Monday, January 26, 2009

Dressed for Success

A friend and I were having lunch yesterday and I was able to articulate something that had been bopping around in my head for a while. It feeds in to why I resent Corporate America so much.

Here's my beef. Development. Seems harmless enough, right? Organizations should want employees to develop. But why does it seem like 'development opportunities' are frequently aimed at turning me in to a clone of my manager? Or my manager's manager? I did my annual performance self-review today and I realized for the first time that one of the items that I am rated on is 'Professional Appearance'. The decription of the item says something like "dresses to make a good impression" and my manager rates me on that as part of my annual eval.

What. The. Fuck?

First of all, I would like to see the study that correlated dress with performance. Secondly, measuring dress is subjective and potentially discriminatory. What if I wear ethnic or religious dress to work? Is that 'professional'? What if I'm FTM trandgender and my manager thinks I should wear a skirt and heels?

I realize that I'm probably not going to ever find a company that doesn't have issues. I also realize what a pain in the ass I am to manage because shit like this bugs me. If it doesn't fly all over my values, I usually let it go. Like the Christmas Tree in the lobby of HR, this one seriously irks me.

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