The other day I wore a dressier shirt with buttons all the way down the front and the sleeves that extended quite a bit past my elbows which complicated things. If I was brandishing a tie, I could have left my brains out of the tucking decision. The sleeved shirt can be quite annoying especially when I have to do that whole wrist shake thing to reveal my watch. This so nice shirt had an agenda. It shouted “I’m trying to act like an adult and be more professional so take me seriously because now I’ll be dressing like this every day since I had to go wear a shirt like this and make all of my other shirts seem obsolete in comparison.” Most shirts I can just throw in the dryer to de-wrinkle. They never really come out perfect but the creases can be explained away as a tight seatbelt or an early morning hug from George “the Animal Steele.”
If the label says “may require ironing”, you’re ironing. If it reads “needs ironing”, no amount of heat or pressure can get the creases out. I might as well put my shirt between two of the rocks from Stonehenge after they’ve come out of a lava pit. If you buy one of these shirts, it’s understood that you’re going to work to make it look like something that might someday be presentable as workplace attire. It screams, “stop being such a lazy ass and iron me already.”
The shirt section at the store should be divided into two sections: “may require ironing” and “definitely needs ironing.” The only way to avoid being on the short end of a portable shirt press when choosing which dress shirt to wear is to wear a sweater over it. This requires that you at least iron the collar. The vest is the other option but then you add the sleeves to the sweater ironing scenario. Both of these situations remove the possibility of removing the over-garment if the office gets a little toasty.
I didn’t want to do it but I had done it before and I knew I would do it again. I actually ironed an entire shirt. Since my arm was twisted, I was doing this on my terms. Instead of breaking out the ironing board, I just did it right there on the table in plain sight for everyone to see.
So now I had this freshly ironed shirt and this whole tuck thing might be the death of me. I should tell you that I plan on wearing a Hanes fitted t-shirt under it which complicated the whole issue. If I do tuck my dress shirt in, I have the two shirt tuck after using the bathroom which decreases my break time efficiency. So they don’t bunch, the t-shirt has to be tucked into my boxer shorts and the dress shirt in my pants. If I go un-tucked with the dress shirt, the t-shirt gets tucked into the pants by not the underwear. And if I tuck, I have to commit to a full tuck for the entire day; there’s none of that half tuck business. If I go with the tuck and later decide to un-tuck, I’ve got a John Pinnette sized wrinkle issue. And it’s not the full wrinkle; it’s a one-third wrinkle scenario I'm dealing with which is beyond my scope.
Once I tuck, I know there’s no turning back. And if I don’t tuck, some well-meaning mid-level forty something is going to try to give me tucking advice. I’ll have to tell him not to worry about my tucking issues; “I prefer not to.” If he persists, I’ll quip “Whether I tuck or not is my issue; there is not voting here. I have a monopoly on my clothing choices. With this issue I am King. And if you don’t like it, you can go tuck yourself.”
