Casual Fridays

I have a confession.

It’s not really much of a confession, if I’m being honest, but it might surprise you: I’ve never worked in a corporate office.

Sure, I’ve worked in my own offices. In a manner of speaking, this corner of my couch has become a de-facto daily office, and each gym has a little office area. I’m talking about a place where workers of the same company fill up a building, or at least an office floor.

The restaurants I worked in had some of that corporate vibe, but I only got glimpses of the sort of dystopian hellscape that Mike Judge’s Office Space presents, just to use one vivid example.

Casual Fridays were nonexistent in the restaurant business, but in corporate America toward the end of the 20th century, they really became a thing.

You can understand why workers were typically so cynical when offered the supposed perk of additional freedom. How dumb do they think we are, you might ask, when offered the “opportunity” to wear a pair of jeans or dockers one day instead of the even-more-uncomfortable office slacks or (god forbid) pantsuits.

It comes across as pandering, exactly the way Apple’s edginess comes across to me. “Will our corporate overlords one day allow us to speak out loud with one another?”, workers might wonder sarcastically. Severance satirizes this concept brilliantly in several ways, especially in the dance party scene.

Like many co-opted traditions, this idea—of having a more casual Friday at a corporate office—has an interesting origin story. We need to travel to Hawaii, and to the 1960s to hear it.

Statehood for Hawaii (in 1959) coincided with the rise of jet travel. That very same year, Pan Am began nonstop flights to the island from California, and suddenly there was an enormous economic opportunity for Hawaii.

At the same time, the culture on the islands would be threatened by influence from the outside. So, while tourism was booming and business owners and workers on the island were eager to keep people coming, there was a very conscious effort to share some of the identity with the world, lest it become subsumed.

Aloha shirts (now more commonly called Hawaiian shirts) were the perfect fit. They were already a niche item, but elevating them to the status of a national symbol would be very, very good for business. The Asian floral motifs on the shirts would remind mainland Americans that Hawaii was unique, with much more Asian influence than any other state.

Aloha Friday was half grassroots, half astroturf. The workers were genuinely excited to show pride in their state, and it was cool to wear a more casual shirt than usual at work. The Hawaiian Fashion Guild lobbied employers to allow their workers to wear Aloha shirts to the office, and they even sent free shirts to each member of the Hawaiian House of Representatives.

In short, this worked because it was just organic enough, and because people really cared about their state.

By contrast, the corporate version has none of the aspects that gave the original Aloha Fridays its soul. Not to mention: people started dressing the way they wanted more often during the 90s, trying to break free from the oppressive, conformist culture that seemed to work so well during the 1950s, but which seems to unnecessarily suck your soul these days.

I probably first noticed how cynical gimmicks like casual Fridays are through the lens of punk, like so many other social ills. Going through a brief period where I deliberately looked shocking so I would be excluded was hell on me for a few years, but it ultimately made life much easier. Nowadays, I just sort of wear whatever I want all the time.

It doesn’t hurt to have had a job where pajama-wearing is encouraged.

Have you ever worked in an office that panders to you like this? Was it good to have a little comfort or freedom anyway?