Social Norms In The Workplace

For this week’s discussion I decided to violate a norm at work. I am a tutor and I usually tutor about 4-5 students in a classroom. When I was getting hired, I was told that as a tutor I should always be on time, dress in business casual clothes and be professional. This week I decided to go into to work in jeans, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. I walked in to work like any other day and just started walking toward my classroom. From my peripheral vision, I could see my boss staring at me from head to toe. It was a quick walk by, but I could feel her eyesight following me from the moment I walked in until the moment I stepped foot into my classroom. At first, I was very uncomfortable because I knew how much I stood out and to be honest, I
I really do hate the feeling of wearing clothes I would be so uncomfortable in and it makes working a lot harder. Society, including me, all wants to be comfortable in work places, but wearing what is considered comfortable is “wrong.” Findings from Muzader Sherif explained that social norms develop because “ we have a strong desire to be “correct” – to behave in an appropriate manner – and behaving consistently with social norms help us attain that goal” (266). That was one foundation to it and another “is the desire to be accepted by others and liked by them” (266). They are both very true and the second one really relates to my norm violation. Even though I was comfortable and having fun in my clothes, my boss and parents of the students would not like it. They would feel like it is a work and school environment, but I was dressed like I was not respecting that environment. So to them, they would find it very hard to accept me as a tutor for the job and for the students because I did not look professional. I was able to learn from the different perspectives from this experience, but I would not dress improperly to work