Roger Arnold, a 22-year government employee, said he had not worn a tie to work for 10 years and that the last time he wore one was five years ago to his son's wedding.
A spokesman for the bureau in Washington said that while there is no specific dress code at ATF -- the coat-and-tie rule for identification photos was "a modest request." Arnold was the first ATF employee to be fired for failure to wear proper clothing.
You will notice that in the picture at the head of this column that I haven't got a tie on -- but then writing this column isn't quite a $36,000-a-year position either. I really don't understand myself to ever be working at a job that would require me to wear a tie every day.
My first experience with a necktie dates back to around the time I was in the third or fourth grade. My parents had decided that I was in the need of some new, "nice dress-up clothes" that I could wear to Sunday school each week. We all piled into my father's DeSoto and headed down to the local Robert Hall clothing store.
After what seemed like hours of trying on one suit jacket after another, we finally made our choice, and the salesman attacked me with a piece of chalk and a measuring tape as he measured for alterations.
Since you can't wear a suit without a tie, I picked out what I thought was a stunning blue, gray-and-white checkered number (remember I was only a kid).
Because it was going to take two or three days for them to alter the suit we'd chosen, all I had to show for our big shopping trip was a claim check and my captivating necktie.
My next big project was to learn how to tie the darn thing. My Cub Scout manual was filled with knots, and sure enough, there was a diagram showing how to tie a necktie. I draped the tie around my neck and began to try to decipher the instructions. "Mom!" I yelled in frustration after I'd been standing in front of the bathroom mirror for 10 minutes and ended up with nothing but a severely wrinkled necktie. "How do you tie this thing?"
My mother walked in with a smile of amusement on her face. "Well, let's see," she said as she tried to figure out the diagram. "This end goes over here and then through and around...no...that's not right. Turn around."
I turned and faced the mirror and Mom stood behind me with her arms around my shoulders and her head next to mine so she could see into the mirror.
"I used to have to do this every morning as part of my uniform. (My mom was once a Marine -- you didn't mess around with my mom!) I just can't tie a necktie when I'm looking at it backward."
When we finally got the tie tied there was no way that I was going to untie it again. I just loosened it until I could slide the loop over my head, and I left it hanging on my bed's head post until the next Sunday.
I did eventually learn how to tie the thing, and by the time I got to high school I was even wearing one to school on occasions. (Our school had a tradition that on game days, members of the team would wear neckties.) Since I played water polo and swam, I'd wear a tie on the days when we had meets.
I'd just add the necktie and button-down shirt to my usual mid-'60s "surfers garb" of wheat jeans, blue tennies and a plaid Pendelton wool over shirt.
When I finally got out of school and "into the real world" that my father used to warn me about, I went to work for a number of different advertising agencies. It didn't take me long to recognize that the people in the Creative Department didn't always wear ties, took long lunches and usually had music coming out of their office doors. Because I could write, I gravitated to that end of the agency.
Don't get me wrong -- I still wear a tie on occasion -- it's just that I resent being told that I must wear a tie. I don't go into restaurants that require a tie and then they very happily rent you something to put around your neck that a Shriner wouldn't wear to Kansas City.
No, my kind of place is the barbeque joint down near Phoenix, where if you wear a tie, the cook comes out with a big pair of scissors and takes it off just below the knot.[[In-content Ad]]