But Now What

In my many years of working, one of the perks that I have come to enjoy and look forward to is Summer Fridays. Now for those of you unfamiliar with, or not fortunate enough to get Summer Fridays *coughs* my friends in finance *coughs,* I will gladly explain the concept to you! Summer Fridays usually begin around Memorial Day and end around Labor Day. For all the Fridays during this time period, you either work a half day, get out of work early, or for some of us VIPs (not really VIP, but a girl can dream) you work an entire Friday and the following Friday you are off completely.

Now I am not sure that I can put into words the level of awesomeness that is Summer Friday. What I can tell you is the IMMEDIATE onset  of the FML feeling in the office  the first Friday that people realize they have to work a FULL day EVERY Friday. This feeling tends to last every Friday until they are once again blessed with the sweet return of Summer Friday, I kid you not.

Another awesome component of Summer Fridays is that employees are typically allowed to dress down. So if you work at a company that is on the conservative end, you may be able to loosen your tie, not wear a suit jacket or if your company is really fashion forward and living on the edge, you may even be allowed to wear your dress or skirt without stockings!

Since I have made it my mission to always hook you up, I am here to give you the ins and outs Summer Fridays so that you are not the girl/guy who took the meaning of Summer Fridays WAY too far. Trust me, they will  be giggling at you in the bathroom.

Now expectations change from the time you were an intern to an actual full time employee. Just because you are allowed to dress down does not mean you get to wear whatever you want. Example, I was walking to a meeting today and I saw a young lady who had clearly woken up this morning and said to herself “Self, I wonder where my shortest pair of daisy dukes are?” She picked them up, cut off 2 more inches, put them on, looked in the mirror, decided they were still not short enough, cut off another inch and a half, said “perfect” and walked out of the door. Not OK!!!! Showing too much skin is still not appropriate for the work place. We know its hot…but not that hot.

You also don’t want to be that guy that shows up to the office in basketball shorts and adidas slippers because you’re “only going to be at the office for a few hours anyway.” Clearly, you are still at work and need to be presentable.

AND Just so we are clear there is NEVER an occasion where it is ok to wear your club dress, sweat pants or pajamas to the office.

When deciding how “down” you should dress I suggest you use a few scales of measurement:

1. Can people see your goodies (all/any of them!) at any point of action (sitting, standing, bending over) during the day?

2. Would you be comfortable in that outfit if you were stuck in an elevator with the president of your company?

3. Would you wear the exact same outfit to the club?

4. Would someone who didn’t know you call security if they saw you on the premises?

If you are able to answer 1 out of the 4 questions with a yes, you probably should reconsider your outfit. 2 or 3 yes answers…Just put the outfit back in the closet!  I’m not judging, just saying.

Sidenote: If you did not know that people talk about this kind of stuff in the bathroom, it’s probably because you are the person they are talking about, so now that you know better, do better!!!