I look good in a suit.
Now, there are a lot of points on which I am willing to cede ground, but this is not one of them, so it was with more than a little joy that I went all Barney Stinson for an off-site client meeting this week and appropriately suited up.
My day job is in Corporate America, so you wouldn’t think it particularly noteworthy that an individual in a professional organization would actually get snazzed up for a day, but down in the land of personal cube space and shared fluorescent lighting I might as well have been an invader from the Planet of the MBAs. Apparently the only reasons to wear a suit are if you are attending a funeral or a job interview.
It is a little disheartening to realize that in most cases dressing up has become as simple as wearing a pair of wrinkled Dockers and a golf shirt with faded pizza sauce stains.
I am a writer, and an occasional writer of video games at that, so I realize the bar of professional appearance is not exactly astronomic. People seem generally satisfied that I arrive at most functions without a family of possums living in my tangled hair. But, when I wear my suit of single breasted armor I just feel different, like maybe I should be watching sports while complaining to strangers about diversifying my portfolio.
Am I the only one who feels different wearing a suit? I slip on the jacket over a crisply pressed shirt, choke up that tie and this confidence washes over me. A guy like me, wearing an outfit like that, is clearly going places. I am stuck in traffic with gusto! I am ordering lunch like a man! I am totally owning this elevator ride to the sixth floor! See that penny there? You can have it, because a man like me wearing a suit like this don’t need no stinking, lucky floor-penny.
And, it’s odd because even as I was an overdressed anomaly at work, it seemed that I was also a defacto source of dependable information on topics I was not equipped to address. I understand now how people in suits becoming spouting mouthpieces of nonsense, because there is a strange synergy (Suit Word!) between the unrealistic confidence the wearer has in his own omnipotence matched only by everyone else’s desire to pass the buck.
It is thoroughly addicting. Even now as I am back in the team uniform of low level employees (jeans and a buttoned shirt) I miss the allure, the power of the suit. I start thinking nonsense like, “maybe I could rock the sport coat and jeans look?”
What am I, a sports reporter from a late-80s baseball movie?
No, it is an armor too powerful and too corrupting to wear everyday. It would be just weeks until I was figuring out how I could leverage my home equity for a BMW loan and cheating at business school entrance exams. I would wile away the hours between spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations watching internet videos on how to improve the distance on my nine-iron. I would finger gun and fist bump.
And yet, it calls to me.