Dress Code, pt. 二番

Most days at work I can forget that I am a lowly contractor instead of a regular employee as long as I don’t look at my paycheck or try to plan my meager vacation time or dwell on the fact that my hours are inflexible. Most days I just show up, do my job, interact only with the regular employees, and then go home. Then there are days like yesterday when I get a surprise e-mail from a manager I never see reminding me that I don’t really work for the nice, ethical people who are focused on the job. Instead, I work for sadistic slumlord managing trolls who apparently exist only to absorb some of my pay, annually cut my benefits, and enforce petty rules that in no way improve our value as employees. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Early this week I took a little time off to visit Dr. Bunny, my thoroughly hot and talented dentist. She has a website with pictures, but I won’t link to it because a) they don’t do her justice, and 2) I don’t want anyone e-mailing her and telling her I refer to her as Dr. Bunny. Thankfully I’ve never called her that to her face. Anyway, since I have no sick or medical time and my paltry vacation time has to be claimed in four hour blocks, I bent the rules slightly* and left early on Monday, planning to stay late on Friday to make up the time. Contractor rules (made by the contracting company – not the regulars) don’t allow schedule flexibility, but the regulars were more than happy to accommodate me since I have more work to do today and it benefited me personally. Since it’s Friday, that means it’s slightly more business casual day and I get to be comfortable and wear jeans. At least it did until a reminder e-mail went out reinforcing our dress code. Apparently some of us were *gasp* wearing JEANS ON FRIDAY!!! OMFG – stop the horror.

I could understand if people were dressing poorly or if any of us had contact with external customers, but the only problem was that the contractors were following the examples set by the regular employees and the contracting company didn’t like it because we failed to obey the rules they arbitrarily created for no reason know to anyone here. Note – the managers who create these rules don’t actually work here. I suspect they issue their commands from home, unshaven and clad in bathrobes.

All things considered I guess it’s silly to gripe about the dress code, but 一) many of us (by which I mean me) look and feel better in black or blue jeans, and ii) it bugs me that denim pants are strictly off-limits but that denim skirts are allowed. Being PC, they don’t create separate lists for men and women, so technically that means I could rip out the crotch and inseam of my jeans and then sew them back together to wear in the office, but I hate sewing.

Anyway, I am a professional and refuse to let such little things bother me. In fact, I swear upon the xtian god and his representative the zombie jebus that I did not write these two long blog posts on company time. Furthermore, despite the fact that anyone who might need me or notice that I’m not here has already left, I vow to sit here and make up the extra two hours. If you swing by my cubicle before 6:00 PM and everything is locked up / shut down, it’s because I went to the bathroom (no, the other one that you didn’t check) and I secured my cubicle in case somebody wanted to steal my latest reports and/or some of my packets of soy sauce.

*Actually, I clubbed them over the head, bent them over the hood of my car, and anally raped them. I don’t think I should have to obey any rule that doesn’t meet my approval.