The other day I was out running errands and I saw something that was odd. It was a lady picking up her dry cleaning in her Pajamas. I see stuff like this all the time. Why would you leave your house without getting dressed? At the risk of sounding stuffy, I have to say this is nuts. If you are going to leave your house, then get dressed. Have some self-respect. People will see you, why wouldn’t you want them to see you looking your best.

This has crept in the workplace. Where I work we have a casual dress code. This means Docker style pants and a decent shirt, in theory. Of course, we are manufacturing plant so many of the office staff have to go on the shop floor. So they were jeans. And T-shirts are permitted if they have the company logo on them. The result is a lot of office employees dressed in blues jeans and t-shirts, even those that couldn’t get to the shop floor with a map. So what, you might ask. On the surface, it doesn’t seem to matter. As long as we are all working, why shouldn’t we be comfortable, right? Wrong. Work isn’t about comfort, it’s about work. Casual dress, leads to casual attitude. People at my job (and yours too, I bet) are very comfortable. They feel comfortable criticizing this and that they don’t like. They hold conversations across several cubes. Just yell out what ever you feel like. All these things by themselves are not big, but when you put them all together you have a relaxed environment (read: chaotic)that isn’t conducive to working effectively.

I see it when I go out to eat. The servers, for some reason they are no longing waiting only serving, more often than not are in jeans and a t-shirt. And they are very casual with the customers. It makes me cringe every time a server tells me that my order make take a while because they are understaffed. Why would you tell me that? Just smile, tell me my food will be out when it’s ready. If it’s a nice place, I’ll likely be content to sit and converse with whomever I’m out with. But when you plant the idea in my head that there is a problem, I can’t help but start looking at this problem myself. When I go to a retail store, the clerks (well dressed in jeans and a t-shirt) won’t even stop the conversation that they having to help me. I find it very disturbing to be standing there while the two young ladies talk about their escapades from the night before. Wow, you drank too much and then found yourself in Jimmy’s bed? Gee, didn’t want to know that. Now could you explain to me what the difference between these two items is. You can’t? What exactly are they paying you to do?

I know I sound like a stodgy old man when I say this stuff. When I was younger folks would wear a Hat and a Jacket to go to the Baseball game. And there was real customer service. And kids wore belt and kept their pants pulled up, too! But I think that these are syptoms of a big problem in this country. Lowered expectations. You can’t expect a teenager to know anything about the product he is “selling.” We’ll just have her ring it up. The consumer will have to do their own research. We can’t expect peple to dress nice for work, isn’t enough that show up. We can’t even expect people to get dressed in the morning to run their errands, they’ll just be coming right back home when their done.

Once again, you ma be asking, so what? By continually lowering outr expectation, we continually get an inferior product, result, experince, whatever. Is it any wonder that this nation of lowered expecations has a president who can’t be bother to speak correctly. Who doesn’t do his homework before invading a nation. Who can’t take responsibility for his mistakes. Who refuses to learn from the mistakes of the past. A man who only wants to represent those who agree with him and his way a life. You can’t expect him to do all that, jeez isn’t enough that he stands for freedom and liberty, makes bold decisons, and keeps us safe from terrorists? I think its time to raise our expectations.