Legal dress code
Do you have shop clothes and wear-outside-the-house clothes? Sure you do.
Do you have shop clothes and wear-outside-the-house clothes? Sure you do.
You probably wear shop clothes when working, then change into other, more presentable clothes if you have to go out on a quick supply run or after wrapping up shop chores for the day. This is perfectly normal not only for woodworkers, but anyone engaging in a get-dirty work environment.
What’s also perfectly normal – for me, at least – is forgetting to transfer my wallet from my shop clothes to my wear-outside-the-house clothes. This proved to be embarrassingly problematic as recently as yesterday when I made a run to the Big Box store for some lumber. I even went so far as to load up my cart and make it all the way to the checkout before discovering I didn’t have anything to pay for it with.
The saddest part of this is that what I did yesterday wasn’t a one-time occurrence, but one I do repeatedly. As much as I’ve tried to avoid it (or come up with a foolproof way of remembering to check for my wallet before leaving the house), I’ve yet to be successful.
Perhaps having a cop pull me over on my way home from the Big Box store to ask about a burned-out taillight on my car and not being able to produce a driver’s license – which also happened yesterday – might help jog my memory in the future.
A.J. Hamler is the former editor of Woodshop News and Woodcraft Magazine. He's currently a freelance woodworking writer/editor, which is another way of stating self-employed. When he's not writing or in the shop, he enjoys science fiction, gourmet cooking and Civil War reenacting, but not at the same time.
