Office Etiquette: Casual Friday Do’s and Don’ts
Ah yes, casual Friday- the great indicator of the weekend having arrived. For many young professionals, casual Friday is the adult equivalent of recess. It’s your one opportunity each week to dress somewhat like you would outside of the office, possibly as a form of self-expression.
But before all you young whippersnappers start breaking out your embellished denim and four-inch heels, consider some tips from employers who know a thing or two more than you about office culture.
Neal Takekewa, president of Roberts Hawaii says, “The safe measure for anyone is to look at how the boss is dressed. Also important to remember is who you are meeting or may be meeting during the day. Even with casual dress, if you want to succeed, you have to dress for success.”
When in doubt, follow in the footsteps of your boss and you should be ok. Sounds safe to me. But if she wears jeans and a tank top, beware. Know that she’s doing so probably because she earned it. Aloha Tower Marketplace director of marketing, Melissa Chang, advises young people that “At your age, you still have to prove your credibility at every turn, and part of that lies in the way [you] dress.” Her advice? “Keep a black blazer- conservative, but one that goes with everything- at your office at all times.” This is advice learned the hard way, via a client catastrophe that happened to fall on a casual Friday, and then required a press conference, for which no one was prepared, at least attire-wise. Yikes.
Aloha Tower Marketplace general manager Floyd Williamson adds that although the casual Friday dress code varies from business to business, there are two categories: the “office worker environment” and the “customer service environment.” In the former, an employee rarely comes into contact with company outsiders and it’s appropriate to dress down as long as your coworkers are in similar attire. In a “customer service environment,” however, an employee is constantly in plain sight of customers or the general public, and he or she should dress the part, even on casual Friday.
“A company’s dress code should aim to mirror the client base,” adds Chason Ishii, President of Coldwell Banker Pacific Properties. “You don’t want to dress the same way when meeting a high level client as with a more casually dressed, lower level client. Also, young people tend to dress the same for work as they would to go out. To them, that’s their nice clothes!”
Well, what does all this look like? Let’s see examples from some stores at Aloha Tower Marketplace: |
October 2007
