By SEAN HANNIGAN
A year after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of video chat services such as Zoom, Skype and Google Meet has led to the increased popularity of the “Zoom shirt.”
The zoom shirt is the shirt or blouse people have over the back of their chair, that they can quickly throw on to look professional and presentable on video calls. This last ditch effort to look professional when a manager or boss asks for the cameras to be turned on. The popular humor site Urban Dictionary coined the new term “The zoom shirt.” This is defined as “the shirt or blouse that is kept on the back of your desk chair to be presentable for video conferences.”
“Well I don’t get dressed up when I don’t have to. Most of the time cameras are off, but throughout the day you have that meeting where you need to speak or present, so I always keep a button up shirt near me to throw on. Nobody notices or has said anything,” said Chris Topeddo, an employee at Marriot International.
“Some of my coworkers laugh about it, we have gym shorts on and a shirt, then we just throw something else on last second to look good on zoom,” he continued.
A recent poll by LinkedIn found that 42 percent of camera-ready home workers owned a type of zoom shirt.
Nate Johnson, a professor at County College of Morris, said he has seen his coworkers attire shift as well, “A few of my colleagues have joked about not being able to stand up from their desk because of the fact they are wearing pajama bottoms. Even when I teach, I just grab my shirt I placed on my desk the day before, throw it on, and start my classes. Why wear jeans or a suit?”
“According to a poll from market research group NPD, only 10 percent of people get dressed for working from home at the start of the day and then change into comfortable clothes later.”
In speaking with Ned Foley of Sparta N.J., who is a senior consultant at a large global consulting company in New York it is clear professionalism has shifted.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, people dressed as if they were at the office, suits and ties. You never heard many interruptions. A month or two in [to quarantine] people relaxed to new norms,” said Foley. “I started seeing baseball hats, kids walking in interrupting meetings. I even was interviewing a guy whose child walked in and took his phone to play games on right in the middle of the interview.”
A Zoom shirt ? and no pants ?? seems to have become staple business attire during this work from home ? season https://t.co/FupJPYujgb
— Akshay Sharma MD (@AkshaySharmaMD) June 30, 2020
Viral images fill the internet showing people in their “zoom attire.”
Recently Tuck McLain, county court judge of Grimes County was photographed jokingly by his wife right after a court hearing. He can be seen with an untucked shirt, his robe, and comfy shorts.
Dustin Kemp, program coordinator at Texas A&M University can be seen wearing a nice suit jacket dress shirt top, with athletic shorts on his lower half. “I normally wear a polo and slacks, but I needed a bit of flare for this photoshoot. Either way, I didn’t want to dress up all the way” said Kemp.
Some observers say work routines will go back to normal.
“This new professional ensemble won’t last forever as Covid-19 very slowly decreases in America. Just like the mullet, it will soon be a faint memory and a talking point of decades to come. Just like the mullet, I hope it never comes back,” said Taylor Wildman, senior marketing student at Sam Houston State University.
Foley agreed things will return to normal. “Yeah, it’ll go back to the business attire I’m sure, but after you see all of your coworkers in baseball hats and pajamas, it may be hard to take them seriously,” he said with a laugh.
Many agree workplace attire and standards will return to normal. Organizations such as the CDC and workplacementalhealth.org have information and resources available to help battle this stay at home stress, saying “it’s important to find new ways to work and interact while also taking care of our mental health and well-being”. If that means wearing slippers and a suit jacket, so be it.
You have some great quotes in this article, with a wide range of people who have to be part of different zoom meetings and conferences. You did a good job of showing how it has changed since the beginning of the lockdown, talking about how people got fully dressed during the few months and as time went on people cared less.