Does anyone have a "reasonable" dress code for staff members that you could share with me? The lawyers are not the problem, but the "key personnel" are getting a little casual around here.

Camo only Fridays.

Ours is on its way to you. I would only note further that theme-based dress days (e.g., "Fetish Fridays," "Thong Thursdays," "Titillating Tuesdays," "Mosh-Pit Mondays") should be carefully monitored.

I give up. What happens in Amarillo on Wednesdays?

Everyone goes to church.

True dat.

Employees should dress in a professional manner at all times. Prosecutors and court assistants must dress in appropriate business attire for the courtroom.

While employees may dress more informally on Fridays (assuming no courtroom appearances), employees should not wear tennis shoes, blue denim jeans, T-shirts, men's shirts without collars, or any clothing or jewelry that is not in keeping with the dignity of the office. Nor should any employee have any visible tattoos or piercings (other than earrings).

Oh yeah, and no nudity.

I'm happy to see that parachute pants are still allowed on Fridays in Wilco.

And apparently some people think faded black jeans with a navy shirt and a visible undershirt is fashionable. Dan, please get the word out that black and navy do not go together (except MEN can wear black shoes with a navy suit -- women cannot)!

Jane, I can only do so much.

Dan is right. There are limits, Jane.

Have you considered submitting secret videos to What Not to Wear? Perhaps an intervention?

I have my eye on several people for "What Not To Wear"! Unfortunately, they just did a 3 episode series of badly dressed people in the Austin area and I don't think they'll want to come back so soon.

Here's another rule you certainly should add to your dress code: girls are not allowed to wear white shoes between the day after Labor Day and Memorial Day. That is a big no-no. You do not want that in your office.

Perhaps you already know about that rule. You probably do. But at the risk of sounding like a fashion moron, I never heard of the rule until one of my aunts explained it to me.

She told me that Prince Andrew's wife, Fergie, made a tour of the US, and shocked everyone by
wearing white shoes during the non-white shoe season. Fergie is a bit of an unconventional person, which may explain her flaunting the White Shoe Rule. It could also be the Brits don't have that rule. Since they don't celebrate Labor Day (or even Labour Day) or Memorial Day, it would be hard for them to have the same rule. So you may want to write an exception to the rule for female employees who are also subjects of HM The Queen.

Hope this proves helpful.

Will your office policy include a section on clogs and clogging, given your locale?

I wonder how Jane feels about wooden shoes, at least during summer.

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... they just did a 3 episode series of badly dressed people in the Austin area ...

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Did they get Leslie?

Only 3 episodes? They could spend a couple of weeks just on people on The Drag.

Well, Greg, you could always tell the tale of your father's experience in what was it, Jimmy Duncan's courtroom?

When my late father was a prosecutor in Harris County in the 60's, for a time he worked in Judge Duncan's Court.

It was early on in his career, and as a guy who had come from an impoverished rural East Texas farming background, served in the Air Force and then worked his way through college and South Texas on the GI bill and working for East Texas Motor Freight full time while attending school full time, my father never owned a sport coat until he was a prosecutor for some time.

Of course, my dad had suits, but he had never owned a sports coat. After he had been with the office a while and saved some money, he and my mom went shopping and bought him a very nice sport coat. He was very proud of his new coat. So one day he wore it to Judge Duncan's court.

Judge Duncan called him to the bench, gave him compliments on his new sport coat, told him how good it looked on him, then told him that lawyers in his court wore suits and not sports coats.

He asked my dad where he lived, and my dad told him Sharpstown. Judge Duncan told him you have thirty minutes to go home and be back in his courtroom dressed in a suit.

The late Larry Fraizer, then a detective with the HCSO (his dad was Chief Deputy Lloyd Fraizer of the SO at that time under Buster Kern), was apparently in or near the courtroom and volunteered to drive my dad home. They called my mom and told her to be out at the curb with a suit.

As did many detectives at that time, Larry had a hot rod Dodge/Chrysler police car with an interceptor police engine in it. My dad said he stopped looking at the speedometer when it passed 100, and was pretty sure they were doing between 120 and 140 on the newly constructed Southwest Freeway. At the time, we lived near Beechnut and 59 and they basically did a rolling stop past our house as my mom handed him his suit.

He changed in the back seat on the way back downtown, and although Larry remained his good friend, he swore he would never ride in a car with him again. I think that Larry had a siren but no lights of any kind on his plainclothes car.

He made it back to the courtroom in 29 minutes.

My dad wasn't scared of a whole lot of people or things in his life, but an overwhelming fear of being placed in jail for the heinous offense of wearing a sport coat (and he had seen Judge Duncan place defendants in jail for inappropriate attire, such as women wearing pants in his courtroom), led him to engage in such an uncharacteristic behavior as being a semi-willing party in a speeding car. I think he probably became less enthused with the idea as the speed passed 90 m.p.h.