pretty-good life.

I just don't understand the point of it. As if seeing a bunch of thickening, middle-aged suburbanites dressed in suits instead of t-shirts will somehow distract from the brutal truth that we're all just self-serving, fearful animal-people, shuffling vacant-eyed through life.

One day I was complaining to my friend "Josie" about how oppressive office attire is, and declared my desire to work from home full time so I never had to hoist myself into another pair of sensible work pants ever again.

"You just need some nicer clothes!" she told me. "Even when I work from home, I always get at least a little dressed up. It's good for morale!"

I couldn't disagree with this more. I guess some people think that professional attire is going to make workers more productive. I suppose the idea is that playing "grown up" is going to trick us into thinking we're busy little junior executives and that we'll finish the report just that much faster.

Personally, I find dress codes condescending. I've worked in a bunch of different offices over the years, and all of them have addressed work-appropriate attire in their own way. From a low-standards code I could get behind ("All employees are expected to arrive at work in clean clothes--underwear on") to more repressive guidelines ("business professional" complete with photos illustrating dos and don'ts), I have operated under various regimes.

But never before I arrived at my current workplace had I encountered such virulent skirt bias.

A few days after starting my new job, I arrived at the office in a sweater, a black skirt, tights and boots. I didn't think twice about the outfit--it was the kind of thing I'd worn all the time at my previous corporate job.

Later that day I ran into my boss, "Kathy", in the hallway. She looked me up and down. "Well!" she said, as if she'd caught me in my hot pants and stripper heels. " I wish I had the legs to pull THAT look off!"

Ever since that I encounter I have to mentally brace myself anytime I wear not-pants in the workplace. For example, just recently I came to work in a generic brown shirt dress. Kathy spotted me immediately. "Cute dress, Shannon!" she said, setting me up. I said thanks. "You know, I have a similar one--from Ann Taylor, one of their cheaper things. I would never wear it to work, though."

I realize that interactions like this are meant to put me in my place--to indicate in no uncertain terms that I am expected to return to the office the next day in a lady-politician pantsuit. But stuff like this just encourages me. I get a juvenile thrill when I see Kathy wince at the sight of my bare knees or when her face falls after I inform her that I found the sweater she admired draped over a parking meter in downtown Minneapolis and that it was "only a little dirty."