Re: Dress Code

[sanders_j -at- TBOSCH -dot- DNET -dot- GE -dot- COM]

Hi All,

>This is going to sound wierd, but I wear a suit and tie because I *want* to.

Sure. As long as you're comfortable wearing one. I used the dress code example
as simply a visible symptom of an overwhelming corporate environment, a method
of conduction business that is decades out of date. One of the most important
things I ever saw around here was a meeting which was held between several
individuals of two extremely seperate groups who had been working together for
years mainly through memos and telephone calls. We all sat down, reviewed the
process we were using, how it was good and bad, and found out, most importantly
what the other group actually DID. It changed a lot of things for the better,
but it wasn't some GE policy or a management decision, it was a bunch of us
who were sick of doing things the "same old way". That's what I mean by change,
and why I brought up the dress code. Corporations don't have to operate this
way to do business effectively, and even productively. Believe me, productivity
is not great.

>Anyway, what does is matter what you wear so long as you enjoy your work? If

Aha! You have hit the matter right on the head. Personally, I DON'T enjoy my
work. Not even a little bit. But for me this is a temporary, hourly wage
position in between real work. For other people here, it's their career, and
they exhibit even more advanced symptoms of the attitude ("who cares?") that
I have. Because of the stiffling company environment, the hopelessness of
changing anything, and the bureaucratic manner in which everything runs. And
did I mention the lousy building.

BUT, in my opinion, things don't have to operate this way, even in a large
company. It's been shown in numerous other companies, many of whom use non-
standard practices to show greater work-force morale, and general productivity.
There's a manufacturing plant in Kentucky, USA (can't remember the company)
that split their manufacturing force up into small, seperate groups who are
now responsible for producing a whole product, where before they were just
workers on an assembly line, never seeing the final product and never having
any idea what went on other places. Now they're like mini-companies inside
the great resources of the parent company, and the productivity is up like
20%. This is the kind of thing that big corporations can do to make work
a cooperative rather than bureaucratic or confrontational process.

Wow, has it been a rough day. Sorry to burden everyone with the diatribe.
(But I don't apologize for my opinions or my theories.)

-John Sanders-