Thursdays

This is one of those rare posts about work. I don't usually write much about my 9 to 5, in part because there's almost always something more amusing going on in my non-work life. In fact, I try to find something amusing in my non-work life to write about because it sort of forces me to look at life a certain way. If life outside of work is legitimately devoid of any and all amusement, the fix to that is to have more fun, not to write about work.

Still, there are rare occasions when something amuses me so much that I'm willing to bend my rule. This, as you can probably imagine, is one such occasion.

First, let me start off with a little bit of background: in some offices, there is the practice of Tie Tuesday. If you've never seen it in practice, people at workplaces that don't enforce business attire show up with a tie on. It's like the opposite of casual Fridays, and people do it for no other reason than to spice things up a bit. I'm guessing it also amuses people that others look at them quizzically, but I can't speak from personal experience.

There are a few folks who partake in Tie Tuesday on my team, albeit not too many. However, some time back, this team also instituted T-Shirt Thursday. It's not just any old t-shirt, either, it's a very specific t-shirt. Essentially, there was a shirt that a bunch of folks liked, and they figured they'd make an excuse to wear it more often. They could have picked Fridays for this purpose, but not everyone is around on every Friday (we're allowed flex schedules, so some folks have every other Friday off).

Now, we still work in an environment where business casual is the norm. This brings up a decision: how exactly are you going to get away with a t-shirt in a business casual office? Well, as a team, we have collectively come up with all of these solutions:

• Hide
  If you're not interacting with anyone but the folks on our team, no one who could potentially give you grief is going to notice. So, you can just rock the t-shirt straight up, but you have to be confident that you're only going to stick to your cube for the day. If you have any expectation of meetings with others, though, you have to find a better option.
  
• Over the top
  If everything fits okay, you can just wear the t-shirt over your regular business casual apparel. I figure there's decent odds that you've actually seen this out in the wild before. If not, however, you can see it here (I wanted to actually insert the image, but suffice it to say that there were reasons why I didn't do so). Basically, you can still be business casual with your collared shirt but have some fun with the t-shirt.
  
  In the worst case, you can just take off the t-shirt, and you're back to business as usual (pun sort of intended).
  
• Go classy
  The last option, and the one that amuses me the most, is to forego the dress shirt altogether, but to add a blazer in its place (see this Quora thread for variations). Now, this adheres to the spirit of the business casual law without actually adhering to the letter of said law, so you have to have a little bit of a rebel streak in you to choose this route. Still, it's possibly my favorite response to this problem. T-shirt, check. Ready for business, check.

  I'll leave it to your imagination which option I usually end up going with, but I am usually amused by what my peers choose to do on Thursdays. And should someone else come up with a fourth option, I'm fairly certain there will be a blog post about it at some point.