News: 1597648511

Ever turned up for a meeting in garb some might consider wildly inappropriate?

Not me, but when I was a relatively fresh-faced almost-newbie at my first company, I remember coming out of my office heading for the kitchen and seeing someone siting in the reception with long, straggly hair, and wearing what can be best described as the sort of clothing window cleaners tend to use. Turned out that he was actually a post-grad student just about to be awarded his PhD and was here for an interview for his first (consultancy) job. Spoke to the director who interviewed him; apparently it was pretty much the shortest job interview on record (< 30 minutes) since the director took one look at him and decided that there was no way on earth they could take him on in any form of customer-facing role.

Of course. An old Dilbert cartoon once pointed out it is vital that the technicians who built your computer were properly dressed.

I always find judging people by how they look and dress such a great way of determining the content of their character.

It affects whether it gets an up-vote or a down-vote.

I suspect it's a mild example of Poe's Law in action.

To be fair, he did say it was a customer facing role. And whether or not you like it, how you look is important if you're representing the customer.

It's no longer (normally) the case that a suit and tie is necessary for a technical customer facing role, but even if you're wearing a polo shirt and chinos, you should still be smartly turned out.

And to turn up to a job interview looking like a slob is just unprofessional.

Yep. As someone with a lifelong aversion to "suit-and-tie" dress codes, I don't really care what a candidate wears to an interview, or what they wear at the office, but there are limits: it has to be intact and, most importantly, it has to be clean .

I wasn't actually in this meeting, but I heard it from a reliable source.

It was a meeting with a vendor, so smart turnout was expected. Someone who obviously didn't know all of the attendees showed up a bit late and started to berate a somewhat casually dressed individual about their appearance, until it was pointed out that this was the vendor!

On the flipside, I turned up to my current job in my best suit and dressed smartly for the first day after getting the job.

My manager took one look at me on that day and said he never wanted to see me wearing it ever again. So jeans and tee-shirt have been the norm ever since...

Well apart from the promotion interview. Old broken ribs causing my lungs to be in agony, cue heavy duty painkillers and a very tight waistcoat so I could at least speak without wincing.

Owner of Gimlet's Hole Food Delicatessen in Cable Street. Not much is known about this dwarf, but his particularly piercing stare is renowned. During Feet of Clay he is accused of using poisoned meat including beef and chicken. This turned out to be a problem with the rats bought from Wee Mad Arthur.

During Thud! it seems he is a respected character among the city dwarfs and has recently opened a new restaurant, Yo Rat! on Attic Bee Street.

Sir Pterry would be proud of you.

A great man, sorely missed.

Ahem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Lorrington_%22Gimlet%22_King

Nice one!

I've done the "visit banker after cleaning the hog pen, before showering" thing. I completely lost track of the time[0], until SWMBO reminded me. Fortunately she (the banker) grew up in a barn and can look past my peculiarities. I got the loan.

The last 9-5 I interviewed for (in 1989), I was wearing my racing leathers. All black, no logos. When the interviewer queried my choice of "uniform", I pointed out that he had asked me to drive up from Palo Alto to South San Francisco by 10AM ... and had called at 9AM. I knew I could make it on the bike, but there was no way I was driving the Bayshore without armo(u)r ... I got the job.

The 9-5 prior to that, I wore the same outfit, for similar reasons. When queried, I responded along the lines of "are you hiring an engineer or a fashion plate?" ... They made me an offer. I counter offered. They hired me at my price point.

[0] Time flies when you're having ... uh ... fun?

I have on many occasions arrived in full leathers to discover the excrement has impacted the rotary air impellor, only to spend the rest of the day with no time to change into 'work attire'. Full leathers are actually a help when in the muckier parts of a cable run.

I would also arrive at remote sites leathered up, and I sure as hell wasn't gonna take a change of clothes for a half hour visit.

My last job interview was in my bike leathers (car broke down and the interviewer said not to bother changing in to my suit). I got the job as they considered anyone mad enough to wear bike leathers to an interview was mad enough to work for them.

