Wearing the Kilt at Work - Like Pulling Teeth

[Jack Daw]

I work for a Multi-National Financial Printer and I wear a kilt everyday to work, just lucky I guess, but you could always look into the HR dept. guidelines on Dress Codes also look for any documentation on diversity.

What's allowed by policy is different from what management really tallies as reasons to promote an employee or not. As an example, facial whiskers are permitted, but the Big Cheese tells in cryptic language certain staffers that they had better not grow any.

[Jack Daw]

Yeah, I sure a.... Heyyyyy, wait a minute! I DO work for one of those!

Good luck with that,
Rex.

But, you've wear the kilt to work? Are you in the back?

BTW, I love Graeter's Ice Cream and Skyline chili! I've been to Cincinnati.

[Jack Daw]

Good luck. My boss is currently going through "channels" for me trying to get my Utilikilt approved as an official uniform option. HE liked it and says yes, but there's always another boss higher up the food chain, eh?

Sounds like a good boss. Good luck!

[Jack Daw]

That sounds somewhat like my company. Yet they allow shorts! Grrr. If an HR department is involved, you know sense and logic will lose out.

Yes, HR. Marvelous people where I work they are. The department performed a market survey to determine if our pay scales should be revised. THEY DID! They changed the pay ranges! But, our salaries stay the same.

[Rex_Tremende]

But, you've wear the kilt to work? Are you in the back?

Well, yes and no. Yes, I'm in the back office, but no, my role is visible to hundreds of people and highly exposed to senior executives. Yes and no, I've worn a kilt in front of colleagues but never at the office during working hours. I've been seen more than once out and about in Cincinnati by coworkers, worn a kilt to an off-site meeting, to an all-employee holiday party and to a more intimate office party, had a life-sized poster of me in a kilt put on full display outside my own office near the COO executive suite, have discussed my interest in kilts with senior HR staff, but wearing a kilt on the job is not something I'm interested in pursuing right now.

I think the thing to remember about stuffy banks is that they don't like to be surprised, and they don't deal well with non-conformity. Or rather - and let me go a bit out on a limb here by saying - they don't deal well with reactions to non-conformity. On the other hand, many financial institutions these days are starting to recognize the value of diversity. In order to compete in the marketplace, they need to appeal to a broad swath of the cultural collage, not only among potential customers, but also in talent. As a consequence, they've had to loosen their grip on long-cherished notions and policies on what a bank looks like, externally and internally.

I don't know about your financial institution, but in this particular time of economic stress my employer has shifted a good deal of its relentless focus on shareholder value to its employees, a hunkering down, if you will, to ensure that we have the talent available to weather the storm and also be ready to go when it passes. That's why a catchphrase like "employee engagement" is more than mere lip service where I work.

I think you're working the right angles - do something important for me, and I'll do something important for you - but remember that your bank probably considers charity something you do "willingly" - not at all coerced - especially if the campaign involves the letters U and W. But they are probably quick enough to realize that if they open the door for this, you'll want to do it more often, so if you're really trying to get the corporate blessing on the kilt as casual wear, I'd suggest you try and separate the issues.

I'd discuss what it means to you (apart from a reward for charitable contributions), show them representative photos of how you'd dress, and help them formulate responses to objections that will inevitably trickle up. Help them see how respecting diversity in all its forms is good for the company. Acknowledge the limits that corporate life requires, but help them see how what you want to do is well within those limits. Start building influential allies who are probably outside your organizational structure, but who are willing and can stand with you on the issues that are important to you.

Finally, or perhaps first, make sure your work outputs are unassailable. Yeah, it's unfair, but you can't allow a crack in your performance on the job be reason for your management to crumble your case. It goes back to that quid-pro-quo I mentioned above - something good for me, something good for you. If you're already providing something really good, it makes it much easier for them to return the favor.

Let us know how it goes,
Rex.

