Some companies have really specific dress styles, and that can be annoying if you like freedom in choosing what you wear.

In this story, a man decided to follow the rules and wear a tie, but in his own way.

They couldn’t really say anything about it.

But that’s just the beginning.

Let’s see how he pulled this off and ended up landing his dream job in the meantime.

It’s a tie

My first “real” job after graduating was in a very toxic company, where I stayed for one year, but I really think that if I had to work again in such a company, I would resign after one week.

There was no official dress code, but men would dress rather formally: suit and tie or something business casual but still conservative (no jeans, no sports shoes).

Then a new guy was hired in our team: a very skilled IT developer, very professional, and a nice colleague to work with.

He favored comfort over looking professional.

But for some reason, someone up in the hierarchy had an issue with him not wearing a tie like the 3 or 4 other guys in the same team.

Our manager actually asked him to wear a tie.

Now, by then, he had been in the company for a couple of months but had confessed to me he was fed up with the toxic environment and was close to landing his dream job in another company.

He also had a funky personality.

So he complied… and came to the office with an ugly flashy yellow tie with a big comic character printed on it.

He came into the office with a big smug smile and made a point to go and say hello to EVERY employee in EVERY closed office in the building, so everyone could see how elegant he was today.

He never wore a tie again.

He finally landed his dream job and resigned…

But they weren’t happy about it.

Then someone reminded him he had been on a training paid by the company and that as he resigned less than a year after that, he was contractually committed to pay it back…

That was unexpected and he was still figuring out if he should pay or if he should challenge that.

But then, one of the managers (not ours, but very influential) came to him with a proposal for a deal:

They had a confidential project that he wanted him to work on outside of the office (they were very afraid of unions hearing about it) and they needed him to adapt a piece of software for that.

So, if he accepted to do it without telling anyone (not even our manager), they would waive the (expensive) training fee.

Sounds challenging…

The manager thought it would take 4 of 5 days for rewriting the code, which all in all would equate the cost for the training.

That was of course very confidential, but he was telling me the whole story when the deal was done and he was in the last 2 or 3 days of his notice period.

Then I thought about it:

“Hey, but I know that app. There is not much to change.”

He was really clever.

– (him with his smug smile, like with the tie): yep

– (thinking a bit more) There is even nothing to change in the code. Not a single line.

“Just one flag to change in a table for some records and that’s it. That is literally a 10 minute job.”

– (nodding, still with the smug smile, just bigger): yep

– Well done. You screwed them.

The manager had no idea how easy that job was. Well played!

What did Reddit think?

This is how life should be lived.

Wow.

Sometimes, you just get tired.

This commenter shares another experience.

You gotta have fun with it.

What’s wrong with a fun tie?!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.