The Danger of Flipflops

Over the past few years our company 'operations group' has gathered to discuss a variety of management challenges. Spring has arrived in MN and it may be 90 degrees tomorrow. This morning a reminder of the dangers of warm weather appeared on the Nicollet Mall. 'FLIPFLOPS on Women'

During one particularly challenging operations group meeting we spent 3/4 of the time talking about a new dress code. Virtually all of the discussion centered on the new dress code as it related to women. Actually there was no discussion about the dress code and men except that men should not wear women's clothing. We did attempt to define how much cleavage was 'OK' but hit an impass when there was a collective realization that some women do not have cleavage.

There was concensus that the biggest danger in the workplace and eroder of profit are flipflops. They make noise. You can see womens toes. This is dangerous. I don't have any recollection of any discussion of men wearing flipflops and I'm not sure if we even touched the issue of men wearing sandals. Perhaps everyone already knows that men should not wear socks with sandals but no one wants to look at men's hairy toes or socks with sandals. Women can wear sandals as long as they don't look like flipflops. They need some sort of heel constraint (according to the men on the committee). Women can get away being sockless (hosieryless?) except in Phoenix where it is truly hot.

I've just wasted five minutes on this topic so I guess the committee was correct. This has been a distraction from technology and the recession. Women should not wear flipflops in the workplace. Across the street women change from flipflops to heel-constrained sandals before entering the building. That's distracting, too. Perhaps flipflops should be banned from the downtown business district. Of course then we'd have women changing from flipflops to heel-constrained sandals on the MTC buses. I'm going to call Mayor Ryback and the Metro Council.