Dickies
The other day I saw a guy leaving the office of a financial services firm carrying a messenger bag with a Dickies logo. That really got me thinking about the nature of work.
When I left engineering school I worked in a couple of different factories in Denver. The best clothes for these jobs was made by Dickies, and they were nothing you would have associated with an office place. Twill pants, denim shirts, ideal for the factory floor. And that is the context in which I understand the Dickies brand.
To see the Dickies brand in the workplace makes me wonder why the financial services guy identifies with it. I believe the answer is in the difference between the factory floor or construction site and the cubicle. The factory floor is very satisfying. The work hours are regular, the work product is tangible, and it is easy to see what you have done, if it is of high quality or not, and whether you have achieved your production quota.
The cubicle generally doesn’t offer these benefits. The hours, while regular, tend to stretch. The work product is never tangible - would you rather heft the machine part that you made or a spreadsheet? Quality is hard to define, much less achieve. And in most environments there are few good expectations set about whether you have succeeded in your work.
Identifying with the Dickies brand is a way to connect with work when it was more satisfying, and engaging. While this is not intended to be a paean to the industrial age, we should remember what worked then and why.
