From Pathetic Life #4
Friday, September 23, 1994The CEO has left the building, and flown back to New York City. He came and went without shaking hands or saying hello to any of the little people. I never even saw the schmuck from a distance, and he never saw that almost everyone on the eighth floor was dressed to the nines.

Several of the men who usually don’t even wear neckties came to work in fancy suits with vests. Some of the women wore long, colorful skirts and high-heel shoes. Even the few people who dressed in their ordinary work clothes seemed to be wearing their very best ordinary work clothes. It looked like a wedding reception, or backstage on some snooty PBS show imported from England.“I didn’t get the memo” that Casual Friday had been canceled, so here’s what the well-dressed fat slob wears to the office, bottom to top:• Black tennis-shoes. Tennies aren’t allowed even on Casual Fridays, but I wear them every day. You can get away with it if they’re all-black and with no logos or swooshes or anything. The security guards don’t inspect your feet.• Jeans are allowed on Casual Fridays, but I don’t own any jeans so I wore my normal cheap polyester slacks. All my slacks are black, and today’s were the same pair I wore yesterday. I don’t do laundry often enough to change britches daily. • Dark blue pullover, with light blue-and-white piping on the arms and a small Big Mac sauce stain above the right nipple. $2 from Salvation Army. Added the stain myself. There’s also a big and obvious mustard mark at the very bottom, but you can’t see it when the shirt’s tucked in.Monday-Thursday, all shirts are required to be button-down, so the pullover was my only expression of Casual Friday. But I was in open revolt against The Man, rules be damned, even though I was the only one who knew it or noticed.♦ ♦ ♦The only jeans I’ve ever owned were gifts. I never buy
jeans, and I just remembered why, so now I’m gonna wax philosophical about bluejeans:When I was a little kid and
Mom was still buying my clothes, we went to a department store — Sears,
probably, or JC Penny — and she told me to try on bluejeans. I did, but didn’t like them, and talked her into buying me some slacks instead. She
didn’t ask why I didn’t want jeans, but I remember that, too.It was
because most of the kids at school didn’t like me, and I didn’t like
most of the kids at school, and most of the kids at school wore
bluejeans on most days — and especially all the mean kids. Never got bullied by any kid who wasn’t wearing bluejeans.I
was a kid, and like any normal kid I wanted to be a normal kid, but … I
didn’t want to wear the mean kids’ uniform.I still don’t. ♦ ♦ ♦It’s payday, and I cashed this week’s paycheck, and last week’s paycheck. Going a week without spending was a semi-zenlike experience, and I recommend it and might do it again some time. Ordinary humans go on a diet to drop ten pounds, right? Go on a money diet and save fifty bucks.I paid two weeks’ rent and the water bill, and bought some oranges, carrots, and bananas for a semi-healthy feast. There’s a good chunk of cash left over, and that’s the way (uh-huh uh-huh) I like it (uh-huh uh-huh).♦ ♦ ♦I just had my first pangs of TV withdrawal, when the theme from The X-Files came in the window from someone else’s window across the dumpster-patio. My instant impulse was to turn on the TV and see what Scully and Mulder are up to, but the feeling passed almost as quickly as it came.