Office attire can compromise safety

I have a new nemesis in life. No more will I hate the guy who parks his car too close to… I have a new nemesis in life. No more will I hate the guy who parks his car too close to mine in my apartment’s parking lot, no more will I despise the slow, mean cashier at Giant Eagle, and no more will I attempt to beef with that guy who almost fought me at a party because I was wearing a shirt with a hammer and sickle on it and his family had to flee Cuba when the revolution came.

No, all of these worthy battles and annoyances need to be pushed aside. No longer can I waste time plotting and scheming against them, time that will take me away from my new fight, my new adversary, the enemy of my friend which makes it my enemy: the dreaded style of dress known as office casual.

It’s going to be tough, I know. It isn’t easy battling an idea, but if the United States of America can spend billions of tax dollars doing it – uh, that’s our War on Terror I’m discussing, not our War on Khakis – I can give it a shot too, right? Right!

Why do I hate this so much? Why does the idea of tucking in my shirt freak me out so? These aren’t easy questions, especially as I haven’t had enough coffee this morning and I’m still a little sleepy. So, I’m going to shirk the pressure of delivering a coherent, well-reasoned argument and instead answer with a brief unfocused narrative.

A few years ago, before I went back to school and before I was working at a sandwich shop in the Allegheny courthouse where couples in the process of battling for custody of their children would yell at me that I put the wrong kind of cheese on their chicken salad sandwich with extra mayo, I needed a job. So I decided to apply at a temp agency Downtown, confident that, even with my desperately limited clerical skills, I would be able to score some kind of low-pressure mailroom job. Instead, I became a temp at a tennis ball factory where I assumed the unlikely job title of “picker” and worked filling orders in a strange industrial atmosphere. That, however, is another column which is, tragically, probably more interesting than the one you are reading right now.

The column you are reading right now would like you to focus on the clothes I was wearing when I interviewed at the temp agency which got me the warehouse gig. Deciding that I should look professional, yet still casual, I wore my dreaded nemesis, office casual. Light blue shirt. White collar and cuffs. Khakis. With pleats. I can’t even remember my shoes. What I’ll never forget, though, is the gun.

It was underneath the bridge on the South Side, down by Station Square and that one gas station, where everything is warehouse and shadow from the overpass above. I had walked across the Smithfield Street Bridge, because it was a gorgeous day, but I had started getting really hot as I made the walk for my apartment, because East Carson at that point geographically is on a slow rising advance.

I was in the shadow when a car flew by, filled with kids who were probably in high school or maybe a little older. They were shouting something, some kind of weird banter I couldn’t figure out. And then in the backseat there was a gun. And they were shouting and laughing, a nature show of hyenas, and then they fired and took off, trailing hysterics.

I looked down; I couldn’t tell what was going on. Had they shot me? Shouldn’t have there been a kaboom? Blood? Pain?

I looked at my shirt, my stupid blue office shirt. Water was splashed across the chest.

Why did those guys decide to shoot me with their water gun? Is it because when I walk, I look at the ground with my shoulders slightly hunched in a manner associated with simians and then sometimes I trip on the sidewalk and look like a moron? Or was it just that they were bored? Or was it that I was there and they had the water gun and so they figured why not?

While I think all of these answers are valid, I believe there is one other factor we have yet to discuss, and that’s the fact that I looked like a tool. And I looked like that because of what I was wearing.

Lame office clothes make you look lame. They make you an easy target for water guns and derision. They take away you and replace it with somebody who is going to get on that TPS report first thing in the morning.

I’ve always liked clothing, and I’ve always liked the fact that what you wear becomes who you are. I think that it’s weird and interesting that clothes can function as an exterior signal of the inside. I think that it’s fun that we can make our image for other people by the clothes we put on every morning.

So who am I when I put on the khakis? Do I just turn into everyone else who is wearing khakis? Or am I still me, just in pleated pants?

And does it even matter what kind of pants I’m wearing if that guy keeps parking too close to me?

If you can explain the magnetic pull that Target has over me, please e-mail kjs34@pitt.edu.