duck-shaped pain

8 June 2001
A Bad Case of Shirt Itch

I have to heartily concur.

I've only had one job where I've had to wear an officially prescribed uniform, [1] a job which neatly doubles as the Worst Job I've Ever Had. It was a phone job, for chrissake -- why the hell would we need to wear uniforms?

It was at a reservations center for a to-be-unnamed gigantoid hotel chain, and it was the top teen employer here in town. It paid $4.90 an hour -- 20 cents more than the amusement park. Although the latter could have some advantages here and there -- trapping people you dislike on top of the Ferris wheel and stealing decadent amounts of miniature golf tees are just the start -- the former was widely considered to be the better job, since you could sit down, you got to work where there was air conditioning, and your chances of developing severe cotton candy lung by the end of the summer were minimal.

So. The uniform. It was a solid-colored polo shirt with the company logo and current motto embroidered on the right pocket. The Motto had been selected through an employee contest, where hundreds of disenfranchised suck-ups had submitted their ideas for a phrase that would define the company's image, motivate the listless, and place them in line for a promotion.

The winner?

"Excellence is Everywhere You Find It!"

I guess you can't really argue with that, but I find myself at a loss to fathom how, exactly, this became an Official Motto. It might sound cheery and inspiring on face value, but then you realize that it doesn't mean anything at all. There could possibly be excellence, but there's a pretty good chance of excellence being totally non-existent. I bet it was the only submission.

We had to buy the uniforms, of course. $15 each. Just over three hours of work for one crappy polo shirt that you couldn't wear anywhere else. Made of a thin polyester blend fabric that pilled if you did so much as sat in a chair.

All the new trainees were kept in a small little room during the official Distribution of the Garments. A few choice employees who had been there for awhile were sent in to remind us just how lucky we were, since we were allowed to wear our own pants. "Once," one old grizzled man told us, in a tone of voice that suggested he was just about to recount the entire creation myth of his people, "they assigned us pants, too."

Shirts were to be worn with solid-colored pants, except that blue pants were not allowed. Jeans were allowed once a month, if you made sure to contribute a few dollars to the Jeans Day Fund. Once in a great rare while, there would be some sort of evil fun day, like Everyone Wear Hawaiian Shirts Day. There was one "out," though -- if you worked on weekends, you would wear whatever the hell you wanted, as long as there was both a top and a bottom.

So many of my coworkers were in pursuit of the perfect Monday-Friday, 9 to 5 schedule that plenty of weekend work was available. I jumped on it as soon as I could. If I could have worked more than two weekends per week, I would have.

Once I was out on the call floor, working amongst seasoned veterans, no longer stuck in training with those also new to the Way of the Polo Shirt, I realized how attached many of these people were to their uniforms. "I like them," one man, obviously hoping for a cameo in the company's next training video, said to me. "They make me feel like I'm part of the team, like I'm ready to work. I know there's no slacking off when I'm in this shirt!"

Once in awhile they would surprise us by announcing that the next day would be an official No Uniform Day. I would come in the most mismatched thing I could find, but a surprising number of people would show up wearing their uniform, like usual. Had they forgotten? Or did they have no other clothes?

Sometimes they would set up a table in the lunch room, offering more polo shirts for sale. This happened a lot when they would offer new colors -- Now! In Pink!!!! -- or when a lot of people quit suddenly, leaving their used shirts behind in spite. The line for new shirts (the price for extras was about $20) was longer than you'd expect. The new colors would provoke strong feelings of excitement, for when you've spent your whole day so far talking to surly strangers from around the globe, many of whom are insisting that they do indeed qualify for the senior discount, any sort of news in the world of shirts can be refreshing indeed.

Eventually, I quit. School was starting again, and I was beginning to cringe every time I heard a phone ring. All I could think on my last day was that I would never ever ever wear a polo shirt again. I think I burned mine not soon after that, in a ritual ceremony attended only by me.


[1] As opposed to unofficial, freely chosen uniforms, as in the way that everyone I worked at the G*p with essentially looked alike (generous store discounts will do that to people), or like how I wore the same exact outfit every single Wednesday (production day) during my stint at the Metropolitan: black jeans, black Confusion is Sex t-shirt, big black shoes and a chartreuse cardigan sweater. It took me a while before I even noticed this pattern; others were more on the ball than I.

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