Cubicle Culture
Mar. 19th, 2004 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brdgtI saw this article in the Wall Street Journal the other day and found it highly amusing...
Not Too Good-Looking But a Good Cuddler: The Office Sweater
Jared Sandberg. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Mar 17, 2004. pg. B.1
JAN VAN METER, a regional president for communications consultancy Fleishman-Hillard, retired three years ago. But his office sweater didn't.
In 1955, Mr. Van Meter was 14 years old when his sister, fresh from her honeymoon in Quebec, brought him a sweater. It wasn't just any sweater. It was a shawl-collared cardigan that fell below the waist, with pockets and a zipper front. Originally white but now yellowed, one of its elbows is gone. But its blue maple leaves and moose heads are pronounced, if not chic.
"You'd never see it on a runway outside of Moose Jaw," says Mr. Van Meter.
Nearly 20 years ago, Mr. Van Meter brought it with him to work to wear when his office building in Manhattan couldn't combat frigid winter days. (At least there was running water.) Then someone in consumer marketing -- or "coma," as he calls the group -- borrowed it and the office, or at least its politics, was never quite the same.
"When you went to a meeting and saw the sweater on someone, it had a wow factor," recalls Susan Johnson, a former colleague. "It was assumed she had some kind of pull with Jan."
The sweater resided on the back of the chair of the last wearer. Occasionally, it was swiped from a vacationing possessor. But for Mrs. Johnson, it was too sacred for that: "Stealing it would be like dipping into a church collection box."
"It's become a weird totem," adds a mystified Mr. Van Meter, who still sees the cardigan when he visits the office. "It's pretty bizarre."
LET US NOW PRAISE office sweaters. They start as emblems of powerlessness: a desperate last resort in any inclement office where, unless you're a park ranger, campfires are prohibited. But the tattered, fashion-ending coffee sponges become part bib, part security blanket. And so much more: Office sweaters are what people get most attached to at work -- and vice versa.
What makes a good office sweater? There seems to be an unwritten rule stipulating cardigans, but shawls or pashmina scarves are also favored. Just so it isn't a garment that has to be pulled over the head, which seems to unnerve prospective borrowers.
If they're not cardigans, "they don't hang," notes Bill Hardigg, a public-policy consultant in Annandale, Va. "There's no way to hang a pullover on the back of a chair." Mr. Hardigg has also observed that managers are less prone to sweaters than their employees; staffers sit in huge open spaces less likely to have a thermostat or be warmed by body heat and breath than a boss's private office.
Beyond that, the office sweater needs to be big enough to fit over anything and ugly enough to ward off burgling, says Julie Smolyansky. And fashion is out the drafty window: "I don't think 'good-looking' is important in any way," she says.
The chief executive of Lifeway Foods, maker of a creamy drink made of fermented cow's milk called kefir, has to roam the 10,000 square feet of refrigerated space at her Morton Grove, Ill., office to taste batches. She now believes her black fleece cardigan improves the kefir.
"When I put my sweater on and I start tasting," she says, without a hint of hyperbole in her personal yarn, "it generally tastes better somehow."
She loves it so much, she describes its stains as "yummy."
GEORGE RITTER IS similarly committed to a sweater relationship that has lasted 34 years. He bought the shawl-collar cardigan with zipper front and pockets back in 1961. It was particularly useful when Mr. Ritter worked for a Wakefield, Mass., engineering office in a century- old wool mill. A huge cubicle farm with exposed brick walls and 15- foot windows, the office was horrifically insulated -- a winter nightmare. "It would be 100% accurate to say that 100% of the people in the building had a sweater," says the engineer.
He is less precise when it comes to the color of his sweater: "I can't tell you for sure whether it was blue-green, green-gray or blue- gray," he says. "But I don't care. It was comfortable."
His studies of colleagues led him to some unsurprising sociological conclusions: Women clean them, men don't, especially engineers who take the term "everyday wear" literally. "Your average engineer doesn't give two hoots and a holler how he smells and what he's wearing in the office," says Mr. Ritter, not exactly a recruiter for the profession.
You'd think office sweaters would make their owners ripe targets for mockery. But there's an implicit understanding that in an office, an awkward limbo between public and private realms, much can be forgiven by those in need.
Nobody at the call center where Carmen Johnson works gets uppity about fashion. "Nobody cares because it's cold."
Still, Mrs. Johnson can't help but point out her colleague's calf- length black cardigan with belt loops but no belt, holes in the elbow and broken buttons. It's pilled and "hangs kind of cockeyed," Mrs. Johnson says.
"Shawl collar?"
"Lemme take a look," she whispers, failing to contain giggles. "Sure does!"
Not Too Good-Looking But a Good Cuddler: The Office Sweater
Jared Sandberg. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Mar 17, 2004. pg. B.1
JAN VAN METER, a regional president for communications consultancy Fleishman-Hillard, retired three years ago. But his office sweater didn't.
