A Runt’s Rant: The Unwritten Rules

Rules are meant to be broken.

Except, they’re not, really.

Pacta sunt servanda, remember? Sure you do; you simply choose not to, sometimes.

You can rest assured, however, that, sooner or later, something (or someone) gives in and you are swiftly reminded of the above in the most unpleasant manner imaginable.

But what if those rules were unwritten? Could you have then got away with saying that they had not been previously brought to your attention? Or could you simply alter those in a way which would better suit your personal and/ or professional needs? Also, how had those rules come to be in the first place; are they actual RULES or are they mere customary guidelines?

The above questions have haunted me for about two days now; and here’s the reason why:

A friend of mine was looking to buy a new suit and I agreed to help him out. As we were walking down the high street, we started talking about the dress code in London.

He told me that he wanted to buy plain, slim- fit, two- button, single vent, relaxed lapel black suit which was, I thought, rather boring and conservative.

When I asked him whether he would not prefer a charcoal pinstripe one, he raised his eyebrows and said (in quite a serious manner, too):

‘In London, you have to earn your stripes!’

Even though the notion itself sounded ludicrous to me, I nodded and asked why as I was genuinely shocked and interested (also, a bit scared, to be honest, because most of my suits are pinstripes…).

My friend then smiled and said that it was a universal unwritten rule that, in the corporate world of London, you could wear pinstripes only once you had become successful or one of the best in what you did.

Often, he said, people knew each others’ status by the clothes that they were wearing. Also, I was told that accountants, bankers and lawyers were all dressed differently so that a client knew who was who once they walked into his office.

At one point, I got so entangled in the, what seemed, endless web of information that the only thing I could utter was:

‘But…that’s not fair…’

It wasn’t fair, honestly. Mainly because:

• No- one had told me when I was buying my suits
• I had NEVER read ANYTHING of the sort ANYWHERE and I thought that I had read pretty much EVERYTHING there was to read on suits
• I had not been told what to wear since I last had my school uniform on
• I REALLY liked pinstripes

Lost in thought, I heard my friend’s hearty laughter; he was quite amused by my sudden childish reaction.

He then patted me on the back and said that there was no point of whinging and that knowledge was power.

Indeed, there were two options; get new suits OR change an unwritten rule.

Since I had long misplaced my invisible pen, I decided that the latter would (for the time being, at least) prove to be quite the Herculean task.

The former, on the other hand, was quite appealing; it had always felt good to find a perfectly legitimate reason to buy some new suits.

After all, one had to follow the rules; even the unwritten ones.