If you go into a Kroger's today, you'll see all the employees wearing a store-issued uniform. However, when I worked there in 1996, that was not the case. Male employees had to wear a shirt and tie, while female employees simply had to "dress nice".
I hate wearing ties, and I always have. For the first few months I resented having to wear a tie to work in a grocery store, especially seeing what some of the female employees passed off as "dressed nice". One day, I was running late for work. I didn't have time to ask my mom to iron my shirt, or to ask my stepdad to tie my tie. So, in a bold act of defiance, I put on a polo shirt and headed to work.
I nervously walked past the customer service desk towards the time clock, expecting one of the many assistant managers to accost me about my dress code violation. But to my surprise, no one seemed to notice, or care. I worked my entire shift and nobody said a word to me about it.
So the next day, I again wore a polo shirt instead of a tie, and again, no one said anything about it to me, except for one of my co-workers, Chris. He asked why I wasn't wearing a tie, and I told him that I hated ties and decided to wear this instead. He seemed to agree with that logic, and the next day, he came in wearing a polo shirt too.
And so it began. First, the other three male employees of the video department stopped wearing ties and began wearing polos. Then some of the baggers followed our lead and stopped wearing ties. Next, the stock boys threw away their ties. And finally, a few of the male cashiers began wearing polos to work. This all happened over the course of about six weeks, but it was very noticeable. The only male employees in the store who still wore ties were the ones over 30 or the suck ups trying to get promoted to assistant manager. Almost all of the younger male employees stopped wearing ties and began wearing polo shirts to work.
Store management, to their discredit, did not say anything to anybody while this was going on. I, and the other employees, took their silence as acquiescence to the change in dress code. However, about two months after I first wore a polo shirt to work, one of the managers finally said something to me. "You know, you are out of dress code. You have to wear a tie", she said. I played dumb and replied, "Oh, really?", and went on wearing polos to work. I knew that they couldn't fire me, because of the union, and I also knew that they hated having employees quit, because it was difficult to restaff and retrain. I decided to use this knowledge to my advantage if they ever confronted me again. Eventually, they did start cracking down, confronting the dress code offenders and reminding them of the acceptable dress code. I escaped this scrutiny until one day, one of the managers, a dorky guy named Tony, came up to me while I was back in the video department.
"Mike", he said, "You aren't wearing a tie." I looked at him for a few seconds, surprised by how passive he was, and said, "I know", and went back to doing what I was doing.
"Mike, you have to wear a tie to work here", he said. "Tony, I haven't worn a tie in two months", I replied.
"Well, we are cracking down on you guys now. So you need to go home and put on a tie right now". Tony was a classic Beta male, and I was amused by his attempt at toughness, since he sounded a bit like Kip from Napoleon Dynamite.
"Okay, Tony, but if I go home, I'm not coming back", I told him.
"But aren't you closing tonight", Tony asked.
"Exactly", I replied.
I called Tony's bluff. Tony glared at me for a second and walked away, and for some reason, nobody ever asked me about my polo shirts again.
Postscript: A few months after my employment at Kroger's ended (an upcoming story), the store began issuing standard uniforms for all employees. The uniform: Polo shirts. Coincidence? I like to think it wasn't.