I've been to a couple of job interviews in full bike leathers. The first time, I explained that I commute to work by bike and the only way that I could get from my current workplace in Central London to the prospective employer (Basingstoke) was by bike. I got the job.

The next time I did that, was with a former employer where the manager was keen to re-hire me. Unfortunately an HR-droid decided to sit in the interview (very rare in this company) and didn't like the leathers, so she vetoed him employing me. He hired me shortly after, with no HR involvement.

Hog pen. Reminds me of a story my mother told me. She was working as an assistant at a small doctors office in a rural village. Got a call on a Friday, almost closing time from a mother, that her son had to see the doctor. My mother replied that he had to come immediately, as they were about to close. No, he HAS to shower first, was the reply. No, he has to come immediately my mother replied. So the guy comes in, in his coveralls, straight out of the stable. And they breed pigs on an industrial scale around there. The doctors asked my mother to never do that again, they had to air out the office over the entire weekend.

I've done several interviews having turned up on the bike.

Normally I manage to arrive with enough time to slip into a cubicle and change, but once the bike actually broke down on the way (throttle cable snapped in the fast lane of the M40).

I had to explain this to the interviewer (the company boss) when he commented on the filthy state of my hands. I had arrived bang on time and didn't even have time to wash them. Silver lining was that the tale of diving through traffic with no power, stripping off the tank on the hard-shoulder and re-cabling the bike with the return cable got me the job. He seemed impressed with the ability to react quickly and work under pressure.

Funnily enough - those same 'alpha-male' (his words, not mine) abilities got me 'let go' about a year later.

My father told me the story of his arrival at his first Army posting. The chain had jumped on his BSA Commander on the way, so he arrived covered in grease nearly to his elbows. He said the Sargeant took one look at him and assigned him to 'D' block ..... which turned out to be where they housed all of the trouble-makers!

And I have also have to do the cable swap routine on the side of the road before. Happened several times with my GS1000. Only once did I loosen off the cable to find that the return cable had already broken. That time I cranked the tickover up to 3k, and then made it the few miles remaining without a throttle at all!

Tangentially related, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, but in a past life I've had to do a datacentre callout in leather trousers and a fishnet top after something Important broke while I was out at a goth night...

(The New Rocks stayed in the boot; I'd thankfully got spare footwear as I couldn't fit in the car to drive with them on...)

I once worked at a very old, well-known, traditional corporate company where absolutely everyone wore suits. Except for this one techie who always had goth makeup, fishnets, New Rocks etc. I always assumed that he was so utterly brilliant at his job that they couldn't do anything about his appearance.

Reynholm Industries, I assume?

Arrived at a job interview with really long hair and a huge, bushranger beard (it was Australia, after all). I hadn't cut my hair or shaved for 14 months, so you can imagine what I looked like. It was a highly technical, R&D, programming role, so it sort of fitted the 'eccentric mad man' vibe. I must've impressed them as they offered me the job!

About a year into the position, I shaved my beard off and had a really short hair cut over a long weekend. Arrived at work wearing a suit, tie and different sunglasses and *nobody* recognised me! Missed opportunity really as I should've robbed a bank.

Many moons ago, I bid on a contract at a un*x shop. I won the contract without a face-to-face interview. When I walked in on the first morning, the guy in charge of the data center looked startled & exclaimed "Where's your beard‽‽‽" ... Despite over forty years of un*x experience, I do not now and never have had a beard. Still makes me chuckle.

On the other hand, when I left HP my hair was around 4.5 feet long ... On my way out the door, I donated it to the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, to create wigs for cancer kids. I'm called "Baldy" to this day by folks who knew me in that era :-)

I once had a driving lesson whilst wearing a wetsuit.

Still beter than scuba instruction in dress suit and tie.

I once toyed with the idea of wearing a business suit under my dry-suit for a brief evening dive with the local club - just for the looks it would get on the beach after the dive, pulling off a dive suit to be dressed for the office. I chickened out :(

Like in that Schwarzenegger film, where he wears a tuxedo under a dry suit. Pretty cool.

