Boots at the Office

I have been enjoying a wonderful email dialogue with an intelligent, insightful guy who, like me, appreciates boots. He works in the banking industry. He has said that he does not get to wear boots to work very often because it would not be well tolerated. He says that he wears boots to work occasionally on casual Fridays, or sometimes when he knows he will not be meeting with upper management.

I work in a management position in professional business setting, yet I only wear boots to work (and everywhere else). Seriously, I don't own a pair of shoes or sneakers. Do I have something against shoes or sneakers? Not really (except that shoes/sneakers are absolutely not acceptable for use while operating a motorcycle). I just don't like that kind of footwear. I think they look funny, frumpy, and personally I would feel extremely uncomfortable. My discomfort would be more from emotion than from actual foot pain, but the emotional pain would be severe.

I'm not quite sure why I feel that way. I guess it is just because of how I am wired. I was just born to be a Bootman. My twin brother got the shoe genes -- and he and Matt Lauer (who is reported to be quite a shoe-fiend) would probably be in competition if they compared closets. While I don't have much of a competitive spirit, I guess my 136+ pair boot collection would qualify to compare with some of the most prolific Bootmen I've come to know or observe who participate on hotboots.com.

This dialogue also caused me to think about my choice of where to work. Would I choose to work at an employer that had restrictions on what I could wear on my feet, either by written policy or internal peer pressure? I reflected on when I changed jobs a few years ago. Where was I applying? When I had four successful interviews and was offered a job at all four employers, I was elated. But I also really wonder if I rejected at least two of the employers because the dress code was much more formal than I was comfortable with. The job duties were #1, the commute was #2, the pay was also up there in strong consideration, but I have to say that the dress code was strongly considered as well. I just don't think I would be happy being forced to wear a suit or shirt & tie all day, not to mention shoes instead of boots. If I were unhappy and uncomfortable at work, I would be unproductive. I am much more productive when I have the freedom to be creative, and express myself as I am, within limits that I consider to be reasonable.

A funny aside -- when I began working in my first professional non-acacemic position in 1987, that employer had a fairly strict dress code. Shirt and tie was required every day, and wearing a jacket at meetings was written policy. But there wasn't anything in the dress code about footwear. So there I was in a suit and boots. Sometimes the old fuddy-duddies around me might say something, but I just ignored it. If my boots were shined and weren't outrageous (with x-toes or extremely underslung, high heels), we just lived with the fact that I wore boots, period. Eventually, like most employers did during the 90s, the dress code was slowly relaxed. The jacket was shucked, the tie became less of a menace. But the boots always remained.

My buddy said that "most people who I know professionally are always taken aback when they see me outside of work and I'm in boots, Wranglers and a belt with a buckle. Sometimes people get used to seeing colleagues in a certain situation and don't stop to think that someone's job doesn't necessarily define who they are as a person outside of work."

He is absolutely right. And let me tell 'ya, I've seen photos of my buddy in his boots & Wranglers, and he's definitely a HOT man! Woof!

While I very seldom see people with whom I work outside of the office, I don't think they would react as my friend's colleagues may react, because the guy (me) that they see at work is pretty much the same guy they would see outside the office. A guy dressed in clean but casual clothes, and boots. Now if they saw me all decked out in leather, that might be a different story. (smile).

Life is short: Wear your boots!