Office Camo Wear

The other evening the Dear Hubby and I were watching the Stargate SG1 characters doing their military best to oust evil aliens from the galaxy, when he suddenly said, “There should be camo wear for the office.” I looked at him, wondering if his sudden excursion into fashion awareness signaled a move toward metrosexuality, but since he is a software engineer for a major aerospace company, I quickly discarded the notion.

“It’s a bad idea for vice presidents to know who you are in a big company,” he said, watching Teal’c in military camouflage clothing skulk behind some bushes and survey one of those sickly-looking alien Priors.

“Even if you’re doing well?” I asked.

“Especially so,” he said. “If you’re efficient and hard-working, AND the vice presidents know who you are by sight, you might—might—get rewarded, but for sure you’ll stand out as someone to blame if anything goes wrong.”

“Really?” I said.

“Saw one of my coworkers wearing a bright red shirt the other day,” he continued. “Told him it was too bright, that he might get noticed. He was a bit worried about it—he’s a good worker, and doesn’t want too much attention, see.”

“Ah,” I said. “The Red Shirt phenomenon.” Even I knew it was deadly to be a Red Shirt, because the guys wearing the red shirts in classic Star Trek episodes always get killed, or at least severely injured.

“Exactly.” He nodded at the camouflage-attired SG-1 members sneaking through the forest. “They’ve got the right idea. Blend in. Don’t be noticed. You get your work done effectively that way because the bean-counter higher-ups don’t notice you and therefore won’t interfere.” He paused for a moment, brow furrowed. “Maybe something in vertical and horizontal black and white stripes, with some beige, to match the office cubicles and blend in with the computer monitors and keyboards.”

“Or grey,” I said helpfully. “If the cubicles are made of grey fabric.”

“Or grey,” he conceded. “It could be a new clothing line called ‘Office Camo,’ with the motto, ‘Working Below the Radar.’ The commercial would go something like this: you see a bunch of somewhat disembodied bobbing heads and a few arms and hands bustling around an office, blending in very nicely, because everyone’s wearing Office Camo Wear…except for one guy.”

“A guy in a Red Shirt,” I said, inspired. "So that he stands out."

“Red,” he said. “Perfect. Pretty soon, a VP comes by, and then another, and another, until there’s about twenty or so converging on the poor Red Shirt guy, all of them saying something like, ‘how’s the project coming?’, ‘you think you’ll make the deadline?’, ‘you need to get on board with the program!’ or worse, ‘we have a few changes we need to make on that presentation.’ Meanwhile, everyone else in Office Camo Wear keeps working productively, while the poor Red Shirt guy cries out in agony, totally hidden by the business-suited VPs surrounding him like so many sharks.”

“You think you might start up such a clothing line?” I asked.

“No, I’m just an engineer,” he said. “I don’t do fashion. But some people have already put the Office Camo look into their wardrobes. I saw a guy today that had the look down perfectly. He was so well disguised in grey, black, and white stripes that I almost bumped into him walking down the hall, and get this: I don’t even remember who he is.” He nodded with approval.

I looked at him, feeling a little worried. “No VPs have recognized you by name, have they?”

He shuddered. “I hope not. I try to keep myself as anonymous as possible. Otherwise I’d never get any work done. It’s bad enough that the managers like my test software.” He turned back to Stargate SG1, watching an alien strike down the primitive inhabitants of a village with a deadly disease because the villagers refused to get on board with the alien's agenda of galactic domination. “By the way, what’s a good shoe store at the mall? I’ve got to get myself a pair each of white shoes and black shoes.”

I directed him to a shoe store, informing him of brands that have stripes that would blend well with office cubicles, because after all, one can never be too careful and I would hate to lose him to a ravaging horde of corporate vice presidents.