Is Casual Clothing Costing You Money?

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Our friend, Ken Davis, sent this story about a technician who worked for him who argued people should be judged by their actions, not their clothes.

Ken wrote, “I totally agreed with him that it wasn’t fair — but people judge by appearance and since there was nothing the two of us could do to change that he was simply going to have to wear a suit. Period. End of discussion.

“Six months later Mark showed up at a company meeting wearing a T-shirt with a coat & tie printed on it. Cute. He thought he’d get a rise out of me. Well, all the other techs showed up dressed to the hilt. They looked good. Unbeknownst to them, the VP of our company was a surprise guest. She took one look at Mark and told me, ‘If you so much as think about requesting a bonus spot check for that smart aleck with the T-shirt you can forget it!’ Mark was a darn good tech and I’d intended to give him a spot bonus.

“Later, Mark said, ‘I guess I got you with this T-shirt joke, eh?’

“I said, ‘that little joke of yours just cost you a bonus spot check worth $2,000.’ His face turned white, then red and he blurted out, ‘That’s not fair!’ I said, ‘Mark. I told you months ago this dress code thing was not about being fair it was about perception.’

Years later Mark and I laughed about it, and then he said, ‘Ken you were the best boss I’ve ever had a chance to work for.’ I was elated with that comment coming from a difficult employee.”

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Is Casual Clothing Costing You Money?

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