“All guys should be wearing shorts and t-shirts, not suits. It’s hot today,” said the complete stranger who works for another company, on a different floor in my New York office.
“Not at the office,” I responded, then got my tie-less, jacketless self onto the elevator as she continued toward her office somewhere in the hinterlands of the first floor.
Tuesday after Labor Day. This is the week when the world grinds back to a start. The unofficial end of summer. People gradually return from vacations. The reality of the last months of the year sets in, and the pace picks up.
Soon we’ll be trading our Summer sunrise-orange-tinted city for fire-red Fall sunsets.
I like to think of it as the week that officially begins the season when I don’t have to see as many dirty toenails at the office.
That season has been delayed a little bit this year because the plus-90-degree summer weather finally arrived in the City yesterday, a few months later than planned. But no-nail season will arrive. Mark my words.
Summer and Halloween seem to be the officially sanctioned times when people feel free to expose things they don’t normally expose, in places where they don’t normally expose them.
At the office during the summer, it’s feet. It doesn’t matter if it’s Tuesday in a sleek new midtown skyscraper or Wednesday in a gritty downtown loft, summer looks like 9 am on Saturday at a coffee shop. Bleary-eyed people who rolled out of bed, putting on whatever they hit when their bodies struck the floor, then slipping on whatever footwear sits next to the door on the way out. In some cases, shower clearly optional.
It’s breakfast time on the train, so I’ll skip my usual overly-elaborate description of why that can be a less-than-ideal when outside people come to visit the office.
But then it’s New York. I guess people expect it.
I’m not complaining. I’ll take this trade any day in exchange for the summer weather.
Ok, maybe I’m slightly cranky from waking up a little later than planned this morning, but the point remains.
Next summer, however at building entrances throughout the city, can the shoe-shine guy offer a quick pedicure or foot wash to shorts-clad, flip-flopping, birk-stomping office workers?
No-nail season’s greetings to all.