Member-only story
The future of work and the end of Covid
When I entered the white collar workforce back in the late 1980s, everyone wore suits and ties. That’s just what you did. Women wore dresses, hosiery and “suits” (rarely with pants). Men wore leather shoes, ties and a wool suit. That was it, you didn’t have a choice. Everyone did it, there was no choice.
Then we started to hear about this thing called “casual Friday” that supposedly started with those crazy hippies out on the west coast. At first -management said we didn’t need to wear ties and our jackets, but everything else had to stay the same (wool pants, leather shoes, button down shirts, etc). But as time went on casual Fridays evolved into jeans and tennis shoes and a “collared shirt” on Fridays. Some people thought this heretical and would destroy our work culture. But the wheels of industry still ground on and stock prices went up and we kept going to work every day.
Then things got really crazy in California. I remember a business trip I took in the mid 1990s to Borland software in Santa Cruz. We met with the CEO and had a tour of their office spaces and EVERYONE was wearing either jeans or short and just some ratty t shirts. Only the C level people bothered with collared shirts (no ties though) and we looked like monkeys in our wingtips, suits and ties. I realized, after that, I had to escape the buttoned up suit wearing east coast for…
