This may blow your mind, btw, but it's not like I or anyone else here actually sit around and make up a dress code and make all the little employees dress the way we'd like to see them dress to fit our preferred image for the Proper Way of Life (tm). No, but *someone* is.  Otherwise, the dress code wouldn't be so nitpicky as to cover *haircuts* as well.  I can take off a suit when I get home, but I can't take off a haircut.

And personally, I have to say that anyone who can't discern the difference between wearing a tie and telling a straight, no-bullshit truth is a close-minded knucklehead I can do without in the workplace. I know plenty of ass-kissing, conformist green-hairs with the integrity of Jim Bakker and plenty of people who wear suits but will speak their minds and go their own way to be true to themselves when it counts. I'm surprised that someone your age and with your intelligence and maturity would fall for such an old and shopworn counter-cultural myth. At no time did I suggest that people who wear ties are less likely to be honest, forthright people than those who don't. I only suggested that companies where conformity trumps _expression_ are likely to be hindered in a number of ways. Another part of what I'm trying to undo is the reverse myth: that people who do button-up are more likely to be useful to a company than those who'd prefer not. I'm quite aware that dressing up, and meeting the expectations of the public, is neccesary in many situations, and said as much. I'm also not talking about a company full of adolescent brats who refuse to conform to any situation because it cramps their _style_. Along the way I made like qualifications. You didn't take note of them, perhaps in order to make this dig here at the end. I'm pleased enough that you consider me intelligent and mature, and wish you'd shown that by a more fair reading of my post. ~

they act and the way they are viewed by others here. Still, how does this necessarily justify a mandatory uniform for all men? It's all about the ability to work and play well with others. Businesses succeed or fail on that. [1] Isn't the whole point of big green mohawks to make a screaming statement, I refuse to get a day job , anyway? I mean, if you can get a day job with a big green mohawk, what's the point? Won't anyone who's not a poseur just have to come up with something that much more obscene and extreme that won't be acceptable to the suits, like nailing a bloody fetus to your forehead?

shopworn counter-cultural myth. But how does the general tendency run?  From what I can tell, *Albatross* is more right about the attitudes most people have, largely due to the fact that most (or at least too many ) of us have to live our lives in accordance with *your* precepts in order to live decently on a material level. Or maybe due to the fact that they've listened to too much damn hippie music, and taken it too seriously. I've listened to the same music, and held down the same jobs, just as long as any of you, and I understand the trap just as well. But there's a big distinction there: integrity and speaking the unpopular truth are things you do because they're right, not because you want to. They're not matters of self-interest. Wearing what you want is just doing what YOU feel like doing. It's not being true to your ethics, it's being true to your tastes and desires, which is not the same thing at all. Even if the counterculture never got the difference.