Driving test would've been even better!

Golf in a wetsuit must be a bit of a handicap.

Use itching powder rather than talc when putting the suit on and I'm sure you'd make scratch!

------> Cos I'd love to itch her scratch!!!

"I once had a driving lesson whilst wearing a wetsuit"

Hayfever? Hangover? Forgotten your glasses?

How many times do we have to remind you... READ THE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY

When I'm interviewing I do expect candidates to wear a suit (of course if they turned up in leathers and explained why, as detailed above, that would be fine).

It's not about judging their ability, it is judging their attitude. If they can't be arsed to dress reasonably smartly for an interview I'll suspect they won't care too much about the job either. Once working we do have a dress code but it's basically polo shirts and trousers (shorts are only allowed in Aus!)

Hmm... When I go for an interview (which has been a long time ago) I expect to be judged on my abilities, not my appearance. I've never worn a suit to a interview, it really helps to select the companies that care about the right things. You know, because I care about the actual job...

I think suit or no suit is not the issue.

What matters is indeed if you can be arsed to look halfway decent and clean and maybe if your attire matches the dress code of the company or the industry.

Personally, I've never worn a suit to an interview, because I work in health care, and we don't work in suits. So dress shoes, decent trousers and an ironed shirt is enough. I won't show up in sneakers, jeans and a t-shirt. Not on the job and not on a job interview.

OTOH about 20 years ago I had gig where my client wanted me to do some work on site at their customer's HO and insisted that I wear a suit on site. So I ended up working in a rapidly dishevelling suit in a heat wave (spending as much time as possible in the machine room to take advantage of the aircon). The customer manager I dealt with was in shorts and sandals in the office. He was the one with appropriate attire.

As a racing cyclist and systems admin in my early 20's I used to cycle the 25 mile each way commute. If there was an issue when I arrived in the office I would be encouraged to just kick off my cycling shoes and get to work. I have ended up working a couple of days in lycra for the whole day. The biggies issue is trying to go to the loo wearing bib shorts.

I wasn't prepared to change straight from cycling gear to 'street' clothes as I needed a wash first. often there wasn't time for that luxury so I'd stay Lycra clad.

>>>The biggies issue is trying to go to the loo wearing bib shorts.

I'd have said the biggest issue was those around you having to deal with the "cat piss & vinegar" stink.

Back in the day, I had to go on customer site for something, and the boss decided he'd come along as well to glad-hand and schmooze.

Obviously we had to go in his car, because he wanted to show off the Lotus.

When I arrived at his house on the bike, he came out of his house and closed the door behind him, then was shocked at my filthy leathers. "No problem, I'll change", but he didn't want to let me in his house.

Ok - I'll strip off and change on his driveway. When he saw me take my boots off and unzip my leathers, he nervously looked around his Stepford-Wives-esque part of Basingstoke and decided to usher me into his house.

Which is how I ended up standing in my boss's hallway in my boxers when his wife came down the stairs wondering why he'd come back inside...

Thanks. Have not laughed that much in quite a while!

My boss never allows me in his car anymore .... not after he demanded I go with him to sort a customers problem....

"Get Boris" came the call

"Where is he? "

"Cell #6 doing some fixing"

Duely called , jumped in his car.. went to customer, had chat.. went back to work

Now the thing about warm hydraulic oil is that you dont always spot when you've been sitting in a puddle of it... however... the boss's wife soon spotted that someone dipped in oil had been sitting in the passenger seat........

I dont get to go on jollies anymore :(

When I worked at IBM, I was asked to attend a meeting with some visiting guys from California. They turned up, long hair, sandels , looking very scruffy. They present their plans, and during the any questions I suggested that what they were doing was not very good, and there may be some other, better implementations. My manager kept whispering "stop it - sit down, keep quiet", but fools rush in etc. Afterwards I was introduced to them; "Mr DB2 and his team" or the Architect of SQL. They were very nice, and said I had raised a good point.

