Finicky Friday
It’s a burned out, crabby, moody day at work. Mostly capped off by seeing other co-workers get in a few hours after me, one wearing jeans under a dress-top kinda thing, one wearing jeans with a t-shirt and another wearing a short sleeved henley (which had a big old pride rainbow swoosh on it, but still). It makes me wonder why I get up a little early to iron, or press a few shirts before going to bed.
Our “big boss” put this out a few months back:
I’ve noticed that some of the staff are dressing a bit too casual on Friday’s. As a reminder the Dress Code policy is:
Employees shall maintain a well groomed, clean, and professional appearance at all times. No jeans, shorts, t-shirts, or other informal apparel is allowed. Business casual and professional attire is required at all times. fois has contracted the Team to provide professional onsite services and this is achieved, in part, through the physical presentation of personnel.
I know it’s silly, I know it seems petty. Our manager seems totally unwilling to actually say anything. I’d love that little bit of extra morning time to sleep in, knowing I can hop out of the shower, throw on some jeans and head out to the office. Especially since our client contact time is maybe once a week. But I know the one week I decide to come in dressed slightly down will be the day one of the Feds freaks out over how “unprofessional” the contractors look.
I wish our manager would either put his foot down, or tell us that we can slack off the dress code and he’ll back us up. Hell, I’m going shopping this weekend for more office wear, I’d love for that to be jeans instead of more slacks that only ever get worn here in cubeland.
[end rant]
In the interests of being pedantic and passive-aggressive, I’ve taken it upon myself to correct the egregious errors in the note from your “big boss.”
1. He should have written “Fridays” instead of “Friday’s,” since the possesive is not called for here, only the plural of multiple Fridays.
2. Typically commas between nouns signify multiples — “jeans, shorts, t-shirts . . .” yet he uses the singular form of “to be,” namely, “is.” This is a subject-verb disagreement and needs to be fixed by writing “. . . informal apparel are allowed.”
3. The sentence immediately following the one just mentioned is redundant in the context of the rest of the paragraph and should be struck.
4. “fois” starting off the sentence neither is clear nor is presented correctly (no sentence case), yet a few moments later, “Team” is presented with a starting uppercase letter. I believe it is German, and not English, which sets uppercase for its nouns. This should be set as lowercase.
5. The last sentence isn’t exactly incorrect per se, but it is frightening — “the physical presentation of personnel” just scares the bejeezus out of me.
Come on Brian, it’s fois. That is one thing I’ll never miss about that place, are all the people who really should be focusing on their jobs instead of what I’m wearing. I won’t mention names but whoever would read this knows who I’m talking about. Maybe some of those GS-15’s and low level SES’s should get their heads out of their ass and worry more about larger problems, like why their uneducated asses are eating my tax dollars for their inflated non-working salaries. It must suck to that lazy that you can’t hack it in the real world. Besides, picking at contractors is all they can do to keep busy. Someones horroble sense of humor made this a big issue, not the real issue at hand. Once again, I won’t mention names, but the Fed side person knows who they are.