The company I work for is a fairly large high tech medical technology company that makes cardiovascular implants. Due to the somewhat serious nature of the medical implant business the corporate culture is a tad on the conservative side. Whereas at other tech firms I've worked at we programmers could get away with wearing jeans and t-shirts to work, now I'm forced to wear dress pants, a dress shirt and a tie. This seems quite silly as I don't ever see anyone outside the company, so who really cares what I wear. We do have casual day on Fridays which basically amounts to my not having to wear a tie.
Things are starting to change now that we've got a new CEO. Our new CEO is a bit more laid back than the old one. He makes jokes at all employee meetings. He's not terribly uptight, seems generally congenial, and looks a heck of a lot like Randy Travis. That's neither here nor there really.
Anyway, this morning we had a big all employee meeting outside the main building. No one was quite sure as to the purpose of the meeting. It was all terribly hush hush. It turns out the purpose of this meeting was to tell us they were trying to shed the conservative image we've developed. This mainly involves knocking the dress code down to business casual and also giving everyone who's been stuck with a small cubicle a bigger 8' X 10' one like the rest of us.
Then the fun started. All of the managers and directors were on stage, most of the male ones had on some obscenely ugly ties. Our former CEO cut off the current CEO's tie at the knot and threw it onto a bonfire they had going next to the side of the platform. He then cut off his own tie and soon all the managers and directors started throwing their ties and dresses and even pumps into the fire. Overall it was quite the sight.
Less conservative image and all, I'm sure there's going to be a few expense reports filed for new ties and shoes, most likely under the entertainment category. | 
