We have a casual dress code at work. (Or, more accurately, we have no dress code, because we have no HR bureaucracy.) Some days I’ll wear a button-down shirt or sweater, but when it’s warmer I usually wear jeans and a T-shirt. It’s totally normal.

I don’t even know how it started — the people involved in starting it have moved on — but sometimes people wear ties on Thursdays. It started for some sensible reason, but then it just became a tradition. By the time I came along I didn’t even know why we did it. Not everyone participates, and it’s not an official company thing.

I haven’t participated in a while, so today I decided to go for it. But it’s sort of like giving a moose a muffin*: if you’re wearing a tie, you need a nice dress shirt, and if you’re doing a nice dress shirt, you’ve got to have dress pants and dress shoes, and if you’re going that far you might as well break out the sweater-vest and pocketwatch.

I happened to see a lot of my friends today, and all of them asked why I was all dressed up. The conversation went like this every single time:

“Why are you all dressed up?”
“It’s Thursday.”
“What does that mean?”
“Thursday is tie day.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“So you got dressed up for no reason?”
“Well, just because it’s tie day.”
“You’re weird.”