All Dressed Up - and Nowhere to Go

Those who know me well know my position on office dress.  While we are officially a “business casual” workplace, I have a different opinion of “business casual” than others around here.

This morning I put on the fancy duds – OK, not that fancy, just a sport coat and tie – but plenty fancy around here – for a customer presentation.  As frequently happens, schedules changed and the 15 minute audience was cancelled. 

So here we were, all dressed up with nowhere to go. This led to a clothing discussion with my colleagues.  Several of us agreed; we are surprised by what passes for acceptable business dress.  I observed that during a rather boring segment of a recent “stand-up” meeting I did a quick clothing inventory:   Of the 14 in attendance, 7 were in jeans, and of those, 3 had shirts un-tucked.   One of my superiors seldom wears jeans, usually only on Fridays – if then.  When she wore jeans recently she was congratulated by an HR rep for doing a nice job setting the proper example for her employees – essentially endorsing and encouraging folks to dress casually.  The gist of the HR thought was that bosses should dress casual to assure the rest of us that it’s OK to dress casual.  As if they needed any encouragement. 

OK – where’s this post leading – nowhere really.  People will dress how they want, and I enjoy the ability to “dress-down” on some days – it’s a nice perk.  But I don’t dress-down every day.  Honestly what do some of these folks wear around the house in the evening?