Biz Casual
Tonight I purged my closet and got rid of nearly every pair of business casual slacks I owned. There were more than I’m proud to mention, accumulated through the years working in the corporate world. First in the early 2000’s in NYC where I discovered my natural ability for accounting, working at Thomson Financial, then Thomson Media, and one horrible job for only a few months, which took me through to 2010, where I started working at charity: water, which lasted nearly 5 years. The attire there was decidedly not business casual. It wasn’t uncommon to wear shorts there. It was, at the time, a boutique start-up of a non-profit, full of young, hip type-A’s that wanted to change the world. They were very much into the more relaxed, flexible environment. I was a bit older at than most of my co-workers, and certainly no type-A. But it was a great group of people and I was happy to work for an organization that wanted to make a difference in the world rather than just make as much profit as possible.
Where was, I? Oh yeah, business casual clothes. So my family and I moved down to Northern Virginia in early summer of 2015 to be closer to my wife’s parents, primarily to be close to her mother, who had ALS, and we wanted to be around for as long as we had. Our older son, Henry, got to spend a lot of time with her, which she cherished. Henry was only two and a half at the time, so has only fleeting memories of her. She passed away in February of 2017, just a few months before Miles was born.
So… Soon before we left NYC, I had made a few trips down to DC job hunting. I landed a job at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as Director of Accounting. I had few reservations accepting the job. Primarily, political, as I am diametrically opposed to the vast majority of their policy positions, but also because of the attire. When I started at the Chamber, they were full business attire. Suit and tie. So I was going from an absolutely casual atmosphere at charity: water, wearing jeans and t-shirts every day, playing ping pong with my co-workers, to the most buttoned-up place I could imagine. But my boss turned out to be the best boss I’d ever had. She was incredibly knowledgeable, a damn good accountant, helpful but without even an ounce of micro-managing, and maybe most importantly, she acted as a buffer between accounting and the rest of the organization’s internal political drama. Internal political drama exists at nearly every job, but the sign of a great boss is one willing to absorb the brunt of it and allow their team to focus on the job at hand. And good accountants have a major responsibility to ignore as much of the political BS as possible. Numbers don’t lie, accounting regulations exist and need to be followed, and people try to get you to bend the rules regularly and make exceptions. The team I worked with was also fabulous. A really great group of people that were all really good at what they did. It just happened to be for an organization I vehemently disagreed with.
I was at the Chamber from around August of 2015 through October of 2021, if I am remembering this correctly. Around 2018 or 2019, the top execs at the Chamber were starting to transition, and the new head boss changed things up to business casual, a very welcomed change. It stayed that way until the pandemic hit, and we all went remote.
During this time, the policies the Chamber was championing became more than I was willing to accept, and I started casually looking for another job. I received a random call from a recruiter, who apparently found my profile on LinkedIn, which had not been updated for quite some time, and I took a job at a non-profit here in Northern Virginia, a five minute drive from my house. An impossibly short commute. It took some haggling and negotiating to get them to match my demands, but they did quite willingly.
I wound up with another great boss, and a really nice team, but it was hard to really connect and get to know everyone, largely because we were remote when I started. It was somewhat spread out, in terms of the corporate structure and how teams were organized. And there was a lot of turn-over in my department. Just two weeks after I started, one of my subordinates quit as they didn’t get the job I took. Can’t blame them, but they weren’t ready for the job. We hired internally someone that ended up being too inexperienced, and never really took the burden off of me, and I never really grew into the job to the extent I, or management wanted. My wife accepted the job in Bangkok about a year and a half into my job there, which I left in July of 2023. I’ve been on a contract assignment at Malala Fund since as my family prepares to move. I only went into the office a handful of times while I was at that job, and occasionally broke out my business casual clothes.
But my Malala Fund assignment is wrapping up in about two more months, and I won’t be holding down a job stateside again until we move back (IF we move back). Seeing as we’re moving to a tropical climate, and I’m going there with no idea whatsoever of what I’ll be doing, and knowing I can get custom tailored clothes for a fraction of off-the-rack clothes here, I get to GLADLY donate my dozen or so business slacks and cotton chinos. I’m ready, willing, and able to wear shorts, t-shirts and flip flops exclusively as much as possible.
