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Workplace Attire for Productivity

Jun 18, 2010 / On the Job / Trackback

I’m writ­ing to you from a 29.25 sq ft slice of per­fec­tion — my bed and pre­ferred work envi­ron­ment. The dog, a cat and a latte are with me and my Insp­iron…  The last thing I want when I’m try­ing to be pro­duc­tive is but­ton gap in my blouse or garter slip­page. I need to be com­fort­able and my cloth­ing needs to move with me not against me for productivity’s sake. There­fore, I’m prone to lik­ing paja­mas and cloth­ing that most closely resem­bles them.

Since I don’t actu­ally work from home I have wardrobe chal­lenges and a closet full of suits that look swell on the hanger but feel like straight jack­ets on.  I don’t need to dress like a Trump to feel good about myself or confident.

So, when I saw this LinkedIn poll about ideal work­day attire I was intrigued to see how oth­ers feel. Unfor­tu­nately, the cre­ator of this poll didn’t have the fore­sight to have paja­mas as one of the options, though I don’t dis­agree with respon­dents that a soft pair of well worn jeans and a T are the best of the choices offered.

What is your ideal work­day attire?


P.S. If you bought that bit about me and garters you’re a sucker…


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  • Joan

    I think about this at work when I see and hear some­one smack­ing by in their beachy flip flops. In my opin­ion, it’s impos­si­ble to not view pro­fes­sional appear­ance and relate it to work ethic and even intel­li­gence. Now, before every­one starts twit­ter­ing, hear me out. I also think that jeans and even flip flops can have a place in cer­tain work envi­ron­ments. It’s often the con­di­tion and/or pair­ing of the items with apparel that is far too casual. Exam­ples include say­ings on the t-shirt; a body hug­ging t-shirt; a skin-baring tank top; jeans with rips in regard­less of how styl­ish and expen­sive. I could go on, but we’ve all seen the car­toons and real-life office exam­ples of busi­ness casual hav­ing gone TOO casual. We have to be aware of the per­cep­tion of cus­tomers and asso­ciates too. I recall being told by an asso­ciate that they didn’t know who their new man­ager was because there was no one dressed dif­fer­ently. I’ll leave you with that com­ment to ponder.

    • http://karlaporter.com/ Karla Porter

      Joan — If employ­ees don’t know who their man­ager is unless they have cer­tain cloth­ing on then I would say fash­ion is the least of the company’s prob­lems (I’m not against higher ups using a glue gun to put gems on their flip flops so they look like they’re worth more). As for the “too casual”, hoochie mamma cos­tumes and ripped cloth­ing don’t nec­es­sar­ily have to come in a par­tic­u­lar fab­ric. Debrahlee Loren­zana is a per­fect exam­ple of being up the creek with­out a pad­dle in a busi­ness suit. We should be safe for a while though, it looks like smock tops are back and who know, next might be granny skirts.

  • http://karlaporter.com/ Karla Porter

    Charissa — I hear what you are say­ing. It’s inter­est­ing to mote that if you go to the poll and view responses by age you will see that younger pro­fes­sion­als are more inter­ested in suit­ing up. You cer­tainly can’t go “wrong” wear­ing one while you are estab­lish­ing your­self and climb­ing up..

    I just cal­cu­lated I have worked approx­i­mately 64,200 hours so far… is a suit less appeal­ing to you now?

  • http://blog.engineeringsolutionsteam.com/ Kirk Abra­ham

    Hey Karla…great post! Just yes­ter­day read another that was some­what sim­i­lar topic ( ‘Good­bye to the Office’ @ http://ff.im/-mi0z7 )

    • http://karlaporter.com/ Karla Porter

      Oh that Seth.. always try­ing to one up me via ESP. I sense a com­plot. He is obvi­ously read­ing my mind and using my thoughts to be highly successful.

  • http://twitter.com/charissawg Charissa Grandin

    When I worked at an office, I liked to look pro­fes­sional and put together. It made me hap­pier and feel more business-like to dress the part. Now work­ing at home and as a B&B/Gallery assis­tant, I tend to wear what’s com­fort­able, usu­ally shorts and a nice top (jeans/slacks when it’s cooler).


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