April 18th, 2013

Arctic Fashion

by Wayno & Piraro

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Surprising Power of Horse Flatulation.

You may be asking why I didn’t publish this cartoon on a Friday and I have a very good reason: Because that’s just what they’d be expecting! Instead, I decided to go with a Wednesday ambush! Even though I never served in the army, all those years at West Point paid off.

There have actually been a whole passel of cartoons about penguins and this thing we have come to call “Casual Friday.” But I’ve not seen this take on it so I went for it anyway.

If you’re reading this from a country where this term is not known, it refers to the habit of some businesses that require suits and ties on a daily basis to allow their employees to wear whatever they want on Fridays (as long as it conforms to a strict code of casual dress.) In a nutshell, if you’re required to dress like a diplomat Monday through Thursday, you can dress like a pro golfer on Friday. It is meant to help morale by convincing employees that they have some freedom to express their individuality. I can’t help but wonder if it works.

This kind of thing doesn’t happen so much in California, where even formal businesses like stock brokerage firms and banks allow their employees to wear board shorts and tank tops to work pretty much every day. Turns out the whole state is pretty casual.