On the final Friday of 2007 I share with you one of my ’07 New Years resolutions:
Wear a tie every Friday.
So, on the previous 51 Fridays, I have worn a tie. The only exceptions have been on Fridays were I am officially not working i.e on vacation or just taking a day off and also one work Friday where we were required to wear a company shirt that in no way could (or should) have been worn with a tie.
You might be wondering where I came up with such a resolution. Well, it actually goes back to my first job out of college. I worked for Ford Motor Company and, more specifically, for Ford Motor Credit. I worked at a local customer service branch. Calling it customer service was a bit of a stretch. OK, the service we performed for the customer was that we would call them and ~remind~ them that they needed to pay for their automobile. It was old-fashioned collections about 95% of the time. If we were having a bad week as far as collecting went, we would have to wear ties on Fridays. As I remember it, women had to wear skirts/dresses. It was the complete opposite of the casual Friday trend that was happening at most of the other old-school companies. It worked as motivation. People really hated wearing ties. People seemed to push a bit harder earlier in the week to hit the numbers needed so that we could dress down on Friday.
I never minded wearing ties on Friday, but I never forgot being forced to do so. As 2006 was coming to an end, I started thinking about some possible resolutions. I had given up caffeine cold-turkey in ’06 (still caffeine-free today) and a few of my other ’06 predictions/resolutions had come to fruition, so I needed to come up with something different, a bit challenging, and fun. I was working, at that time, in an office with a rather loose dress-code (there was not really one) and many of the employees took full advantage of that fact. I decided that dressing up on a typically casual day would be good and that a simple tie on Fridays would be perfect.
It took several months of ties on Fridays before people stopped asking me if I had an interview or something. Truth was, many times I actually did. (On my last day at that job, my VP brought in a couple of dozen ties and many folks wore them in honor of my little stunt, so that was nice) I started a new job back in November and have continued the Friday tradition. No one has asked me if I am dressed up for an interview and I’m not sure if that lack of reaction has got me thinking about not continuing on after today, but we’ll see, I’ve got a few days left before I need to decide on my 2008 resolutions.
Oh, yes, I am wearing a tie today.
Adomatica 