I’ve worked at a tech company where I could literally wear sweats and flip flops and throw my greasy hair under a baseball cap. I’ve worked at a brokerage firm where I had to wear a suit every day. Not just “professional attire”… a suit. On “Casual Friday” I could wear a dress or slacks and a dress shirt or a plain polo and dress shoes.
I don’t question dress codes any more; I just go with the flow.
You really get the side eye for wearing a company branded pride shirt? We have very colorful pride shirts and they are really not my style but I almost feel like I’m not supportive if I don’t get one. Same for the shirt sponsored by our DEI group. I mean, that one is not crazy and I would wear it but I’d feel like I was appropriating an identity that is not my own.
No one has ever said anything to me, but we are only really supposed to wear company tshirts on our team building volunteer days, and never wear tshirts otherwise. There are still many people who have worked here for ages who wear suits every day. There is a lot of work to be done to modernize my company, I would say. But when I started, jeans were reserved for Fridays, and now they’re permitted every day, although most in actuarial don’t wear jeans at all.
I think my company has made a lot of progress on lgbtq, we even support our local pride festival, but I don’t feel that the company embraces it so much as recognizes they have to acknowledge it to stay relevant.
That was my last company, they were huge and publicly traded, and LGBTQ+ (among a lot of other things) were paid lip service. The company might change their Twitter profile pic for a month type of a thing.
Current company DGAF what you wear to work, we have a whole series of events for Pride Month (including drag queen story hour ), and a lot of stuff is written formally into our company culture. You’re expected to show up to work as you like and people will embrace you for being you, whoever you are. As a result the company is quite diverse across a lot of measures.
Why is it that if I bring my young children to a brewery I’m a hip, with-it parent; but if I bring them to a bar, I’m getting a visit from Child Protective Services?