Do employers have the right to tell employees how to dress?

I?m not clear on whether employment laws say they do. But I think they should ? and now the city of Cheyenne apparently agrees with me.

Cheyenne?s municipal government is considering a ban on restaurant workers wearing nose rings, tongue rings, and other facial jewelry.

Reason: the Cheyenne Department of Health has had several cases of restaurant customers finding tongue rings in their food (though not yet in a tongue sandwich).

But even if a foolproof method could be found for preventing tongue rings from falling out, I think they should be banned in restaurants and most other professional workplaces.

Here?s my logic: your employer is paying you not just to perform a specific job function, but for your total contribution to her business.

Part of that contribution is the impression you make on customers. When you dress too casually or outrageously, that impression is negative ? and the business that pays your salary suffers.

Yes, I am a cranky curmudgeon. But I?m betting that you will agree with my on this one. Yes?

The correct answer is ?B.? MM, a successful bar owner, says the best people to hire as bartenders are attractive young men.

?You want to fill your bar with young, successful men, because they are the most profitable bar customers,? says MM.

The attractive male bartenders cause the bar to be filled with women ? and the crowd of women, in turn, attracts men.

Both Harry Joiner and Bret Cooper nailed it in their comments responding to my post.

?Assuming you want a large clientele who spend big bucks, I?d say you need hunky young men,? says Brett. ?Guys, particularly young guys, buy most of the drinks. They don?t go to bars to pick up female bartenders. They go to pick up female patrons. Hunky bartenders ensure more female repeat customers who in turn draw more paying men.?

The point is that in almost every business, there are a few success principles that are known to people who are in the business ? but are invisible to everyone else.

And usually, these success principles are counter-intuitive — the opposite of what common sense and intelligence would predict.

You are opening a new bar. For your bartenders, you can hire either:

A. Hot, beautiful young women.
B. Hot, hunky young men.
C. Frumpy, middle-age men.
D. Frumpy, middle-age women.

Which would you choose? And why?

Note: After you?ve had a chance to respond, I will reveal the correct answer, the logic behind it, and the business lesson it teaches us.

I?ve always maintained that good copywriting is clear and conversational ? but there are many marketers who apparently disagree.

For instance, here?s an excerpt from a brochure promoting a conference on Buying and Selling eContent:

?Instead of building universal, definitive taxonomies, information architects are finding there is a tremendous benefit to creating un-taxonomized miscellaneous pools of enriched data objects so that users can sort and organize to suit their own peculiar needs ? [resulting in] information systems are far more contextualized.?

I call this example ?What did he say?? It?s pretentious, laden with jargon, and it?s not how people talk.

What do YOU think about this copy ? profound, enticing, acceptable, a turn-off, or just plain terrible?

?I discard all marketing materials received in my mail without reading them, period,? writes Aileen Cassidy in a post on this blog. ?There is simply too much of this material clogging up my mailbox to have it invaded by strangers.?

Aileen makes the common error of concluding that, just because she doesn?t like direct marketing, direct marketing can?t possibly work.

?Everyone I know feels the same way,? she contines. ?So how come these methods are so aggressively pursued? Do they really improve sales? I am curious.?

I think Aileen already knows the answer to her question, which is this: of course they are profitable. Otherwise, marketers wouldn?t keep doing them.

Condemning — or advocating — a marketing tactic because you personally don?t like it or like it is the most amateur mistake you can make.

The best advice in this regard comes from my colleague, top DM copywriter Peter Beutel, who warns us: ?Don?t get caught up by personal preference.?

What you think or don?t think works — or should work — is irrelevant; what actually works or doesn?t work is all that matters.

Right?

We live in a society that, for the most part, seems to value speed, efficiency, service, economy, and technology over quality and craftsmanship.

Therefore, those who are true craftsmen or masters of a particular trade are rapidly becoming obsolete or unable to compete in business ? because consumers are not willing to pay a premium for the level of craftsmanship they bring to their product or service.

Example: a local resident in my county has spent his professional life becoming a master at tuning pianos by ear and hand.

But new technology allows far less skilled technicians to tune pianos adequately, using electronic monitors, faster and more efficiently ? and these untrained tuners charge much less.

Photography is another great example of ?the death of craft,? according to BD.

?I am a professional photographer,? says BD. ?I got my skills to a world-class level and realized that ? for the most part ? people no longer cared enough to support my business.?

He blames it, in part, on the frenzied pace of modern society: ?As you know, it follows that the fast pace erodes appreciation for craft in our young.

?If I could produce quality at the speed, price, and efficiency, I?m not sure the young buyers would recognize the quality of craft.?

Another example is graphic design ? and it?s a sad story.

In the early 1980s, when I was an advertising manager for a manufacturing company in New York City, I used SB, a freelance graphic artist, to design our sales brochures.

He was such a meticulous craftsman that, when he got galleys from the typesetter, he would literally cut the text apart word by word ? even letter by letter, at times ? to make it just right.

?Will anyone know the difference?? I asked him.

?I?ll know the difference,? SB replied.

But with the advent of desktop publishing, doing layouts manually faded away, and no one was willing to pay SB?s rates for his level of skill and caring. Clients wanted jobs delivered electronically as Mac files; no one wanted the old-fashioned boards that SB did by hand. And today SB is a doorman in New York City.

How about you? Are you a craftsperson? And do you ever worry about your craft dying out or being rendered obsolete by either technology or changing times?

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In a recent segment of the reality TV series The Simple Life, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie were interning at a New York creative ad agency.

The boss gave Nicole a terribly important assignment: reserving a table for lunch at a trendy NYC restaurant that is usually booked up a week in advance.

When Nicole completed the task successfully, the agency owner told her, ?I think you have what it takes to make it in this business!?

Unfortunately, I don?t think he was joking.

The three-martini lunch on Madison Avenue is a clich?, but amazingly, certain businesses ? advertising and publishing among them ? still seem to embrace it.

Here?s what this says to me about the agency employing Paris and Nicole:

1. They are so untalented that their method of making a client happy is to take him to lunch.

2. They place little value on their time (these fancy restaurant lunches can easily take 2 hours or more).

3. They don?t offer real value (in terms of increasing client ROI), and they hope by entertaining the client well no one will notice.

Maybe I?m just reading too much into this. But in my 25 years in marketing ? 23 years as a freelance copywriter and 2 years on the client side ? I saw too many agencies who viewed taking the client to a fancy lunch as their major achievement.

How sad — and pathetic.