We got a department-wide email today about the dress code:

Due to the attire of a few individuals, we need to emphasize the dress code in regards to body piercings. It is very simple:

For men – No visible body piercings.

For women – one set of visible earrings, through the lobe of the ear. No other visible body piercings.

There are some employees with eyebrow, nose, or multiple piercings through their ears. These are examples of unacceptable attire at DocuTech, since it does not maintain a professional demeanor. If any employees are sporting such piercings, please address the problem immediately and have the individual remove the piercings while they are at our facilities.

A few notes:

1. I’m almost sure that the ‘certain individuals’ who did this were never actually approached. This company, like most I’ve worked for, has a real passive-aggressive streak about it. Do something wrong and they won’t say anything to you personally. They’ll just say something to everyone.
2. A quick poll in our cubicle row found zero (0) examples of men wearing having any piercings, zero (0) examples of anyone having eyebrow or nose piercings.
3. However, there are a lot of girls that have multiple piercings in their ears. They have been wearing them since I got here roughly a year ago.
4. And yet they do what they always do when instituting a new policy: “Things have always been this way.”
5. And if they think they’re going to slip this regulation through when some women in company have had multiple earrings for decades, they’re nuts. I can’t help but think this sort of thing wouldn’t happen if there was even one woman in management.

I work for a chaotic company. I knew this when I signed on. When the report tracking progress changed four times in my first two weeks there, I learned it even further.

But one of the most aggregating things about my employer is how stubbornly they refuse to acknowledge that ‘no, we don’t have any established way of doing things.’ Reports has been pushing for established procedures for a long time.

But rules that have never been mentioned or much less enforced since I arrived are being touted as having always been in place. It’s not a matter of them being written down and ignored because FalStaff, a company that makes employer documentation, has no employee handbook. I still don’t even have an employment contract.

When it’s not written down, there is no dress code that isn’t being enforced. Absent writing, enforcement is the only way to discover existence of any regulations. A couple weeks ago we were told verbally that we were expected never to wear X, Y, and Z. Nobody flinched and everyone kept doing it. No one has said a word about it. The rule is not written down; it is not enforced; it does not exist. It is solely the province of a department email months down the line tut-tutting everyone for breaking a rule that was mentioned in passing and never enforced.

And, of course, requiring them to go home and change.

Or, more likely, just ignoring the rules we make, which is the only thing this company has ever always done.