The Business Casual Dress Code is Making Me Fat

Once upon a time I worked at a fitness equipment manufacturer. As you might imagine, fitness was very much encouraged there. While most of us were chained to desks in our massive 10,000 beast of a facility in excess of 10 hours per day, we were also provided with a gym that is probably half the size of Bill Gates' gym, but for us, it was awesome. We were also provided an outdoor track on which to run whenever our schedules allowed, and most importantly: showers. Even better, we were given a cafeteria that was subsidized by the company and had nothing but healthy food in it.

I was fucking skinny when I worked there. Assuming skinny is everything (and sometimes, to me when I'm feeling all self-loathing, it is), this was a utopia. So why would I have ever left this Shangri-La?

They didn't pay me very much and I was bored. I moved to LA.

My first LA job was at an internet company. It was casual as all hell. Employees wore sweat pants, flip flops, and stained pieces of garb to work. I knew they didn't pay anybody very well, so I never judged this and literally thought that perhaps some of the part-time employees were homeless. I was close, but still managed to have a laundry coin budget.

This job sucked on many levels: my boss, the type of work, and the money. I found myself skipping out for walks a lot. I also couldn't afford lunch beyond an Amy's frozen meal that ran about $3.95 at the nearby grocery store. I was really skinny.

I can complain about both of these jobs a great deal: the money, the bosses, the lack of upward mobility, etc. But one thing I can't complain about is how skinny I was at both positions. Because they allowed fitness to occur at any given point.

At my current job I have a posh office, go out for lunch with my boss nearly every day, and dress rather well. This all sounds lovely and part of the American Dream I'm sure, but another part of the American ideology that this lends to is...drumroll...

Being fat.

I've put on, at my worst, ten pounds working at this job. I am successful at managing it because I don't have kids I have to feed, pay attention to, or love, so I get to spend my evenings in the gym.

I guess I wasn't so hyper-sensitive to my job being a factor in my weight gain until the HR department began plastering posters promoting "health" and "fitness" all over the office.

I became confused and flummoxed. My neck cramped up in the way that it does when I have a proverbial bee in my bonnet about something. My blood pressure rose. I was pissed by the catch 22 that was being presented:

So...you assholes want me to work out at lunch...but this is LA. It gets hot. There are no showers in our office. I have to dress up, I have to wear fucking heels. I can change all my clothes, but where? The bathroom where we have one stall? When the sun hits my skin I start sweating like a polar bear in global warming. I can't do my hair again when I get back here, as we lack the proper facilities. Let's also not forget, that we may have less than one hour to do all of this. So what do you really want me to do???

It appeared to be a lovely exercise in "well if we say it, then employees can't say we never told them they CAN'T go exercise, plus our group health insurance provider may leverage us some discounts."

I guess all I really want is for this to be less cumbersome. If I could have just one of my previous facilities: a shower, an air conditioned gym, or a casual dress code, I'd actually work out during the day and not wait until I'm tired at night. Which often results in me not moving my ass off the couch.

So, HR departments of the world, I ask you: would you be willing to give all us hard-working, overweight folks a casual dress code in exchange for my working out at lunch? I wish you would, I sure would like to be less fat.