Looking at my first attempt at explaining my view point on this whole "dressing-up" concept, I realize I rambled WAY off-topic. I did say things that gave you, the reader, a glimpse of a bit of my personality, but I sort of lost sight of the original point I was trying to make. So, I'm here to try again... bear with me as I'll probably ramble off the road once more...
In the last two years since I became my own boss, two things have happened. One, I've gained a bit of weight, and two, I fell in love with the freedom to be "who I am".
The weight thing is something I am going to try to work on, but I straight-up admit right now that it's going to be difficult. I'm a fat, soda hound who loves food, and being at the store as much as I am, eating healthy is really hard to do. It's very easy to have someone bring me a pizza, some Thai food, or a tasty steak quesadilla with sour cream to the store so I can keep working without interruption.
Hand in hand with the weight gain, my level of dress went right down the tubes. I'm pretty much a t-shirt and sweats guy anyway, but after about six months of a steady diet of fast food, those were really the only clothes I had that would fit me anymore. Being my own boss, the only one who could keep me in check was... me. Major fail.
In short order, the uniform I chose to wear for our store, A PUBLIC PLACE OF BUSINESS, was a black t-shirt with the store logo on it, a pair of sweats or jogging shorts (dependant on temperature), a backward baseball hat, and either a pair of beat-up high-top sneakers (socks optional) or a pair of $12 sandals from Wal-Mart. Now, I'm a fairly friendly person, and the regulars never seemed to have a problem with this, but I have to wonder how many POTENTIAL regular customers did I scare off with it.
Combine those thoughts with me seeing the previously mentioned pictures of Comic-Book-Guy-Me, and it brought reality crashing down around me as I realized the potential damage I was causing to our business. Suddenly, all of those various workplace rules and regulations I had previously been dismissive of made sense to me. It all clicked...
So, I broke out the "dress" clothes to see what still fit me. What I was left with was very... anemic to say the least...
One pair of brown deck shoes...
Four pairs of blue jeans (two dark wash, one medium wash, one light wash)...
Two braided leather belts (one black, one brown)...
Several various pairs of socks...
And a *HUGE* necktie collection.
As "accessory" wear, I had...
Five cotton, V-neck long sleeve pullover sweaters...
One pullover sweater vest that fit well...
Two sweater vests that fit OKAY...
A long-sleeve cardigan sweater...
and several other sweaters that I should not wear again until I lose some weight.
Notice something missing? I had no dress shirts that fit anymore...
So my first step was to procure some shirts that fit, and that led to my first new discovery about the world of clothing... Big & Tall stores are a scam worthy of Bernie Madoff. Seriously, the increase in price from regular sizes to B&T sizes is actually pretty staggering. If that alone isn't incentive to lose weight, I'm not sure what is.
I also needed to find some comfortable black dress shoes. My feet are an oh-so-not-easy-to-find-shoes-for size 12EEEE.
The shirts were easy to find, but pricier than I wanted. The shoes had me running to four different stores, but cost me about what I expected to pay for them. Overall, not horrible, and now that I have my new shirt measurements, I can find better bargains online if I need to.
Moving on... armed with a few shirts to start with, I able to begin this New Year's Resolution on New Year's Day.
Most of the regular customers have been pleasantly surprised, but appreciative. A few have been outright shocked and flabbergasted to the point of "Who are you and what have you done with Dave?"
So two days are down, and more are still to come. I plan to add to the new wardrobe on a regular basis and cull non-fitting items out as I replace them. Along the way, I'll get to break out and show off my extensive tie collection for the first time in about five years. Hopefully, I can find a bow tie that will fit my 20-inch neck.
One thing that I have noticed is that the few new customers that have come in now make a beeline straight for me because I LOOK like the one in charge and with the "new style" I blend in a whole lot less with our typical black t-shirt/jeans gamer crowd.
Looking over what I just wrote, I realize that I have once again veered from my original topic. Bear with me... I'll hit it eventually.
peace... GopherDave
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