Work

[BomberPat]

I've always worn a suit to interviews, and maybe part of that is psychological in my own mind to make sure I'm in "professional" mode. I normally dress reasonably smart on my first day too, not necessarily full suit, but usually a cut above whatever the dress code is, I would just rather risk being overdressed than underdressed. 

Though in my actual day-to-day work, I don't think I've even worn a smart shirt since before the pandemic. I kind of drifted out of wearing decent shirts one winter in my old job when I was always wearing a jumper over them, then figured if I'm going to be wearing a jumper anyway what does it matter what's underneath it, and then by the summer just wearing T-shirts and no one saying anything. I'm pretty bottom of the totem pole at my current job, and I'm not public or student facing, so I pretty much just dress how I'd dress anywhere else, which these days is jeans and a T-shirt.

Admittedly it was for a job in a suit shop, but I was once told that the only reason I got the job over someone else was because we were pretty much neck-and-neck and it came down to me having worn a pocket square "properly" for a professional situation - straight, rather than peaked. I've heard of other people passing up applicants for office jobs because they wore brown shoes to the interview! I do wonder how many people miss out on jobs they'd be good at because they got dressed in their best suit, but by the time they got to the interview on public transport in the height of summer and horrible humidity, they had sweated buckets and looked like shit. 

[westlondonmist]

40 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Took me about 2 years! Someone finally told me I didn't need to wear a suit and I've not looked back since.

After being somehwere for a week I was told I didn't need to wear a tie. My reply was "I just like ties". They did have a dress code, trousers (chinos or non ripped jeans accepted) and collared shirt (polos included). The strictest dress code I had was in call centre, not as if the people I was speaking to could fucking see me. 

My office in the last 6 months has gone casual as fuck, the directorate I'm in anyway. There are several teams, but there is the opperational/service teams (me) and then the policy/strategy teams. The latter is much more casual, as it expanded the teams became much more casual and had a bit of a knock on effect to the people already there. I was surprised to see one of their managers turn up in grotty trainers, trackies and a t-shirt. Honestly, if someone i managed turned up like that I'd have a word. I'm fine with casual clothes to an extent but he looked like his missus had thrown him out and he'd slept on a park bench. I go very casual on site visit days, a few days in shorts unfortunately I ran into a manager on one of those days. 

 

15 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

You adapt to the situation/client/company. I wouldn't turn up in a suit to interview in hospitality for instance, and I wouldn't advise anyone to do that. 

Reminds me of the time I was recruitment scum, I used to recruit sales people for the construction/building materials industry and turned up to a large aggregate manufacturer with my manager fully suited and booted, to speak to their sales director.

We were sat outside his office and he asked if we were there to audit him. I felt like such a twat and never dressed like that for a client visit ever again. 

I definitely have been to interviews where I've felt overdressed and wish the agency who got me the interview had said this is a very casual office, shirt and trousers will suffice. I have had a couple where I've been told you have to wear a tie as they'd gotten from previous feedback. 

[SuperBacon]

7 minutes ago, westlondonmist said:

My office in the last 6 months has gone casual as fuck, the directorate I'm in anyway.

I would say that when we're in the office, it's still quite smart casual, wearing smart trainers is about as informal as I get. I do visit a lot of construction sites and colleges so am probably a bit more casual than most.

Always easy to spot who works in the IT department at ours though. Those guys really don't give a shit 😆

[davertfnewman]

I've generally always worked in places where you needed to dress smartly, but had a period where I left one place and thought I had something that was going to be great for me, but it wasn't, so was having to apply for anything and everything. Booking three interviews a day at one point, including a job with Amazon in their warehouse. So, went along and wore the suit and was the only one in a room of people who were in tracksuits and baseball caps and trainers. Couldn't believe it.

They also announced that they were going to do a drugs test and gave people the chance to leave at that point if they thought they weren't going to come up clean because they wouldn't accept an application from them for several months if they failed. Cue people doing the "I smoke weed, but weed isn't a drug!" argument from morons aplenty.

