Mental Health Thread #8 - Fall is here!!

That can be a tough one. We have a few employees who sometimes dress like that, not often enough for us to say that their entire wardrobe is inappropriate but enough that some days it can be hard to distinguish if they understood that they were dressing for work, not for going out to a club.

I just spent two days in training/meetings and we were all dressed very business casual but there was one girl who wore skirts both days and the second day I kind of did a double-take when I saw how high the slit in her skirt went. It wasn't revealing when she stood up, but when she sat down there was an awful lot of leg showing. Funny thing is, I know she doesn't dress that way for work every day, but this was her first year to attend these annual meetings so I'm sure she figured she should dress up a little more than normal. Problem is, I think sometimes people don't have any concept of what "dressing up" for work is versus dressing up to go out.

 

Right-it's that line where she's too dressed up and overdoing it-and definitely too sexy for the environment. If this was the office in The Devil Wears Prada she'd be A+ but it's just too much here. I almost think it's easier to address someone dressing too slovenly than someone dressing up too much.

 

I agree, ferritrick. It's easier to tell someone they aren't allowed to wear jeans to work that look like they just cleaned the garage in them, because pretty much everyone understands in a professional office that isn't appropriate. I've found over the years, though, that for many women the definition of what looks "professional" can have a very broad range. I used to work with a woman who had a skirt suit that she felt was the most professional outfit she owned. Mind you, this outfit was fake leather, with a top cut low enough to show ample cleavage and a skirt slit far too up her thigh, but because it was a skirt suit, she felt it fell into the category of professional office wear.

 

Some people have no clue. We are pretty casual, but sweatshirt and sweatpants with Mickey Mouse on the rear end is a tad bit too casual.
Sometimes the ones who dress down too much is because that's all they have and that can be embarrassing if not handled carefully.

 

One place I worked, we had an employee who called me on a regular basis to describe what someone else was wearing and demand to know if it fell within the dress code. Note that she was not the manager of these employees; in fact, the person she called about most often was her own manager. Oh, did I mention that I was about 2,000 miles away and this was before the days of camera phones? (Not that I would have wanted her to take pictures.) I finally had to tell her flatly that if there were any dress code violations in her office, I would hear about them from the branch manager; that she should take any complaints up with him; and that I would personally write her up if she didn't get back to work and stop sticking her nose in matters that were none of her business.

That worked for about a month; then she starting timing how long it took her manager to get back from lunch.

 

I've had to deal with a couple of employees like that, cbg. It's frustrating, to say the least. If employees have enough time in their day to keep track of what everyone else is wearing or their manager's comings and goings, they clearly don't have enough real work to do!

 

Wow cbg, that's just wow. I mean sure I've had that type of person before but never to that extreme.

 

Seems like the weather has been kinda strange in many parts of the country. We have had one small snowfall, and that was in November. Otherwise it has been unseasonably warm lately (high 40's, low 50's) and very wet this week. We had record-setting rainfall a couple of days ago and some flooding. Flooding is uncommon around here but over 9 inches of rain falling in a 36-hour period has to have somewhere to go!

My sister lives in Texas and she said they had about a foot of snow on the ground yesterday in Amarillo. I know they have snow there occasionally but for them to have that much was pretty unusual. She said it broke the record, which was less than half that amount almost 50 years ago!

 

This will be our first plowable snow of the winter, though on the south coast where I live the forecast is still for mostly rain with a little snow mixed in.

 

Well, we got about two inches of mushy snow but it seems to be in the process of changing to rain now. Which is quite okay with me, since on Monday I am flying out for a visit with Proserpina.

 

This is the second "major" snow predicted in the past week that has turned out to be almost nothing. Just enough to make everything icy and slushy. I was hoping for a snow day. More snow supposedly on the way tonight. We shall see.

 

I got out on time and am here with Pro now. They're shutting Boston down - schools closed, no non-essential travel, MBTA shut down. It's all about safety.