[O'Callaghan]

Where I work, the men's dress code specifies that your shirt must have a collar and you have to wear smart trousers, and the rules for casual Friday, for both genders, only add the option to wear jeans and/or athletic shoes. It's not the strictest set of rules I've had to work under, but it doesn't provide for men wearing anything below the waist that doesn't have two legs in it.

[Frank McGrath]

Yes, HR. Marvelous people where I work they are. The department performed a market survey to determine if our pay scales should be revised. THEY DID! They changed the pay ranges! But, our salaries stay the same.

My darling wife, being in HR all her career, does not know everything. She was working a consulting job for a large institution in the NE. We started talking about what the tradesman were earning. Painters were making 5.00 an hour more than electricians. I told her this is no good. We argued for days until I took her to see a friend that was an electrician. She now knows about High wattage panels, and if pressed she could probably change a breaker if she had to. (she has me to do that kind of work, though). The electricians got a good raise and I received a nice gift from the group. Every good HR person still needs a blue collar consultant now and then.

[auld argonian]

I wonder if women have also to go thru channels when they decide to go to work wearing pants.

Interesting point. I lived through the period during which the wearing of pants by women in the workplace gradually became acceptable and, in retrospect, it was interesting. Don't forget that one of the "tipping points" in that transition was the employment of women in the production of ships and planes as part of the war effort in the 1940's. I think that that sort of took the edge off the image of "wimmens in pants" as crossdressers.

Looking at the sitcoms of the 1950's and you'll see women in pants in a casual setting...in the home, for example...but the rare woman in the workplace is always in a skirt or dress. There were a couple of great photo journalist type articles in magazines like Life and Look about "the working girl in the modern world"...to our eyes these now seem pretty funny but they were news back then. Needless to say, the working girl was always dressed "appropriately" for the time: pants only in a casual non-work setting if at all.

I well remember the emergence of the womens' pants suit...Hillary Clinton did not invent them (she has just raised them to an art form). The popularity of synthetic fibers helped make these affordable but don't forget the women who just have a suit made from the same business-appropriate fabrics that mens' suits are made of but with a skirt rather than pants. But it was controversial and there were comments about trousered women "wanting to be men" and it "not projecting a businesslike image" and such like.

Obviously, though, we are way beyond that and now absolutely anything goes and everything has, imho, gone to hell. What was once beach wear is now business wear...just yesterday I saw huge shoals of people going to work in downtown Chicago looking like they were going to a beach party. I guess that the prevailing attitude is that it doesn't matter how you look as long as you're doing your job. Looks like most of these folks are employed as clam diggers but there ya' go.

So I continue to find the threads on Xmarksers being hassled about wearing the kilt to work bothersome. With all of the fashion crimes being committed nowadays, how disruptive is a man in a kilt...perhaps one of the most conservative garments in the world? I still think that it stems from the fear that the kiltie in question is going regimental and that an "accident" is going to happen. One of my stock answers to that (and it seems that no one ever comes right out and says that that is what they are worried about but that they hem and haw around the topic) has been, "I assure you that if I were to do a handstand right now, modesty would be preserved...okay?" That usually shuts them down. But that's me and the way that I dress and not necessarily anybody else...

Best of luck to all who have to slug it out to get to wear the kilt in the workplace.

Best

AA

[GreenDragon]

Yeah, I sure a.... Heyyyyy, wait a minute! I DO work for one of those!

Good luck with that,
Rex.

It's OK Rex. At least it's a locally owned bank. Hey, i bank there.

[Geoff Withnell]

I was joking with my senior manager about wearing a kilt to work one day. Joking because I work for a consulting company, and it would be inappropriate to draw attention away from our message and to how I am dressed. We decided that, since our company dress code requires a suit when "client facing", a nice tweed kilt with a matching jacket would be perfectly acceptable according to the strict wording of the dress code. However, he pointed out, the code requires that "with any outfit with a skirt-type lower half, hose must be worn, and the hose tops should not be visible." So he said fine, as long as I wore thigh highs or panty hose. The company is actually very accepting, and I have worn a kilt to company holiday parties, picnics, etc, with nothing but positive comment.

Geoff Withnell