The recruiters themselves actually took so long in getting their shit together that I had to leave ahead of time and told them to forego my application because I had another one to go to. Yeah, you could argue that's not a good look either, but I was having to keep my options open.

[westlondonmist]

19 minutes ago, davertfnewman said:

I've generally always worked in places where you needed to dress smartly, but had a period where I left one place and thought I had something that was going to be great for me, but it wasn't, so was having to apply for anything and everything. Booking three interviews a day at one point, including a job with Amazon in their warehouse. So, went along and wore the suit and was the only one in a room of people who were in tracksuits and baseball caps and trainers. Couldn't believe it.

They also announced that they were going to do a drugs test and gave people the chance to leave at that point if they thought they weren't going to come up clean because they wouldn't accept an application from them for several months if they failed. Cue people doing the "I smoke weed, but weed isn't a drug!" argument from morons aplenty.

The recruiters themselves actually took so long in getting their shit together that I had to leave ahead of time and told them to forego my application because I had another one to go to. Yeah, you could argue that's not a good look either, but I was having to keep my options open.

 

I've had one interview where I've had to do a drug test. She said she wanted to see me doing the sample, so I didn't do it. I was sure I would pass, I just didn't want her in the gents with me. Came out the interview and phoned the agency, making sure I contacted them about how weird it was before the interviewer called and said I refused a test. I've done loads of d & a tests as I've worked on depots with large vehicles and plant on site, all been swab and breatheliser tests. At the very least she could have checked the gents was empty and let me go in by myself? 

[davertfnewman]

Reminds me of when I worked for an AC company in their office, sending the engineers out. Sent a guy to a site and in the induction they had all sorts of different HVAC engineers present and said they'd be doing a drugs test before assigning them to their job. One guy said to our guy that he'd been out on Saturday night doing coke and having a good time and was going before they got him to do it and he came up dirty. No idea what conversation he had to have with his company. I imagine he made up a story like "The wife messaged me and said something bad had happened and I needed to come home urgently".

[SuperBacon]

Mentioned before but my Dad was a long distance lorry driver all over Europe and as he got older he moved into survey side, managing the drivers etc. 

Anyway when they introduced random drug testing about 20 odd years ago and he broke the news to a fleet of about 40 drivers, about 10 of them stood up and said "Ah well, it's been a good run, all the best" and all just left without notice 😆

[davertfnewman]

I guess in their case it was something to get them up and keep them up and something to put them down when it was time to try and sleep for a few hours in the day in a lay-by in Belgium.

[gmoney]

22 hours ago, Chris B said:

 I also found out I almost lost out on a job in one place because 'we're not really a suit and tie place, so I don't know if you'll fit in with our culture', which was the last straw for me. 

I think this perfectly encapsulates that you never truly know what's going to irk an interviewer. The fact that they seemed to think that because you wore a suit to an interview that has a bearing on your personality or even what you might wear on your first day should you have got the job highlights the irrationality. 

It does ultimately come down to what you feel comfortable in, and as long as your on the right side of smart you're probably fine. I personally like a suit (but not a tie) because it feels like a bit of a ritual and gives me a little layer psychologically somehow. I've worn one to supermarket jobs, warehouse jobs, an industrial curtain cleaning job, a my current job for a media company and got jobs every time. 

[Briefcase]

When I got offered a job around 10 years ago, the area manager gave me a call, offered me the job and went into great detail as to why he offered me the job (was like a 45 min phone call) then said the only negative feedback was that I wore a tie and no one wears ties anymore (I wore a suit & tie to the interview). Note sure if he was trying to help me out or being a twat, probably the latter later knowing what he was like to work with. 

I've also worked with managers that would send people home straight away at interviews if they rocked up wearing a cap or tracksuit and ask them to come back dressed 'properly'. 

