Dress To Impress

Every workplace has rules that nobody writes down.

Someone tells you to “dress professionally,” and somehow everyone is expected to know exactly what that means.

But what if nobody ever taught you?

What if your version of looking your absolute best came from a completely different world than the one making the rules?

That morning, nobody was trying to break the dress code.

They were trying to make us proud.

**Names, locations, institutions, and identifying details have been changed or fictionalized to protect privacy. Some characters may be composites. These pieces are creative nonfiction based on lived experience, memory, and reflection.**

We had a rule on the floor: business casual, always.
Now, I don’t know who came up with “business casual,” but I swear it was invented by somebody who’s never been broke and trying to look respectable on a Walmart budget.

Every once in a while, one of the bigwigs from the bank would visit—some VP with a Rolex and a tie that cost more than a collector’s paycheck. Whenever that happened, our boss would get nervous and want us looking “sharp.”
Which meant we had to make them look sharp.

So the memo went out:

Dress to impress. Professional. Shirts and ties. Bring your A-game.

The problem was—we’d grown fast.
Most of our crew had never worked in a “professional” setting before. They came from gas stations, retail counters, and hustle jobs. They were survivors, not corporate clones.

That morning, the floor buzzed like a hair salon before prom.
People actually ironed. Someone borrowed cologne. I remember thinking, Hell, maybe we’re gonna pull this off.

And then two of our young collectors stepped through the doors to the collection floor—heels, lashes, glitter, tight skirts, the whole club-ready package.
They walked in like it was Saturday night and the DJ just dropped the beat.

They looked incredible.
They just… didn’t look bank incredible.

I remember one of the supervisors froze mid-sentence. Another dropped his coffee.
The girls were smiling, proud, absolutely glowing. They’d done their best. They thought that’s what “dress to impress” meant.

And honestly?
It kind of was.

That was the thing about that place. The language of professionalism didn’t translate clean to the language of survival. Nobody had ever taught them what “business casual” actually meant—only that they were supposed to show up and make it work.

So they did.
Just not in the way the bank wanted.

We pulled them aside gently, found spare cardigans, helped them tone it down before the VP made his rounds. But I’ll never forget how proud they were walking in. Like for once, they were part of something big.

They just didn’t realize the game was rigged from the start.

They came dressed for success.

We just forgot to tell them whose definition we were using.

Looking back, I don’t laugh because they got it wrong.

I laugh because they cared enough to try.

For a few hours that morning, they believed they were walking into something bigger than the jobs they’d worked before. They ironed shirts. Borrowed perfume. Put on their best clothes because someone they respected had asked them to.

Nobody had explained that “professional” is often just another word for someone else’s expectations.

That’s a lesson a lot bigger than a dress code.

Working the Floor is an ongoing Bent But True memoir series about collections, survival, dark humor, and the unforgettable people who somehow made an impossible workplace feel like home.