Again, people, what’s with the blue jeans?

Apparently if any given department at my job achieves 100 percent participation in having money taken out of our checks to be donated to The United Way, everyone in that department gets rewarded by being able to have a full week of ”jeans days.”

On jeans days, employees get to wear blue jeans, and, well, that’s it. They still have to wear a nice-ish shirt and some decent shoes.

This whole jeans week thing came up today, and my boss was saying he really wanted to reach 100 percent because he’d like to wear jeans everyday for a week at work.

This led to the following exchanges:

Me: “Okay, but what if I don’t own any jeans?”
My boss: “Well, you’ll have to go buy some to wear for that week.”
Me: “I don’t like jeans. I’ll just come into work dressed like normal those days. Or maybe I’ll come in wearing a full suit and tie.”
My boss, clearly not realizing that me not owning jeans in the first place already answers the following: “Then you’ll be the odd one out. Do you really want to be different from everyone else?”
Me: “I’ve never succumbed to peer pressure in my life. I don’t plan on starting now.”
My boss: “Well, when everyone else is contributing and trying to get a jeans day, then we’ll see about the peer pressure.”
Me: “Veiled threats of physical violence are not the same as peer pressure.”
A girl in my department: “Hey, Josh, I want to have a word with you after work in the parking lot.”

Me: “What if I choose to support a competing organization because I don’t like The United Way’s ideology?”
My boss: “Well, I can’t do anything about that. That’s just the charity the company chose to support.”
Me: “Charity? I already volunteer at a soup kitchen.”
My boss: “You can still contribute.”
Me: “I don’t actually volunteer at a soup kitchen.”

Me: “So, since I don’t own jeans, this whole jeans day thing isn’t really incentive for me. I need some other motivation to participate.”
Girl in my department who threatened to fight me in the parking lot during the other exchange: “Josh, I”ll buy you lunch for the whole week if we get a jeans week.”

So, that settles it: people apparently really like wearing blue jeans at work.

I’m not saying I will or won’t choose to have money taken out of my check to support The United Way, and it’s honestly something I am open to consider, even if just to help boost morale for everyone else in the department for one stinkin’ week. What I am saying is that trying to tempt me to donate by offering a jeans week isn’t really incentive to me.

But let me wear some baggy-ish cargos, and maybe a Busted Tees t-shirt and/or a nicely relaxed fit hooded sweatshirt, and I’m totally there.

However, I might actually be more prone to just dress as normal. At my last job, I got to dress more casually on a regular basis, and I found I was less focused at that job. That may or may not have something to do with that I really disliked much of my last job, but I will say I was more focused there on days when I was required to dress nicely to conduct interviews and stuff.

Or maybe they could just let me wear a Batman costume* all day. That’d be cool, too.

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* The cool new one with the built-in abs, of course, not the ol’ skool TV show pajama-style outfit.

~ by joshlos on October 9, 2009.