Rules that make absolutely no sense are just part of the whole game of having an office job. From the weird jargon everyone uses to being expected to work eight hours whether you have that much work or not, hewing to the convention is just part of the gig.
But some rules are downright ridiculous, and when one man in the U.K. had quite enough of one of his employers’ silliest procedures, he decided to turn it against them.
The man got around the office’s ‘no shorts’ dress code with a brilliant bit of malicious compliance.
For the uninitiated, “malicious compliance” is an internet buzzphrase for following office rules to the absolute letter in ways that either make the rule-maker downright miserable or just boldly underline how stupid the rule is in the first place.
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For one worker, a Queer man from the U.K., his malicious compliance definitely sent the latter message.
He works in a very casual workplace that is “in general, kinda chill about what we wear,” the man wrote in his Reddit post.
But their dress code draws a firm line at shorts. And when a recent bout of 90-degree weather put that rule to the test, the man decided to take matters into his own hands.
Shorts are banned in his office despite skirts, dresses, and tank tops being allowed for women.
“So in the U.K., here we get about five hot days a year that we get to enjoy/endure,” the man joked, and during one of those recent scorchers, “one of my colleagues got an HR email… for wearing shorts in the office (he has great legs, who could blame him) when the weather was sweltering.”
This seems petty and silly on its face. Who wants to be wearing trousers, and especially jeans, when it’s 90 and humid? But more to the point, “the women in the office wear short skirts and dresses and showing shoulders all the time without any bat of an eye,” he wrote, “but somehow shorts in men are just no-no.”
He decided he wasn’t about to play that game. “Oh well,” he wrote, “I’m not commuting in 30+ degrees Celsius in jeans.” And he devised the perfect way to do it without running aground of any of HR’s rules.
Since the dress code said nothing about men wearing women’s clothes, he decided to wear skirts to work on hot days.
Here’s where the malicious compliance comes in. The man writes that while he is “very proudly Queer,” wearing what is typically considered women’s clothing has never been his thing. But that all changed amid the uproar over shorts.
“I bought some fabulous skirts and wore them twice to work since,” he wrote. “Once just to a regular office day, and then last Friday when we had a summer party.” Hey, rules are rules, right?
Since the dress code did not mention men wearing skirts, he figures this is a perfectly maliciously compliant solution. “No one has spoken to me about my wardrobe choice yet,” he wrote, adding that “my legs were so free.”
And he might have even started a trend. “Some male colleagues told me they are inspired, and we might see more skirts in the office when it gets warm again,” he added.
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People online applauded him for finding a way to break a very silly rule in an unassailable way.
“Why managers feel the need to force people to be uncomfortable whilst trying to work, I don’t know,” one Redditor commented, and almost everyone agreed—and plenty had similar stories of their own.
“I work in the NHS, and we have the same stupid rule,” another person wrote. “A bunch of us said if they won’t allow shorts, we will wear skirts. Suddenly, all of our bosses said shorts are just fine.” Classic.
Several schools have seen similar protests from students. In 2017, a group of boys at a school in Exeter, U.K., all wore the female pupils’ school uniform plaid skirts to protest being forbidden from wearing shorts. One hundred Canadian boys did the same earlier this year.
And as well, they should! What is the point of rules like this anyway? They’re arbitrary and silly, and for the record, they’re also part of why so many women are always freezing to death at work in the summertime in air conditioning set to “polar vortex” to accommodate the fact men are expected to be in khakis and button-downs, if not full suits, in the middle of August!
As for this gent, he’s decided to up the ante by purchasing some long, flowy skirts to go with the more utilitarian ones he’d started with.
That’ll teach ’em! And his fellow Redditors are planning to follow suit to prove a point, just like his colleagues. “You’re just skirting the issue,” one man joked. “Well done.”
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.
