Dazed and Confused

Hello, Earthling.

We’re here on a research mission. Perhaps you can help us. Our ship landed in what we understand to be an office park, where sometimes humans do business. We were watching you remotely for a long time before our on-planet mission was approved, and we’re perplexed about your work uniforms.

The first issue is that your uniforms are anything but uniform.

On Epsilon-53, our planet, and on every other planet in every other galaxy, everyone — regardless of species, race, gender, or profession — wears the same thing. There might be some variation in color. We’re not savages. But utility, comfort, and uniformity of dress are seen on every planet but this one.

That is the logical approach.

The dress code of Earthling office workers is not logical. We want to know why that is.

Do you all worship a deity that demands frivolity and nonconformity from your species?

Is your supreme planetary leader a retailer? On our monitors, we’ve seen thousands of trucks labelled “Amazon,” dispensing smiling boxes on doorsteps across the planet. Are you required to keep buying new uniforms regardless of whether the old ones still function?

Why? Do you pledge allegiance to Supreme Leader Bezos or a Planetary Oligarchy? Is it your life’s purpose to enrich them?

I mean, look at the two of you.

One of you is wearing a constricting “dry-clean only” jacket. As someone who spent at least 16 years in the sausage factory you call education, you should know better; “dry cleaning” isn’t dry at all.

More importantly, chemicals like those used in “dry cleaning” are killing your planet.

Your impractical and unethical jacket covers a cotton shirt (kudos for at least using a more sustainable fabric) but the fabric always looks hideously wrinkled. That is, unless you fire up an “iron” — an item not made of iron at all — and waste time you’ll never get back using it to make the shirt presentable.

Let me stop for a moment right there and ask you, what fool invented your tribal language? Why do none of your words make any sense? “Dry clean?” “Iron?”

Then, on the bottom half of your body, you have wrapped a rectangular, tight piece of cloth — a skirt — which only covers you to the knees and requires another piece of clothing to keep your lower appendages warm. Not only does the skirt provide no protection from the elements, but you can’t even bend over or walk up a flight of stairs without flashing your undercarriage at the world.

Ludicrous.

Finally, your footwear is ridiculous. You’ve crammed five toes into a shoe with a point that might, at best, fit one toe. Then you have to wobble around on said toes, with no help from four-inch heels that touch perhaps five millimeters of floor at a time.

Nonsensical.

And you, male human. At least you’re wearing trousers and flat shoes, but what in the name of all that is holy on this rock is that piece of cloth around your neck? Is that on standby in case you need to hang yourself at the end of a bad work day?

Do either of you have an answer for us?

We didn’t think so.

Now, we know that over the past two years, humans have been working to stop the spread of a disease that has killed more than five million of your species, and most of you haven’t been coming to the office to do your work. Because of that, you started wearing more sensible clothes: washable soft pants with elastic waists, wrinkle-proof zip-up shirts, some with hoods in case it rains, and shoes with flat, rubber soles that you can actually ambulate in.

All very sensible, logical. We approve. You were finally starting to make sartorial sense.

But then someone called you back to the office and capriciously decided to enforce a “dress code.” Now you’re back, imprisoned in your senseless, illogical donkey suits and footwear that maims.

Human judgment being an oxymoron, we predict your world will doom itself within a few generations.

Good luck and good-bye.