Dressing for the Role

Before I begin, let me tell a story.  A few weeks ago, I happen to be walking through the local mall and glanced over at one of the stores.  All of a sudden, I saw a breast pop out of a shirt of a female store employee.  Not being prude, I continued to watch to see how long it would take before this employee realized what happened.  Since I was about 20 feet away and behind a display, I could easily look without looking like a prude.  It took about 5 minutes to realize her wardrobe malfunction and button herself up accordingly.  My point is that this employee was wearing street clothes with just a lanyard identifying her as an employee.  What bothers me most about this is just how many stores have similar problems. 

For example, during its existence, Borders female employees regularly gave their customers a show because every time they bent over, their breasts would be fully exposed.  Don’t they realize this or are they purposely not wearing underwear?  To me, I would be embarrassed as a female if I didn’t wear underwear all the time.

As another example, recently I have noticed an increasingly number of female employees at Target wearing low cut sweaters and then wearing even lower cut shirts underneath them.  This means that their cleavage is shown to the fullest extent and in some ways even more than I think it should be.  My question is why are these female employees not told to go home and put on something a little less revealing.  I believe the answer is that many of these employees are managed by MALE managers who enjoy the show they provide.  The reason I say this is that while I was employed at Woolworth, there was one manager who constantly was making comments to me as his thoughts of the young female employees and the young female customers who enter the store.  Ironically, this 60+ year old manager was married to a girl barely out of high school.  So I could understand his flirtiness with the young women.

It seems that more and more companies are moving away from wearing street clothes and moving into company clothes.  Among the companies now doing this are Sears and Radio Shack.  Apparently the suits are leaving the retail industry once and for all.

Way back when I started at Woolworth back in 1989, guys had to wear a dress shirt, nice pants and wear a tie.  They were given a red vest to wear over their nice shirt.  Attached to the vest was a huge nametag.  This nametag was almost as large as the contestant tags on “The Price is Right”.  Interestingly, nobody in the store had their name engraved on their nametag, they were all from a cheap DYMO labelmaker.  It really makes you think you could be disposed of at any time.  I felt lucky I was with them as long as I was.  The women of the company, however, had a choice of wearing either a vest or wearing a smock (with 2 pockets!! – how lucky is that). 

With only a 7 week lifespan at HQ, my nametag should have been a Post-It note, but this company was a little kinder in giving a small nametag with a name entered again with a DYMO labelmaker.  The most important thing about this company was that I could finally ditch the fancy duds.  We were assigned an ugly green shirt to wear and some of the employees wore an ugly green apron as well. Beyond that, it was anything goes…and I do mean ANYTHING!!  The employees were allowed to wear short pants (I did..my legs looked great back then..very sexy).  However, some of the girls wore pants that were so short that they really didn’t qualify as pants in my book.  Again, since this company was dominated by male managers, it was like a feeding frenzy to see all these hot looking girls dressed this way.

Staples, however, was different..much different.  This company has had as many wardrobe changes as Vanna White (well not quite).  My wardrobe never changed:  red shirt, black pants, and black shoes (sneakers actually).  Managers shirts evolved from wearing pink-striped shirts to gray shirts to now I guess green shirts.  The electronics department evolved from red shirts to green and black shirts.  The copy center evolved from red shirts to blue shirts.  The only thing that remained constant was the nametag.  It was a small nametag that usually had a DYMO-made name with the words of “Sales Associate” engraved underneath.  I was lucky that I was hired way back to have an actual engraved nametag.  I felt proud of having my name engraved in this tag.  In fact, at the time of my termination, the store manager asked for the nametag back, I ignored his request since this was a personalized nametag with other attachments (I will get into that with a future post).  Never would I ever depart with this nametag.  Ironically, the management’s shirts changed 3 times during my employment with the company.  First it started out being a pink pin-striped shirt, then moved onto a black-pin striped, then finally a gray shirt.  I guess the shirts fit their attitudes.

The interesting thing about these companies is how they reacted when someone came in dressed improperly.  Depending on the circumstances, Woolworth let the improper wardrobe slide.  HQ didn’t care at all, as long as the important areas were mostly covered (and I do mean mostly).  Sadly, Staples had no forgiveness in its dress code: wear the wrong shoes-go home and change (off the clock of course). wrong pants-see you later.  The management seemed as much concerned about their dress code than anything else.  Why should management really have to be so rigid all the time when people do have lives outside the company walls (or at least that is the way one should think).  Ironically, the company offered a full catalog of wardrobe items that you could order to have that “Staples-logo” with you all the time in your personal life.  Possibly, they might have even carried Staples logo women’s undergarments too….

 

Next Up:  One Employee—Too Many Hats