Suits in the Workforce

Is this elevator working? I asked staring at the woman manning the front desk at my office building. She stares at me blankly before stating "depends on which floor." "Nine" I responded. "You need to use those" she said pointing at the line of people waiting at the second set of elevators. I had been in that line for several minutes and grown tired of waiting.  "Ok do these go to 8?" I said willing to take a stairwell up the rest of the way. "Yes" she said.

I pressed the button again. Nothing lit up to indicate the elevator call. I stood. "So I can go to 8?" I ask again. "Yes" she said blankly. 

"Ok do you know why the light isn't working"

"They're not working."
"The elevators I'm standing at are not working?" I say to confirm that she had truly watched me stand at a broken set of elevators for an extended period of time while inquiring which floor they took me too."
She nodded dully. 

Why she hadn't stated this initially is beyond me. Why she suits up to sit at a desk to orchestrate a building flow she seemingly has no idea about what is going on is beyond me. This isn't the first time. My first day at this office she pointed to an elevator and said "it doesn't go to the ninth floor" then when I stood on the elevator it had a round grungy number 9 button which I promptly pressed and managed to get off on the ninth floor. 

All this has me wondering why is it that dress suits are the pinnacle of dress for a professional while simultaneously representing low skilled jobs that have a tendency to irritate you. The work attire bell curve if you will.  The outskirts of a less skilled task requires suits, then as your career barrels upwards towards CEO you reach peak slob level, Mark Zuckerburg, where you can traipse your 700 billion dollar business in basketball shorts and Addidas velcro slides. As you curve back down you get on the other side of the bell curve of professionals who have to wear a suit. 

So on the lower left you have suited unskilled labor like hotel clerks, car rental clerks, and politicians, and on the lower right you the skilled suited jobs like doctors, attorneys, and European soccer coaches. 

On the left side I must assume the suits are intended to trick your mind into believing they are trying to help you. We have been indoctrinated to trust people who dress well or look superior, and for the past few decades suits have been the Western look. So when the Fox car rental agent decked head to toe in the finest polyester and tell you its $900 fee for dropping off the car in Oakland instead of San Francisco you may believe them. With the suit Fox Rentals is hoping I'm less likely to throw a hissy fit and show my contract agreement that specifically states to drop it off in Oakland, or even better not check thoroughly to find their scam. Or when a politician claims they want to make the country great and drain the swamp then they put all their cronies into office and systematically dismantle every positive program that developed nations around the world actually agree with like helping the environment, feeding the poor, and not treating women like a magic machine that transforms jizz into Republicans or future free labor from incarceration and they're just hoping that the suit helps you believe them and they have your best interest in mind. Just like love covers a multitude of sins, suits cover a multitude of bullshit, ineptness, and stupidity. 

At the top of the bell curve you have the intelligent but casually dressed. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, tends to wear pullovers with jeans. Comedians like Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen are often casual, even in interviews wearing jeans and t-shirts. 

It should come as no surprise that when Sundar went to Congress to teach them the basics of internet and relevant searching, that most kindergartners understand implicitly he wore a suit. When Seth Rogen went to ask Congress for more funding for Alzheimer's due to his personal connection with the issue he too wore a suit hoping to get the miserly Congress to help an issue millions of Americans are currently and will soon face. Rogen unfortunately had to call out many of the Senators for not showing up. They forgot to come to work, which was ironic on a speech around forgetfulness. Neither of these men were trying to bullshit Congress, but peacocking for the closeted members of Congress who tend to be the tightest with the purse strings. 

On the far right end of the curve we have skilled, intelligent, and well dressed individuals but primarily presenting labor. A doctor is normally in scrubs the top of the bell curve, casual and skilled, but occasionally they need to present to peers or patients. Like say when Lindsay Graham is at the doctor for erectile dysfunction, he needs someone in a suit to cover the bullshit that its completely normal to have never maintained an erection with a woman. When Susan Collins goes to a therapist she needs a well dressed person in a chair with a clipboard to assuage that nagging feeling about Brett Kavanaugh being a bad person. The therapist will say "we can work through this" while internally thinking "this will haunt her forever." The therapist needs to cover up their bullshit, but ultimately when they were in the throws of that PHD they were in sweats huddled over a book. 

Now of course this isn't always true, its a bell curve afterall, there are outliers. For example highly unskilled writers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff  of Game of Thrones are often casually dressed when those men shouldn't roll out of bed in less than a tux. Or some CEOs are well dressed but more skilled manipulators than business folk. Bill Gates invented operating systems and became CEO, where other CEO's  just fell out of the right crotch. These examples are easy to tell who is skilled vs who is not. Just check their Twitter. 

Oh nice, what hopeful and informative tweets regarding the state of our world and how we can make it a better place by working together. 

Wow. How generous to offer your best wishes to haters and losers on a day of remembrance. And anti vaccines. And acknowledging two failed marriages of celebrities. 

But for the majority the bell curve works out fairly accurately. The casually dressed environmental heroes who wade through underbrush to check carbon levels in the soil and develop plans to protect our ecosystem, or the business casual desk jockeys who actually run and maintain companies are securely in the center of the curve while their CEO pays off another affair tumbling into those outlier positions. And naturally all this goes out the window when you're at home. That's on you. But when out and about and you see someone in a suit, first look up, are you checking in somewhere, if not then tread carefully and simply state "global warming is a..." then trail off. If they say "scam" then run. If they said "it's actually climate change" then I'd bet you're on the right side of that bell curve and with a know it all.