Friday Shirts

Tamara follows up on Kyra's Notes From The Cube yesterday . . .

Today is Friday and we are going to have Casual Day again. I like it, except for . . .

Butt-ugly print shirts.

What is it about men in certain professions - engineers, sales, technical in general - that they all seem to shop in the same store where ugly print, fake "Hawaiian" shirts are apparently the only item on display? It's almost impossible to describe how patterns of drab color can be intermixed with designs of repetitive disdain for form. "Impossible," and yet... it is done so many, many, many times. There is a twisted genius at play here: in a world where originality is such a rare commodity, the designers of these Ugly Shirts seem to find no end of innovative horrors to create.

If there ever was a persuasive argument for uniforms in the office workplace, Friday-God-Awful Shirts would be high on the list.

But where do they come from? There are far too many of these Ugly Shirts in sight to make this mere happenstance. Are these shirts given as gifts to men by wives that hate them? Is there an epidemic in bad taste that takes otherwise reasonable males and, once their waistline starts to bulge, disconnects their sense of style and taste? Do they think these shirts are "fun?

People are pack-oriented, men particularly, following the head wolf. Is there some style-perverted Role Model that these men are emulating? I know that like behavior among men reinforces itself: so when they see someone else in an ugly-as-sin Friday Short, does that support their own lack of taste?

Oh Lord, Deliver us from this evil. Amen.