Swiss Bank Has 43-Page Dress Code 212
Tasha26 writes "The HR of Swiss bank UBS AG came up with an innovative 43-page document (French) to establish fashion 'dos' and 'don'ts' in their retail branches. Among the rules are such things as: 'neither sex should allow their underwear to appear,' perhaps Dilbert was a bit ahead of them on that. The document also mentions smells and 'avoid garlic and onion-based dishes.'"
Re:huh (Score:5, Insightful)
So uh a business whose employees deal with customers on a daily basis in an industry where projecting an image of professionalism is very important has developed a guide to aid their employees? This just sounds like common sense to me.
Yup. Every business has a dress code. Some do uniforms... Some just tell you how you need to dress... Isn't that unusual.
43 pages sounds a bit insane
It does. And I assumed that it was all kinds of legalese...
until you actually look at it. Large print, lots of diagrams, lots of whitespace/formatting not 43 walls of text. It actually looks pretty clean and readable.
Not just clean and readable, but actually useful. There's instructions on how to tie a necktie. I don't know how to tie a necktie. If I got a job at one of those banks I'd have to go dig up some instructions on-line... Or I could just use the nice document that HR provides during orientation. That'd actually be handy.
Re:Plain but classy, and balanced (Score:4, Insightful)
Well men don't really have anywhere near the options women do in most dress codes (and men's clothes generally don't have clevage/cut/hemline issues) so it follows that most of the dress code would be about what the women can and can't do.
Re:huh (Score:2, Insightful)
It does. And I assumed that it was all kinds of legalese...
No, it isn't. If you follow the link you'll find (as long as you can read French) that it is quite informally written. It takes so many pages because there's a lot of whitespace, lots of pictures, and lots of supplementary material explaining the reasons for the dresscode and showing different ways of tying a tie. It does essentially define a uniform (white shirt, charcoal, black or dark blue suit, plain black shoes and company tie for men), but the content that does that could probably be condensed to less than a single page.
Sorry, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
dress codes are bullshit. Total bullshit. Go to a bank in Italy on a summer's day, for instance. You'll find the clerks are dressed way down from what you'd see in the US. No tie, open shirt collar. And you know what? You won't have any sense that they're "unprofessional". Whatever that means. Ride the train through Switzerland. A conductor with an earring may well greet you. He did me. And he did his work efficiently.
What I'm saying is that the whole "dress code" is largely US-centric. That's not to say there are no rules of dress -- I've had the pleasure of getting thrown out of a store right off the beach in the South of France for not wearing a shirt. But just as hard-working Europeans still feel justified in demanding 5 weeks of holiday and are less inclined to put in 60-hour weeks, they show up for work dressed neatly but not in the uniform that's demanded of their American counterparts. The thing that's amazing to me is that most people posting here clearly feel the uniform is justified. What do you care if the guy in the bank has a tie on or not? Why should any employer have that kind of power over you?
Re:Dress code? (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, there are also plenty of people in suits that don't understand why the ripped jeans and t-shirt crowd doesn't think they're cool.
If you think about it for a moment, you will see that it is kind of silly that you're only taken seriously if you tie a strip of cloth around your neck tight enough to slightly restrict blood flow to your brain.
Beyond avoiding holes where they shouldn't be and not being offensive, it is all rather arbitrary and even childishly silly.
Re:Backscatter scanning (Score:2, Insightful)
I love my utilikilt... sadly most American men have no sense of fashion and comfort, and are not manly enough to wear one.