Maketh The Man ?

Tony Noon remembers dressing appropriately for work.

                      

                  

“Saturdays were best” my  mentor told me wistfully “ We were allowed to wear flannels and an open neck”. He was recalling some Betjemanesque golden age when every town had a bank.

Some had more than one , but all were populated by mostly middle aged men in shiny suits with dark ties.

I had made a massive error on my first day in the banking profession by taking my jacket off on a very hot July day.  I was not upbraided immediately . There were standards to be maintained even in the pre precipice days of the mid seventies.

At around 4.30 ( my second error was assuming that because banks closed at 3.30 it meant an early bath for the staff ) , the Deputy Manager , who sat all day in a glass box above us all,  approached me and coughed politely but authoritatively to attract my attention.

“ Gentlemen don’t remove their jackets in the banking hall unless they have permission …”   

That was the beginning of the end of my career in banking. There were many other lessons to be learned , but after a year I concluded that high finance was not my forte.

A not quite triumphant return to higher education followed and after a couple of years refining my brand profile , I was ready to join the ranks of the unemployed . My father didn’t see this  as  a career option. He strongly urged me to become a job seeker.

 My old headmaster had already frowned on this. “ So you want a job , eh, Noon ?  “ he drawled from behind a large pipe .  This was actually code for  “ Our reputation rests upon our ability to steamroller our pupils into higher education “ .   For those on message , there was endless encouragement and support , for the rest of us there was a brief chat with a careers teacher , who claimed to have done every job in the world as well as being a full time teacher.

His parting advice was always that it would be better to get more qualifications under your belt.

So , with more qualifications under my belt , here I was again , looking for a job.  This time , however , things were different.  I was overskilled.

Eventually, like water, I found what proved to be my natural level  and for most of the last four decades I have been what some may disparagingly call a desk jockey. The old banking suit served me well for a while. Inevitably , though , like the last boy at school in short trousers , I was forced to concur that tulip lapels had had their day .

I have worked in sales , logistics , planning  and so on . What used to be called white collar jobs .  I very rarely wore white collars , but shirt and tie of  some hue was always de rigeur.  Jackets were mostly off and hung over the backs of chairs….permission neither requested or required.  We always wore a jacket when meeting customers or other visitors to the offices.  

I had colleagues overseas , particularly in Germany , who told us towards the end of the eighties that no one wore ties in the office anymore.  At the time , that notion was as wistful for us as my old banking colleague’s grey flannel memories .  It would be another ten years before that sort of anarchy began to seep into the sort of firms I worked for.

But a revolution was underway .  A trickle at first. Small factories kitting their workers out with polo shirts carrying the company logo. Soon shops of all sizes and garages had employees wearing similar polo shirts .  They often had branded fleece jackets , and worse , matching baseball caps to complete the ensemble.

I maintained a position of sartorial defiance throughout this onslaught.  Photos of countless Chinese cycling to work in Beijing or wherever in identical unisex tunics came to mind and I warned whoever would listen that we were on a slippery slope.

My downfall came around the middle of July 2005.  Having resisted the ridiculous excesses of Dress Down Fridays , I had settled with a new company who had an “Either/Or” policy on polo shirts.  All employees were given three absolutely free of charge. Male employees could either wear these or alternatively a shirt and tie.  There was no middle ground.

Having long believed that  phone conversations with customers had more gravitas if one was wearing a tie , I had hung onto the habits of a lifetime , religiously ironing shirts the night before to enable a quick getaway each morning.

One hot evening , my wife and I arrived home late after a merry night out and I promised myself I would get up early the next day to iron a shirt for work.  I didn’t make it .

Reaching for the unworn polo shirt I vowed it would be a one off.  Ten years later, I only iron a shirt to meet customers .  Even worse , somewhere along the way , managers stopped wearing ties and meet and greet people open necked.

I am , of course , disappointed with myself but have drawn a new line in the sand .  I am resisting the trend to working from home.  The thought of mostly middle aged men working at laptops in vests and shorts is just too much.