Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually
I remember when I entered the work force back in 1978 right out of college and went to work for Bell Labs. We were required to wear a suit, ties and white shirt. You were not allowed to hang your jacket over your chair; it had to be hung in the closet. You could smoke at your desk, I am not a smoker but many others took advantage of that. You could smoke in conference rooms during meetings and in elevators and many did so (See Mad Men).It has been very interesting watching the norms shift over the last almost 40 years. Women and minorities filling the ranks, casual attire, smoking prohibitions (all very good things in my view).One, funny interesting side story, if you will indulge this old timer. When I was in high school, my father was a budding attorney and of course had to wear a suit, tie and white shirt. My mother was a struggling artist. My father wanted her to wash and iron his shirts to save money and only have to pay for the dry cleaning of the shirts. My mother refused (an early feminist perhaps). They had a huge fight over it. In the end, my Mother relented and agreed to endure the task. However, in classic passive aggressive style, she "accidentally" got a red sock in the wash with the shirts turning them a slight shade of pink. Of course that made them, for that time, unusable !  So he had to toss them. After that he simply had them laundered. Ever since then our family calls this ruse "red-socking-it", which basically means intentionally fucking up to get out of doing something you don't want to do. I think we can all think of times when someone at work "red-socked-it".