Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog

I am fortunate. I work in a casual and laid-back place. A lot of people don’t. I met my friend Chris for lunch yesterday—the poor sap had been stuck in meetings all morning and was wearing a tie. Don’t get me wrong, he (you) looked great. But I don’t know how I’d make it through the day if I had to “dress up.” And our infrequent meetings driving me up the ever-lovin’ wall.

We do graphic design which means that, as the business world goes, we’re artsy-fartsy. Steve Jobs set the precedent for casual with his black turtleneck and jeans. We don’t even have to look that nice. Jeans and a beer t-shirt are good enough for our place. I’m not unaware of the philosophy that you should dress for the position you’d like to achieve. Maybe that’s why my seventeen-year anniversary of doing the same thing is coming up. I don’t dress for success.

We also don’t work in a nanny-state. Most of us plug in to the music or podcasts or futbol videocasts. For people like me who have low powers of concentration, it helps my focus to drown the rest of the office out. Even when I have the football webcast going it’s extra helpful, because I don’t want anyone to think that I’m just sitting there watching TV, so I work even harder. Really! Nobody’s tracking our keystrokes on the computer—or if they are, they’ve done a really good job not letting on and haven’t called anybody on our Facebook and Twitter activity. We all do it, but nobody abuses it.

Best of all, on many birthdays and many holidays, we get beer! A happy worker is a productive worker. I think I’ve said once or twice in previous posts that I do some of my best work when I’m drinking beer. Same goes at the office. Being at work is a lot more fun when you’re enjoying a tasty beverage.

All in all, where I work is a nifty place.