Re: Suit-ism, youth-ism

[Anonymous Monk]

Interesting article.

The following really happened to me, and has changed my life, I was once a true "SUIT". Not anymore.

First, I should say I was 52 at the time, and had been in banking. This was a tech company: This happened to me in 1998, when I applied for a job at a large company at the height of the casual trend. I wanted to make a good impression. I really wanted to join this exciting new world.

I bought a new suit - blue pinstriped, Hickey Freeman. I had my shoes polished on the way in to the building. I carefully knotted my tie. I was ready.

I showed up in my $2,000 navy blue pinstriped suit, red silk tie, starched white shirt, cufflinks, black Brooks Brothers captoe shoes polished like mirrors, black silk socks, braces, and a pocket square. The CEO interviewed me. He was about 30, in sandals and jeans.

I settled in for the interview, dapper and confident, impeccably groomed, certain of the power of my appearance.

The first thing he said was: we have a dress code. I thought: OK, he doesn't like my tie. He said: "I only interview people who are barefoot."

Barefoot.

"I think the real person comes out without shoes. It equalizes people" he went on.

I thought: this can't be happening. My carefully shined fancy shoes, the symbol of my prestige and success. I argued with him for a moment, but he said "Are you the kind of flexible person we want here?"

"Shoes AND socks?" I asked.

"Yup" he said.

And I was wearing a business suit! I started to leave, but, somehow, something kept me from going. The challenge? The sense of something new?

So I grimaced, and untied and slid my feet out of my expensive shoes and my dress socks. He took them and I felt the strange sensation of carpet under the soles of my feet. I felt strange - bare feet and suits don't go together. It is impossible to describe the shock. Yet somehow I managed to continue, and soon was caught up in the conversation.

He also loosened up and we really started to talk. Then he said: "Take off your tie, and that thing in your pocket, and those cufflinks."

I untied the offending piece of neckwear and handed it to him, along with the other items.

We talked a while longer. Then he said: "Now that suit jacket. Are you wearing a t-shirt?"

"YES!"

"Then take off that starched shirt, too."

So the slow and literal stripping away of my corporate identity took place. I took off my suit jacket and shirt, and he even told me to take off my braces when he saw them.

At this point, my corporate clothes were piled high on his desk. He went into another room and found a pair of jeans and flip flops. "You can swap the suit pants for these." He left and returned in a moment. There I was, Mister Corporate Banker, Mister Suit-and-tie, barefoot in a t-shirt, stripped of all the accoutrements of privelege and success. I looked like a janitor as he showed me around.

I got the job and took it.

Someting else happened that day. On the way out, I folded my business clothes and put them in a paper bag. The elevator operator, the newspaper vendor, the homeless man and the taxi driver I encountered on the way in now treated me as one of themselves. The shoeshine man who had called me sir when he has shined my shoes didn't recognize me in flip-flops. I no longer received deference. I was no longer above them. I was no longer "sir." I had fallen off the ladder - into freedom. I went into the men's room and changed, re-emerging as my corprate self, but it felt strange. Once again, I was set apart. I thought: "I can't do this." I even took off gave my shoes and socks (again) and gave them to the astonished homeless man. (How many suit-and-tie business men hand over their shoes to bums and walk away barefoot?)

Since that day, I have not worn a suit or a tie. I often walk barefoot if at all possible - unimagineable before. I am casual all the time. I was a symbol and a proponent of "suitism", but after being stripped that day, I no longer am.