Dressed for Success

Work-appropriate attire is not quite the same thing at a stodgy government agency as it is at a trendy private-sector marketing company, is it?

This morning I was sent to a mandatory safety awareness session at another campus. Normally three or four people from a few different departments attend these, but today only the hosting department was in attendance, so it felt kind of as if I were crashing their staff meeting. Their department handles construction site inspections.

I unsuspectingly sashayed my vanilla-brown-sugar-scented, short-skirt-clad, toe-ring-and-anklet-bedecked self into the meeting room - and froze. Fifteen grizzled construction worker heads swiveled to stare at me. A hush fell.

Their kind and my kind are enemies in the wild.

At lunchtime, carrying my soup back from the microwave to my desk, I nearly collided with a man I don't know, who works on my floor. We laughed and excused ourselves politely, and I went back to my cube about twenty feet away.

"Always getting into trouble, bumping into girls!" joked another man in the kitchenette as I got back to my desk. They proceeded to banter back and forth briefly about how it's nice to bump into pretty girls, but you gotta just look, etc. I thought about standing up and clearing my throat and saying, "You know, I'm right here..."

Maybe I should demand a raise so I can buy a new wardrobe.