Opinion | Accept Your Fate. Don’t Wear Shorts to the Office. (Gift Article)

I need a @dieworkwear.bsky.social ruling on this: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/o...

“the man who wears shorts to the office is telling everybody that he wants to be somewhere else.” Yes, I am. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/o...

Good to know there's another person in the world (David Coggin, the author of this column) who I'm never going to take advice from. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/o...

My experience with wearing shorts to the office: After a botched trailer-loading attempt that resulted in severe injury, I took medical leave for a week & then was obliged to return to the office--on crutches & in baggy shorts as my grotesquely swollen & mottled left leg could not bear pants.

I am about as sympathetic to the aesthetic convention as one can be but find the pitch pretty cringe here.

reasoning by analogy: accept your fate, don't write or publish opinions about office shorts in the NYT

As a committed shorts-wearer, I didn't want this to be persuasive, but it was. "That's why pilots wear uniforms. And you'd be turning right around on the jet bridge if you looked into the cockpit and spotted madras, bare legs and flip-flops." www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/o...

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/o...