We had a local character, an expert, he wore hair down his back, didnt drive, and looked like a hobo. We had a customer present their plans, and they stood back expecting to get praise for a good design. Our hobo said "this is total boll*cks. It wont work" the customer was shocked, the hobo went on to say "it work work because of a) b) c). If you change this and this and this, you will get a better solution, which is cheaper to implement, and have better availability". Afterwards the customer (having recovered from the shell shock) said what a great meeting it was, and what clarify they had from IBM.

I once worked at a tech. company with its headquarters on the same site as McLaren. Our owner was very old and his son was taking over running the business. The son loved race cars and racing yachts. We shared an office because I was one of the people training him to understand the products that we created. One lunchtime he was out and reception called to say that they had a visitor held in reception and they needed the bosses son to vouch for the visitor because he was repeating his name and saying he had an, appointment that they couldn't trace. I was the only one in the office at the time so I said I'd come down to deal with it. The receptionist was quite upset because the person in question was "wearing casual clothes" and she couldn't believe that he'd have a genuine reason to have an appointment with someone who was, after all, a billionaire who tended to keep other people at a distance.

I did a double-take. The person in reception was Ron Dennis, wearing clothing that was indeed "casual" but had probably cost more than my monthly salary. He had an appointment but the bosses son had forgotten to tell anyone. I was gobsmacked that the receptionist could think he was scruffy just because he didn't have a jacket.

In my first job I was asked to go to a meet & greet with prospective graduate hires, as I was a recent graduate hire myself. The dress code at work was suit and tie, but as it seemed an informal evening affair I showed up without my jacket. About thirty seconds later a steward appeared at my elbow and inquired in a lowered voice, "would Sir feel more comfortable in a jacket?". I took the hint and fetched my jacket from my desk.

Early on in the life of our first startup (~30 years ago), tendering for a 7-8 digit contract from a UK utility, we made the short list of two. The other contender was IBM. There was a meeting to decide who got the contract, both IBM and us to provide up to three people to answer the client's questions about our tenders. The three IBMers were there in expensive suits. One of our number, the domain specialist, was also in a suit because he'd been an IBMer until we hired him. Our sole marketing man was in chinos and sports jacket. I as main techie wore DMs, black jeans, black T-shirt and a motorbike jacket. It soon became obvious that the IBMers were all marketing types with no real technical knowledge, and they were somewhat undermined by our ex-IBMer knowing that the software they were pushing was vaporware. We answered all the clients questions from domain specific stuff right down to what hardware and networking we'd install.

We got the contract. We continued to beat IBM afterwards and first they asked us to port our software to AIX(*), gave us machines for free, and ultimately when their project got canned, they started selling our product into their contracts.

(*) Doing the port I also had direct access to their compiler team, because our code gave the C compiler a more vigorous workout than it had got up to that point. Getting compiler bug fixes in less than an hour was the best service I've ever had from a vendor.

I am not a big fan of shoes. I much prefer walking around in stocking feet. I had a job (coincidentally in the CBOT) where after I showed up in the morning I would kick my shoes off under my desk and walk around all day w/out. I didn't get much grief from coworkers, but when I'd step outside for a cigarette, especially in January or February, I would get all kinds of hassling from the smokers clique. After a while I decided to appease them and I bough slippers, with large stuffed monkey heads on the toes. That got many smiles, and a bit of a side look from my manager.

Jump forward 2 years and I was transferred to the new office in the northeast of America. I didn't take the monkey slippers with, but continued to go about my day sans shoes. One day I was cornered by an HR drone who told me I had to wear shoes on the job. I politely pointed out that the company dress code made no mention of a shoe requirement and that there was not OSHA requirement for shoes. I had read the HR handbook, but the OSHA bit was a bluff, I hadn't actually checked OSHA regulation on shoes. She stomped off in a huff to check, but I never heard from her, or HR again on the matter.

>>>

As it transpired, the customer turned out to be highly technically astute. They just required guidance in database and website optimisation

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...add more terror-bites

"had time left to kill in Chicago"

Nice one.