Hi, everyone. Thomas Astor, Executive Vice President of Human Resources, here with a quick update for the entire company. Smith, Sampson, and Barnes has been one of the world’s largest and most successful corporate law firms for over eighty years. It is a privilege to walk into our stately and distinguished office each morning, an august space that, until just now, imposed a traditional business-formal dress code of pressed slacks, crisp shirts, dark blazers, and long skirts. Starting today, however, I am enacting some changes to the guidelines of clothing allowed at work. From now on, huge coffee stains all over the front of a white button-down shirt are permitted. If an employee chooses to dress with a massive brown coffee stain drenching his collar and turning the fabric over his chest translucent, everyone will accept it as normal and not ask him any questions about how or why the stain is there. Also, beginning immediately, our dress code now tolerates gaudy, distracting wrinkles on stained, soaking-wet sport coats. These wrinkles may make you question the employee’s professionalism and ability to manage his wardrobe and, therefore, his entire personal life, but because the dress code specifically allows sport coats so creased and crinkled and dripping they seem to have been used to sop 16 ounces of coffee off the floor, you are not allowed to ask the employee for an explanation of his sartorial choices. And finally, our revised dress code now authorizes employees the freedom to walk around with enormous holes torn through the seats of their pants. These kinds of ripped-apart gashes that give everyone a look at the employee’s old, beige underwear are officially no longer embarrassing; they are sanctioned by the HR team, and no one is allowed to ask an employee to explain how he blew apart his pants, or to speculate with other employees in whispers that it seems like he crouched down too fast when trying to clean up his spilled coffee, and he ripped his pants in a sort of silent-film-style comedy act, but a sad and lonely version because no one was there to see it, and he didn’t realize how foolish and wrinkled and wet he looked until he arrived at the office, locked his door, and had a panic attack under his desk before coming up with an absurd plan to change the dress code. That sort of commentary on a colleague’s choice of dress is no longer allowed, and anyone caught speaking about coffee stains, wrinkles, or shredded pants will be disciplined immediately. Thank you all for understanding these exciting new amendments.
An Update to the Office Dress Code