 

Edited November 7, 2025 by Briefcase

[DavidB6937]

If anyone is going to not give a job to you because you wore a tie/suit etc, then either they're lying and using it as an excuse, or they're just a twat.

[westlondonmist]

I didn't get the job I interviewed. The feedback was that although they knew I worked to a high standard, had legislative knowledge and experience, I didn't interview how they expected someone of that level (whatever the fuck that means). Part of me was trying to end the call quickly so I didn't tell him to go fuck himself, so he may have explained better. He did make an appointment to through all the questions with him and I get to keep all the questions as that level role has almost identical questions across the board. Which is great if I wanted other jobs, I wanted this one. Did make me wonder, has someone else had copies of the questions in advance and can basically practice their way to getting a job they aren't competent for? The person will be managing 4 contracts, I wrote the spec for 3 of them. 

 

I've basically taken an unofficial day off. I'm angry and will probably avoid the office for a week incase I tell someone what I think. They've essentially dangled this carrot in front of me for the last 2 years saying there would be this promotion for me to work for. Do the procurement, the finance, the project management and it will help you get it. Just feel used and angry at myself for believing them. One advantage is my job will now have a lot less responsibility but they can't lower my pay.

Edited November 14, 2025 by westlondonmist

[westlondonmist]

I was at a team away day yesterday, honestly if I hear one more cunt use the word holistic when not talking about a Douglas Adams novel I'm gonna fucking jacknife powerbomb someone through a desk. 

[BomberPat]

staring down the barrel of another restructure and round of job cuts at work; there's basically not been a single year I've worked here that everything has felt secure, and not a year I've worked in education that some aspect of my job hasn't been subject to restructure, review, "recovery", or whatever other euphemism they've come up with this week.

In the middle of that, they're "reviewing" the curriculum and professional services. Went to an all-staff meeting with SMT last week, and they talked in very vague terms about the need to cut costs, save money, increase recruitment, and to revise the professional services model - myself and several of my colleagues in professional services were there, and the meeting was very clearly directed at academic colleagues and not ourselves, so it was effectively an exercise in being in the room while they talked about us and not to us. They took no questions from any of us when it came to the Q&A, and basically promised the world to academics in terms of "fixing" what we do, but with zero detail. So that's worrying.

 

I've also been roped into working on the curriculum review. They're simplifying programmes so there's fewer pathways, combining similar programmes together, just making things more efficient - no problem there, really. But there's a huge piece of work involved in updating all the paperwork, and (like everyone else) the team responsible for doing that are ridiculously short-staffed, so I've been asked to spend this week helping them out with it. For the most part, it's a copy and paste job to get info from the old version to the new, but across hundreds of documents, so it's a week of busywork. I was given the go-ahead from my line manager to effectively be uncontactable this week while I solely concentrate on getting that work done. Except I haven't even been able to start on it, because the team I'm supposed to be working with only gave me access to the Sharepoint folders I need this morning, and the academics and senior managers who need to sign off on the paperwork as okay to start working on (which was meant to be done over a week ago) haven't done any of it yet - some of them are the same people who stood up in a lecture theatre last week to complain about professional services not being fit for purpose, yet here's muggins in professional services not being able to start on a job that's already overdue because they haven't done their part yet. 

I have asked, and the expectation is still that the work gets done this week. There doesn't seem to be any understanding of the fact that I'm on leave on Friday, and that it's 11am Tuesday and the work that should have been done in time for me to start at 9am yesterday wasn't done, so I'm effectively being asked to do a full week of work in - at best - two and a half days. And I will do that, and then probably come back to work after my break to walk straight into another meeting about how people like me aren't getting things done!

[SuperBacon]

13 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

there's basically not been a single year I've worked here that everything has felt secure, and not a year I've worked in education that some aspect of my job hasn't been subject to restructure, review, "recovery", or whatever other euphemism they've come up with this week

Pretty much the same as local government, constant restructures and merging directorates over the last 3 years, and that's before the faff of local government reorganisation (LGR) and devolution starting. Fun innit?