h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Courtesy and politeness are social lubricants. It keeps things pleasant.

If I dress decently, then I am demonstrating that I can look and act like a professional. That's a job skill in and of itself. One that is sadly lacking in many places.

or you can not wear anything at all and offer yourself up to the socialites that like to point and snicker.

Well, I dress appropriately for wherever I find myself - black for funerals, dresses for weddings, jeans at concerts (rock, not classical ), swimmers on the beach, cocktail dresses for gala evenings, plunging necklines for dinner a deux, smart clothes for work, and suits for business meetings.

Wearing a suit for an interview is no a lie, since a suit is certainly a business meeting.

Actually, I don't wear suits, I wear smart trousers and a jacket, but I think womens suits tend to look too much like air-hostess uniforms.

But even so, I guess that makes me
a suit called Ben

The suit is the standard attire for people who want to Sell Things To Companies.

According to the Selling Things to Companies philosophy, buyers will look for loads of ways to eliminate potential Sellers from their list before they choose their final Seller.

Therefore, if you want to sell things, you need to make sure that you don't dress in boxer shorts, Hawaiian shirts and sandals, because, very simply, you will look different to everybody else, and you will give the Buyer a reason to eliminate you from their list.

As a result, people Selling Things wear suits. Other conventions in the same vein are the the Business Card, the Business Lunch, the Laptop, the Powerpoint Presentation, and lately the Corporate Web Site.

If you go to an interview dressed in a suit you are Selling Something - namely yourself. If you choose to dress in anything else, you are giving the Buyer, namely the company, an excuse not to choose you. Its that simple.

The Selling Things to Companies philosophy is subtle however. Once Sellers are successful in selling Things to a company, they try to sell more Things to the same company. So they keep their suits on so that the big company has one less excuse to drop them when another potential sale appears on the horizon. Therefore, many people working close to (but not employed by) business customers wear suits every day, just in case.

People who dress in suits just to give some impression to their staff that they are important and educated are on the wane thankfully, but the Selling Things to Companies philosophy guarantees that the wearing of suits will go on for the foreseeable future.

CR

Last year I placed a bet with a friend that the suit will be dead (me) or more alive than ever (him) in 2010.

With the demise of the .coms it looks like he may be going to win.

Still, at least a fiver will only be worth a couple of quid by then.

a gambler called Ben

I'd rather point and snicker.

Abstracted Woodpigeon, your point is well taken.
Is there any way to explain the way car salesmen dress?
A lot of them look like refugees from the first
"Austin Powers" movie.

Aha, but we are not Companies, are we? We are mere consumers, and consumers "don't" like suits, as is clearly evident from the forum submissions so far. The Sellers therefore adapt to the attire the consumer expects them to wear for the product they are selling.

Still, that doesn't explain the car salesman phenomenon - why anybody would dress up in an Austin Powers throwaway costume and expect the consumer to gladly hand over their hard-won earnings to them beats me. Does that make us more sophisticated or less sophisticated than company buyers?

CR

Well, as consumers, it is our own money. Company buyers are consumers too, of course (though you have to wonder about the cars that some of them drive ) but they are spending Someone Else's Money.

Always a head-rush, that.

a spend-thrift called Ben

Also, if its our money, we can just go "Ah, I just felt like it at the time". If its not our money we go "They were dressed in Hawaiian shirts, therefore they were unprofessional, therefore that's disqualification straight away."

In business, even a bad justification is better than no justification.

CR

uh?

I partially agree with the Woodpigeon, although I think there's also another factor involved : Prestige. When you wear a suit, people will react in a different way, and that is not only because you are Selling Things. There's a company I know were Staff-members (mostly managers of all kind, and lawyers and stuff like that) have to wear suits because it makes them distinguishable from the 'workmen' (I'm not making it up), and they are treated differently.
Now, the reason why they are treated differently, is because everyone knows they have Responsibility, and a lot of people's fate (e.g. the way they will be working the next couple of months, who will be in their next project, how much money they will get to do the project etc.) depends on their decisions. You could reason that this is a good position to be in, since in the other case, you depend on the 'mood' of the guys-in-suits, but I don't agree : this Responsibility creates a lot of Stress, a lot of Extra Fat (caused by all the obligated Dinner Parties you have to attend), takes away most of your Spare Time and Sleep and can easily kill your Family Life if you don't pay attention. Luckily these Suits get payed enough to compensate for all that, because I assure you : they should give me verrrry good Price to take away the important things in life...

To summarize : People in Suits get a lot of Prestige, good Prices and some Pleasure (if you like eating in a restaurant), but also heaps of Stress, too little Sleep and no Spare Time...

Great way to create a deep split between workers and managers, that. In my company and most companies I know nowadays, there is no distinction in the dress code between workers and managers (nobody wears suits, unless we absolutely have to). It doesn't cause any problems, and I think it helps, actually.

CR

I agree with you about the stress thing though. You couldn't pay me enough money to be away from my family all the time...

CR

You wouldn´t need to pay much to get me away from my family, but that´s a whole othet thing

A suit it a lie, in the same way as is make-up, politeness and job interviews. I want to just wear whatever I feel like, and I´m happy that the .commers are helping that to happen.

So if wahtever I feel like wearing is a suit, does that mean that it's a lie? I like dressing up from time to time. Sometimes, I even over dress a bit to look nice. They're also more comfortbale than what I normally wear.

I have recently become responsible for others. It's not as much fun as I thought it might be. At least it isn't yet. Every decsion has to be balanced between maintaining discipline and maintaining morale. Anyway, it's a pain.

No, but usually people wear suits to lie.

You'll have to let me know if you ever get on a jury. I'll make it a point to wear my uniform that day.

BTW, your name kills me.

Oh believe me You´d be much better off wearing a suit.

Actually, I pretty much agree. There aren't a whole lot of people who would
choose to wear suits if they had other options. Go to any high-level conference
of government officials from around in the world, and they are wearing suits.
The dashikis and kimonos get left behind for less formal occasions. (Would these
people speak truthfully if they wore their casual clothing? Good question. Let's
start a research study to find out .) If you wander around the financial district
of any large U.S. city, you'll see lots of suits. Some are worn by salesmen, some
by lawyers, some by corporate executives who have to periodically tell shareholders
that the company is doing great. A few are worn by job applicants, because they
have been told to "Dress for success." Vestis virum facit, i.e. clothes make
the man (the ancient Romans weren't politically correct about inclusive personal
pronouns ).

The other side of the coin: My brother-in-law is a shopkeeper in a college town in
Western Massachusetts. Suit-wearing people are so rare there that they stick out
like sore thumbs. They are usually recruiters. If they are corporate recruiters,
the graduating seniors who need jobs will be happy to see them. If they are
military recruiters, the welcome mat gets hidden .