The Right Tool For The Job

Ann: I’m running out of time! Hannah and I head north to take her to school tomorrow. Of course she’s packing all her own stuff and the stuff for her dorm room. But I need to get myself packed for the trip.

Pam: That shouldn’t be too tough. The weather’s pretty predictable and it should be all casual right?

Ann: Yeah, but with everything I have left to tie up for work, I’m going to end up just throwing a big pile of clothes from the clean clothes basket into a carry-on and hoping it works out.

Pam: That’s the way I usually end up packing for pleasure trips. It goes fine until the last day or so when I end up having to wear a lime green top with lavender skirt and orange sandals. I figure, if the plane goes down on the way home, at least they’ll spot me in the wreckage right away.

Ann: Gee thanks...comforting thought! It’s not fair. It’s so easy for men to pack. For a casual event like this, all they have to do is throw in a bunch of khaki and navy shorts and a pile of polo shirts and they’re set. Everything matches everything. It’s like a whole suitcase of those kid’s clothes with the animals on the tags that tell them which ones match. Only the suitcase is full of clothes with the same animal on all the tags.

Pam: And the same animal in them! I point that out all the time to the men I travel with on business. They use the same color socks, belt, and shoes every single day. They can even wear the same jacket day after day and no one thinks a thing about it.

Ann: Yeah, a woman could never get away with that.

Pam: When they tease me about my bags, I explain that for every outfit I pack, I have to also pack the right undergarments, jewelry, hair accessories, shade of make up, belt, purse, shoes, scarf and jacket. It adds up pretty quickly.

Ann: I think it’s their hair that lets them get off easy. Woman pack shampoo, conditioner, a shower cap, hair spray, a wet comb, a hair brush, a styling brush, a curling iron or curlers, and sometimes both, hair bands, barrettes, elastics, and Scrunci’s of various colors. When we go to some hotels we even have to pack our own hair dryer. Men pack a comb. They use the tiny bottle of shampoo from the hotel. That’s it…a comb.

Pam: Oh but don’t they always point out the women with the thick, well groomed, beautiful hair? They want it both ways. They want us to look pulled-together and gorgeous, but we’re supposed to do it without the equipment.

Ann: And they’re the ones always down at the home improvement store justifying their latest purchase with ‘You gotta have the right tool for the job!’ Hypocrites!

Pam: I guess we’re supposed to just MacGyver it with our hair. Hang our head out the window of the rent car to dry it. Wrap it in those little bottles from the mini bar and sit in front of the heater to curl it.

Ann: Yeah and then we could use the rubber band off the newspaper to put it up and then slip the housekeeper a buck to get us some starch from the laundry to use for hair spray.

Pam: Finally, we could borrow the curtain tie backs to give us that final decorative touch.

What The Heck Is Smart Casual?

Pam: I’ve really had some good laughs with the emails that were flying around at work last week. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Ann: Some of those jokes that get forwarded to everyone?

Pam: No. One of our vendors offered six of the guys in the office an all expense paid trip to the Indy 500 this past weekend. It was for transportation, hotels, meals, parties, golf, limos, and a luxury suite at the race…the whole works.

Ann: Talk about a real guy’s getaway!

Pam: Actually the week before they left I was beginning to wonder whether it was a guy’s getaway or a ‘ladies retreat’. I was the point of contact for the vendor so I forwarded all the guys the detailed agenda for the trip. There was a cocktail reception on the evening they arrived, a welcome breakfast the next day, then golf, followed by an authentic Moroccan dinner, and then on the final day, the race itself.

Ann: Wow. Sounds like fun.

Pam: Since the information came to me, I was on the email distribution list and saw everything that went back and forth between all the guys at my office. It was hysterical.

Ann: What? Let me guess…they were coordinating what to wear each day.

Pam: You’re kidding, but that’s exactly what was going on! I intentionally stayed out of the discussion simply for the entertainment the whole thing was providing. Can you imagine six grown men trying to decide what the heck they were supposed to wear when the invitation said, “Dress for Saturday night is ‘smart casual’ but we encourage you to have fun with the Moroccan theme as you select your attire”.

Ann: Heck, I’m not sure I know what that means.


Pam: They went back and forth about what exactly constitutes ‘smart casual’ and they had opinions from “casual means jeans” to “we’ll be sitting on pillows on the floor so we should wear our stretchy sweats”. One guy even said, “They mean dress like a professor.”

Ann: That’s too funny! Just like a man not to ask for directions.

Pam: They finally did email the vendor’s rep to get clarification but they were told that the attire for that evening had been changed from ‘smart casual’ to ‘business casual’. Then they went back and forth as to whether that was a step up or a step down.

Ann: Certainly they know what business casual means.

Pam: They used to. But they had confused themselves so thoroughly at this point they didn’t know their own names. One email actually said, “So if we were going smart casual and then downgraded, does that mean we're dressing ‘dumb casual’ now?”


Ann: So what’d they do? Rent hand-embroidered sheik’s robes for each of them?

Pam: I think they would have if they thought it would solve the dilemma.

Ann: Seriously, what’d they do?

Pam: The final email I saw came from the guy in our office who arranged the flights and stuff. It had the subject line of ‘Indy trip attire revisited (again—well actually—still)’. It said:

Travel Friday: Whatever! Just no flip flops or cargo pants. We’ll change at the hotel. (I know we’re getting up at three in the morning but shower anyway because I’m sitting next to you guys on the plane!)

Friday night reception: Button shirt, sport coat, slacks, dress shoes and belt. (Bob, do not wear a tie and make us all look bad. We don’t care what your wife says!)

Saturday golf: Nice golf clothes—shorts if hot and pants if cold. (Joe, DO NOT wear your brother’s shirt from our vendor’s big competitor. It’s not funny to insult our hosts.)

Saturday night Moroccan dinner: This is the final, final word! We are wearing nice, dark colored polo shirts and khaki pants with brown shoes and belts. (Jeff, you stole that Pizza Hut table cloth for nothing because we gave up the whole sheik thing while you were out sick.)

Sunday (Race Day): We all agree it’s a car race after all. But we’re being entertained in the luxury suite. So we’re thinking we should look really good but not like we’re trying. So try to look like a really rich guy on his day off.

Ann: I wonder how the heck they interpreted that one.

Pam: Hey, it was the last day of the trip. I figured they’d just wear whatever they found in the bottom of their suitcase that was relatively clean.

Ann: So what did they wear?

Pam: Every last one of them showed up wearing the promotional stuff that the host vendor gave them on their first day there.

Ann: Well at least they looked like a team!