In 1955, Mr. Van Meter was 14 years old when his sister, fresh from her honeymoon in Quebec, brought him a sweater. It wasn't just any sweater. It was a shawl-collared cardigan that fell below the waist, with pockets and a zipper front. Originally white but now yellowed, one of its elbows is gone. But its blue maple leaves and moose heads are pronounced, if not chic.
"You'd never see it on a runway outside of Moose Jaw," says Mr. Van Meter.
Nearly 20 years ago, Mr. Van Meter brought it with him to work to wear when his office building in Manhattan couldn't combat frigid winter days. (At least there was running water.) Then someone in consumer marketing -- or "coma," as he calls the group -- borrowed it and the office, or at least its politics, was never quite the same.
"When you went to a meeting and saw the sweater on someone, it had a wow factor," recalls Susan Johnson, a former colleague. "It was assumed she had some kind of pull with Jan."
The sweater resided on the back of the chair of the last wearer. Occasionally, it was swiped from a vacationing possessor. But for Mrs. Johnson, it was too sacred for that: "Stealing it would be like dipping into a church collection box."
"It's become a weird totem," adds a mystified Mr. Van Meter, who still sees the cardigan when he visits the office. "It's pretty bizarre."
LET US NOW PRAISE office sweaters. They start as emblems of powerlessness: a desperate last resort in any inclement office where, unless you're a park ranger, campfires are prohibited. But the tattered, fashion-ending coffee sponges become part bib, part security blanket. And so much more: Office sweaters are what people get most attached to at work -- and vice versa.
What makes a good office sweater? There seems to be an unwritten rule stipulating cardigans, but shawls or pashmina scarves are also favored. Just so it isn't a garment that has to be pulled over the head, which seems to unnerve prospective borrowers.
If they're not cardigans, "they don't hang," notes Bill Hardigg, a public-policy consultant in Annandale, Va. "There's no way to hang a pullover on the back of a chair." Mr. Hardigg has also observed that managers are less prone to sweaters than their employees; staffers sit in huge open spaces less likely to have a thermostat or be warmed by body heat and breath than a boss's private office.
Beyond that, the office sweater needs to be big enough to fit over anything and ugly enough to ward off burgling, says Julie Smolyansky. And fashion is out the drafty window: "I don't think 'good-looking' is important in any way," she says.
The chief executive of Lifeway Foods, maker of a creamy drink made of fermented cow's milk called kefir, has to roam the 10,000 square feet of refrigerated space at her Morton Grove, Ill., office to taste batches. She now believes her black fleece cardigan improves the kefir.
"When I put my sweater on and I start tasting," she says, without a hint of hyperbole in her personal yarn, "it generally tastes better somehow."
She loves it so much, she describes its stains as "yummy."
GEORGE RITTER IS similarly committed to a sweater relationship that has lasted 34 years. He bought the shawl-collar cardigan with zipper front and pockets back in 1961. It was particularly useful when Mr. Ritter worked for a Wakefield, Mass., engineering office in a century- old wool mill. A huge cubicle farm with exposed brick walls and 15- foot windows, the office was horrifically insulated -- a winter nightmare. "It would be 100% accurate to say that 100% of the people in the building had a sweater," says the engineer.
He is less precise when it comes to the color of his sweater: "I can't tell you for sure whether it was blue-green, green-gray or blue- gray," he says. "But I don't care. It was comfortable."
His studies of colleagues led him to some unsurprising sociological conclusions: Women clean them, men don't, especially engineers who take the term "everyday wear" literally. "Your average engineer doesn't give two hoots and a holler how he smells and what he's wearing in the office," says Mr. Ritter, not exactly a recruiter for the profession.
You'd think office sweaters would make their owners ripe targets for mockery. But there's an implicit understanding that in an office, an awkward limbo between public and private realms, much can be forgiven by those in need.
Nobody at the call center where Carmen Johnson works gets uppity about fashion. "Nobody cares because it's cold."
Still, Mrs. Johnson can't help but point out her colleague's calf- length black cardigan with belt loops but no belt, holes in the elbow and broken buttons. It's pilled and "hangs kind of cockeyed," Mrs. Johnson says.
"Shawl collar?"
"Lemme take a look," she whispers, failing to contain giggles. "Sure does!"
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Date: 2004-03-19 07:00 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2004-03-19 07:10 am (UTC)Ha, this guy is so funny. And it's pretty accurate, too.
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Date: 2004-03-19 12:38 pm (UTC)I love office sweaters. I have a black cardigan hoodie that's trendy and hip, and a gray sweater I love that my grandma made me when I was 11 that's like my security blanket. I don't think I wrote a paper in university without that sweater.
I also have a gorgeous wool shawl that my aunt's friend brought me from India that I would love to start wearing -- I usually use it as a reading blanket at home.