Halloween at Work

When I worked at a Children's Hospital, we were encouraged to dress up, but being the sensible and mature people we were, we were never inappropriate. That's where I was the Blues Brothers, the corpse, and Dr. R. Although, come to think of it, one of my secretaries dressed up as a nursing pig. That was kinda gross.

Not to get too personal but how did you dispose of your innerchild? Hope you didn't put it in a tied sack like the proverbial unwanted puppies and throw it into the proverbial river.

"long past heyday when people had dignity and class, normal adults didn’t dress up for Halloween…" The problem with this poisoned level of sentimentality is you tend to ignore the era's social horrors and hypocritical and insincere suburban 'niceties' of institutional racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.... Yep. Good times. All hallmarks of alleged dignity as conformity is forced on others to create a singular definition of what a normal person should be.

The story I had originally linked to definitely devolved into name-calling, which was kinda unfortunate. And it did push an agenda that somehow the 50s were better (kind of a weird hill to die on, so far as I'm concerned).

Bottom line (I think) at a law firm, it was mainly inappropriate if it went beyond your standard witch/bunny (not of the Playboy variety)/Nixon mask, I suppose. It's hard to say where to draw the line. In a law firm where they defend a lot of sex discrimination cases (or sue as plaintiffs), a sexy nurse is probably a not so wonderful idea.

At the Financial Services co. this year, there was dressing up but it was also a party for people's kids, and that department is not public-facing. Plus I did not see anyone dressed up (although they were decorating long before this) until about 3, 3:30, when the first of the kids arrived (there were extra juice boxes in the company fridge for a coupla days afterwards).

I can absolutely see it at hospitals and restaurants. I can kinda see it at schools although I'm not so sure teachers would want to be doing that. It can be enough of a problem to get the kids to listen, etc. and it's possible that that could be undermined.

I have found it to be generally strange in a lot of the places I have worked at, although it's been years since I was in any sort of a customer-facing role. I think that there are some lines, and I respect companies that don't really want to be drawing them, or reminding their employees that dressing as a slut while doing auto repair is a bad idea.

There was a news piece on the CBC about schools who tell students not to dress up for Hallowe'en before coming to school. They said it was disruptive.

I plan to dress up in a hard hat and safety glasses, today. I will go to work as Siding Replacer Man. Muahaha.

There was also a piece on the news last night about schools in the US who wanted the kids to be 'caring' instead of 'scaring' - LOL .

I will not be "dressing up" for work today. I work at an investment firm and I think it would be inappropriate.

I haven't, but I know some one from Blue Cross and they used to dress up.

Plus what sort of time scale are we looking at? Carnival/ misrule has a very long history. When people would shed their usual identities and take on new ones.

At that point it was for adults, so one can rather easily argue that making it just for kids is itself the bastardization.

We didn't dress up this year - new SVP - not sure how he'd be about it.

The feedback - why aren't you guys dressed up?

okey dokey

My humblest apologies jespah for tracking mud on this benign thread. I let emotion and impatience get in my way when I hit the send button. Je regrette tout!