Man, if I wore that shirt to work; I think my co-workers would tackle me in the parking lot and rip it off me.
I work as a lead engineer for a contracting team; and our contract is under review every year. So, if one of us screws up; we all find ourselves without a job. If the reason that our company didn’t win a renewal, was due to a complaint about my attire - whatever company picked up the next contract, would most likely pick up the rest of the team, but not me.
Depending upon your employer, these rule may be incredably inflexable, or very lenient. When I worked in a high tech company (out of view of customers), we wore shorts and T-shirts on a daily basis. The only guides we had were that they could not be ‘hate’ T-shirts, nor condone violence (thus removing the “Halo” and other video game shirts). But, we knew better than to invoke either religion or politics. Our team consisted of Hindu, Christian, Buddhist and Jewish members. We got along great, but our T-shirts were personally screened by a fairly observant manager.
This calculation shows how you make logic the master of your reason. It's a consequentialist conclusion based on knowledge that you don't have.
Whoa man, you've got to lighten up and stop taking the world so seriously. Would it make a difference if I told you it was my company? Thought so... Or it could be that was just another tall tale like the story about wearing such an inflammatory shirt to work?
I've got another story to tell about dress codes;
The service department of the company I worked for was located in an old brick (rebuilt in 1903, after the fire) manufacturing building that we bought long after the original owners had departed this vale of tears. The basement was used to stage the material returned for warranty claims. Each job was placed on a pallet with a job ticket and set aside until Friday when the service techs would evaluate the returned material to ascertain if they were repairable and if such repair was covered under our warranty.
Did I mention that I worked for hydraulic components manufacturer? That meant that return material was generally covered with oil and dirt of various sorts as well as being in various stages of dissasembly. All this was stored in a dimly lit, rat infested cellar with about a five foot headroom.
Since Friday was reserved for giving this mess a good looking over, the techs began dressing down for the job. Eventually the department manager took them to task as his idea of office decorum was at minimum white shirt and tie. The techs held to that until the next Friday when the boss was treated to the sight of them in tee shirts and jeans again. The boss put another blip in their file and this went on for some time with each go round finding the boss more put out by their intransigence. To the point where he threatened "serious repercussions"!
Being Friday when it hit the fan, our four miscreants had a weekend to prepare. They located a tailor shop that rented Tuxedos and asked the proprietor if he had some Tuxes that were so dog butt ugly that nobody would ever rent them and he came up with the perfect wardrobe. As I recall they had lite purple shirts with the entire front ruffled. The jackets and slacks were a somewhat darker shade with the cummerbund darker still, shoes were mirror polished black patent leather. Studs and cuff links, of course! The tailor was so glad to get rid of these clown suits for $50 each that he even threw in the alterations gratis.
Monday came and went as did Tuesday with our crew wearing there normal office apparel. By Friday everyone knew something was up. When the boyz waltzed in all pimped out, looking like sidemen for a big haired black R&B singer the place erupted. People were coming down from the upper floors (with cameras, someone leaked the story!) and the laugh riot went on through most of the morning.
Needless to say the point was made that dress down Friday was not such a bad deal as that particular Friday, no one ventured into the cellar because of inappropriate dress. Even the boss agreed to a loosening of the rule one day in five.
Regards,
GtG