One warehouse employee was shocked when her bosses told her that she would be required to wear a women's business suit to work in the warehouse. They wanted her to look 'professional' and 'appealing.' She wanted to 'be able' to 'do her job.'
For the sake of clarity, I'm going to say I work in an industry which is similar to warehousing. Same logic in the grand scheme of things. In my branch, and several surrounding branches, there are only two staff members to keep the place running so we all have casual uniforms; Just a polo shirt and appropriate pants and footwear.
I mainly do administration work and have a team member who works in the back end of things, but I'm capable and willing to jump outside when required of me.
Examples of me needing to work in the back would be if we have a huge rush, or if I need to send my team mate to help at another branch or out on the road to collect stock and I have to fill in for him while he's gone.
It's a pretty good set up because working outside really breaks up the monotony of being stuck at a desk all day and it's easy enough to do both parts of the job when I need to.
Well, some genius in head office decided he wanted to change the uniform for any and all admin staff to something a little more corporate and dressy. I can only describe this uniform as a three piece suit made with the heaviest fabrics known to man.
Suddenly I've gone from wearing a polo shirt which is comfortable and easy to move around in, to wearing a white long sleeved business shirt with a vest, jacket and neckerchief. Complete with a skirt, stockings and a slight heel.
I straight up look like a flight attendant working in an industrial warehouse, and can barely lift my arms high enough to hold my steering wheel on the drive to work. It was a poorly designed uniform and I was so incredibly uncomfortable wearing it; I was very quick to voice my anger.
I first mentioned how it is unfair (borderline cruel) to expect staff to wear such a thick and layered uniform when we live in Australia; particularly in a place known for our consistent high temperatures and harsh sun.
I then asked how I would be expected to leave the desk to operate machinery and do heavy lifting in a suit, skirt and heels. I was met with the promise that anyone working in admin and wearing a corporate uniform would not have to leave their desk to do any back-end work at all.
I raised another concern, stating that we did not have enough staff for them to make this particular promise and still maintain our quality of work and hit our deadlines, and was met with a strong guarantee that I would not have to do any physical work in my day-to-day operations.
I was all but ordered to sit at the desk to look appealing for clients and never move from there... Okay then, no problem. From that point onwards, I followed their instructions. I never left my desk.
There would suddenly be long wait times for orders and fulfilments, because my team member was on the road on a job and there was no one on site to continue his work until he got back. If my team member called in sick, I would spend the day pushing back deadlines with clients which affected our targets and our reputation.
Funnily enough, my teammate only started getting sick because I had to have the office aircon on freezing temperatures so I wouldn't get heatstroke at my desk.
I was honest with clients who had complaints, and explained that I would usually step in to help to make sure their needs were met but was specifically instructed not to anymore, and then redirected their complaints through to customer service in head office.
After a few months of this I was invited to a meeting with three of my direct managers and a HR representative. They were clearly upset about the drop in productivity and amount of complaints we were receiving.
I let them all say their piece before reminding them I raised these concerns to them months ago, and was merely following instruction given to me which were abundantly clear that I was to take care of admin work at my desk and do nothing else.
I let them know my hands were tied, so all I could do was look pretty and placate clients when we inevitably couldn't meet their needs as promised. I suggested hiring more warehousing staff to fill in the gaps left by the admin staff who were now chained to their desk by their uniform and unable to ease the pressure of the workload like we used to do.
I could see that comment definitely hit them right where I wanted it to and they couldn't argue with me for following their instructions, so I was told they would get back to me on a solution moving forward.
Well, here I am at work two weeks later, typing this post while wearing my old polo shirt uniform. I was fully prepared to find another job if their 'solution' wasn't reasonable, and maybe I still will look to leave this place. But, I'll take the win for now!
Take this story, redo it in a positive light and put it on your resume. “Successfully lead efforts to improve safety quality and customer satisfaction by working with senior leadership to mitigate gaps I identified in daily operations”
So close to where I worked. My uniform was polo shirt, jeans, steel cap boots in the office. All we had to do was throw on a hi-vis vest and head out the back door if needed to help out. 'Head office' introduced a corporate uniform, but luckily were smart enough not to apply it to anyone who worked at the warehouse sites.
Seems like your doing 2 people's job and your pay should reflect such.
Oooh, this is gold. I can just imagine the cheap-ass poly blend poorly tailored monstrosity they made you wear too. Bulk ordered in only two sizes, too large or too small, with the company logo on it, so you can't wear it anywhere else, in that navy blue colour that instantly looks dusty and faded as soon as you wash it. Just make sure they didn't take the cost out of your pay check.
There are some naive people who would have done the opposite and tried to power thru the obstacles put in place by management and they usually burn out trying to work with stupid rules in place of giving the higher ups exactly what they asked for.
Classic example of the ever prevalent problem with corporations today of not hiring enough people because they see them as operating costs to minimize instead of appreciating the value they bring.
I remember when I worked at a Macy's store it was common for them to only have one person staffed for the entirety of the women's sections combined which stretched from one end of the store to the other.
I would literally see people leave and drop a pile of clothes somewhere because there wasn't anybody to check them out let alone help them pick out clothing. Similarly the entire second floor was sometimes only staffed by one person.