Hot Under the Waistband

(Edited to add that the mighty HR powers-that-be, as of today, have granted me a leniency to wear my sarong on the recognized casual business days. Onward and Upward!)

The full weight of corporate ridiculousness fell today at the office place with the total impact of a huge meteorite breaking through our atmosphere and colliding with the earth. In the middle of a summer heat wave, the schmucks in Human Resources have decided in all their infinite wisdom to disallow men from wearing neatly tailored walking or dress shorts on the regular “business casual” week days.

WTF?

C’mon! I can understand that they don’t want to have an entire office of Shaquille O’Neal’s in over-sized sparkly lamee shorts big enough to hide an entire tribe of nomadic peoples – but have a fucking heart! These are t-a-i-l-o-r-e-d shorts!

I'd just wear one of my many colorful sarongs instead in order to comply with this stupid dress code requirement, but apparently the fact that 3/4 of the males on the planet wear them (mostly those living in HOT climates - imagine that) to keep their core body temperatures from boiling over in extreme humid climates, continues to escape them. Instead, these same HR moolyaks deem sarongs to not be "gender appropriate". Hasn't any of these morons ever ventured outside the office walls?

Considering that we’re in the middle of the summer's most brutal muggy weather, this news went over with all the enthusiasm of a wet fart. What medieval taskmaster decided on that dress code policy exactly? Why not just place us all in leg irons and march us off into an active volcano for fuck sakes? You'd think they'd throw us a bone every now and again and let pairs of innocent dress shorts slip through the radar to be, you know, decent. But, OHHHHH NO!

What possible reasoning could they have had to prevent us men from keeping our haloed lower extremities cool and comfortable? I thought that it would be in the Human Resources best interests to make sure that we’re all happy and comfortable in our labors in order to prevent sudden outbreaks of violent protesting and rioting within Cubicle City. I know nothing makes me more instantly uncomfortable and irritable, not to mention likely to storm the managers office with a torch and pitchfork, than having my Charlie Brown's feeling like two baby potatoes boiling away in a cotton/polyester crock pot - and believe me, with the high temperatures that we’ve been experiencing lately, it’s a variable ‘Mississipeepee Burning’ going on south of my waistband!

Dig?

How come the ladies can wear nice loose skirts and dresses in the hot weather and yet us fella’s are condemned to steep our cajones in our own devil’s cauldron of stewing crotch sweat? Why not just make us wear a suit of armor for Christ sakes?! How exactly is this in keeping with "equality in the workplace"?

The real stupid thing to me is that the weekends, including Mondays and Fridays, are dress down days anyways in which shorts are perfectly acceptable attire. So really, pants are only a necessary requirement to be worn Tuesday through Thursday. What the fuck kind of sense does that make? Is it supposed to be miraculously cooler on these three days of the week or something – or is this just another cruel punishment bestowed on the males in the office just to amuse my evil managers?

I wonder if they have a special ‘Cruel & Unusual Punishments’ department who has regular weekly meetings where they lounge around in their bathing suits in an air conditioned office and sipping on margarita’s to plan out these idiotic tortures for us lowly overheated wage donkey’s?

“Today, we’ll make them all wear really itchy sweaters and hook electrodes up to their testicles – they’ll love it!”