The Chronicles of North Carolina - The Wardrobe

So we reached the office on this rainy Monday morning (ironically, that was the only half hour that it rained in the whole week), all decked out in formal wear as we do back home, wary of the fact that we shouldn't appear too casual to our clients. This despite being forewarned that it's not compulsory here to wear formal clothing. So as it turned out, once we were in, we realized that t-shirts, jeans, track pants and shorts seemed to be more the order of the day. And the point i make here to all those brainiac human resource managers out there who make the rules, is that surprise surprise, work DOES get done regardless of your outfit! Now i'd like to believe that everything has a story behind it, including this mind-numbing question of why so-called responsible, working adults need to be given a set of rules about what they can and cannot wear to the office. So here's my take on it.

Something, somewhere went terribly wrong. Maybe it all started as a big joke, or when some smart-alec indian HR guy decided that we should all dress like our western counterparts. After all, he thought, they're ahead of us in the race, so maybe that's their little secret. Now maybe it made sense at the time too, because we sort of needed to fit in with the western world and what not, and this was our way of doing it. However, as time went by and companies evolved and newer, less traditional ideologies cropped up, the same guys whom we were copying, decided to ditch this very idea. I'm pretty sure The Phantom would concur, and quote that ancient jungle saying that says "He who writes awesome code, can also look sharp while doing it" or something to that effect. (As long as they aren't influenced by The Phantom's dressing sense, i think we're ok). So now you've really gotta appreciate the irony of this. We're all here in India, burning up in the unforgiving summer heat, wearing these horrendously impractical formal clothes that clearly aren't meant for such climes, and assumingly emulating our counterparts in the west, who themselves now think that it's a silly idea to be dressed like that. If anyone, and i mean anyone, can give me a convincing explanation as to how the way we dress matters where it comes to our productivity at work, well, i'll probably just try harder at knocking some sense into their head. Now the real clincher was this bizarre reaction to the current economic crisis (i'll refrain from calling it the recession), where the company suddenly decides that they need to enforce the dress code requirements more stringently. I fear to think what logic could possibly have driven this change of heart, but it's disconcertingly like telling us, look, we're losing money and we think it's because you guys look way too sharp wearing those levis. Off with them now, for we just cannot afford it any more. And so the story goes...