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The End of Casual Friday

Written by: Stuart Schneiderman

Article Overview: Would the business world function better if people dressed more formally? And has the current financial crisis spelled the end of casual Friday? In time of trouble should people be more intent and serious about their decorum and demeanor on the job?

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The End of Casual Friday

I may be getting a little ahead of the curve, but it would surely be a good thing if people in the business world went back to dressing professionally every day.



Observing that business people in London are reverting to more formal attire, Lucy Kellaway comments: “The casual look, which we used to celebrate as a sign of egalitarianism and unstuffiness, now looks sloppy.”


Moreover, sloppy dress might well denote sloppy thought. Or worse. Kellaway explains how casual dress became discredited: “…we also are starting to suspect that a man who is casual with his clothes may be casual with our money.”


As Kellaway says, people adopted casual dress because they thought it was going to fire up their creativity.


Surely, this fetishization of creativity is a vestige of the 1960s counterculture. I suspect that what did in god of creativity was the now-discredited notion of: creative accounting.


Weren’t bankers engaging in the highest level of creativity, creating something out of nothing. Once you unleash human imagination and set it working in the financial world, the sky’s the limit.


The return to more formal dress will, at the least, cure a strange form of cultural dissonance.


The kind that occurred when Mom and Dad were going to work dressed casually, while their children were neatly dressed in school uniforms. To the delight of their parents.


When businesses rebelled against uniforms they were rejecting the militarism from which such dress codes stem. These codes denote position on the status hierarchy and membership in a group. They do not enhance your feelings of being a unique, autonomous individual.


And yet, when we are in trouble, and we need to band together to fight our way through our problems, it is not a time to cultivate the creativity of each and every individual. That has been our cultural policy, and we see where that has ended up.


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Home > Business-Coach > Stuart Schneiderman > The End of Casual Friday
Article Tags: 1960s, business world, casual dress, creativity, cultural dissonance, curve, dress codes, egalitarianism, feelings, formal attire, formal dress, hierarchy, human imagination, lucy kellaway, militarism, mom and dad, notion, school uniforms, something out of nothing, vestige

About the Author: Stuart Schneiderman
RSS for Stuart's articles - Visit Stuart's website

I began my career as a psychotherapist. Having spent too much time trying to figure out why people get it wrong, I changed course and started helping them to get it right. As a business coach I show people how to lead and manage, how to negotiate and organize. And I especially work on developing good behavior and good character, in oneself and in others.

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Ebay: System and method Ebay: System and method - [quote:1y2ddln3]Unless you wanna spend hours packing your products and run everyday to FedEx to ship them, I would not recomment an ebay business [/quote:1y2ddln3] You don't have to run every day to FedEx...if you have that much volume, let Fed Ex come to you! Yes they charge a fee but it saves you time, wear and tear on your car, and cost of gas. Also, rather than do this every day, set aside one day, for example a Friday, and pack everything on that day and ship it out. If you've got the correct-sized boxes and appropriate packing material, it shouldn't take that long to do. Just specify in your ads that winning bids are shipped on the next Friday, so your customers know what's going on, and you should have no hassles.
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