To think you should at least try and look presentable at work?

[92AP]

For context, I work for a very large company in a building that does a lot of different 'back office' functions. We have recently moved buildings so I now work on a new floor which we share with two other teams. I have seen the individual in question around the old place but now see her every day as we work on teams next to eachother.

Our office dress code is smart casual. Most wear nice jeans and tops/jumpers or floaty dresses. Everyone adhears to this as its not very strict and as long as we look decent then theres not an issue.

The woman in question comes to work every day in scruffy leggings and baggy tshirts that are visably dirty. Her hair long is alway greasy and matted beyond belief, honestly mine looks better when I have just woken up after a night of heavy drinking. It is so matted in places some days it looks as though its been back combed and then twisted up. It is also dyed pink on the ends, which does not bother me at all, but surely shows some kind of hair care takes place at some point to upkeep this?

I understand some people may have disabilities that mean they cannot look after themselves as much as others, but surely if you are capable of doing an admin job in an office, you are capable of at least brushing your hair?

AIBU to think if you are coming to work you should at least make a small effort to look like you care about yourself/your job?

YANBU OP.

Meh - don't sweat the small stuff.

Concentrate on your own life and not your colleague.

While having some sympathy for this lady, I find it baffling that a dress code of Smart Casual is expected ,and yet someone can turn up in scruffy and dirty clothes .When I worked as a P/T Nursery Nurse ,we were told that it would be a disciplinary action if we wore dirty /stained clothes to work. Im Frankly amazed that she hasnt been pulled up on it TBH!

Whether some of you like it or not, people will judge. It is a perfectly normal thing to do. Everyone does it. There is a stench of hypocrisy on this thread.

I can't believe some of the replies on this thread. As if you wouldn't judge someone who was badly dressed in any context, never mind at work. Women are the absolute worst at judging other women!

Virtue signalling at its worst.

And yet it doesn’t.
She is not being concerned. She is being critical. It is none of her business. The degree to which she is concerning herself with it is frankly bizarre.

I think it's the way it was said/ presented. If OP had said "I'm worried that one of my colleagues is extremely unkempt- is she okay?" Then I think it would have come across better.
I think the messy colleague is brave, when I'm mega-depressed and showering and hair brushing is painful torture, I daren't set foot into work!

I dunno, maybe im just being too judgey but it just doesn't make sense to me that someone can have the mental or physical ability to come to work and do their job but not the same energy to simply brush their hair?
Someone may have an economic need to be at work, work might be their only respite from caring for children with additional nerds, work may be the place they escape from domestic abuse, work may be the one piece of normality they’re able to maintain in the face of significant mental health problems.

As a older teenage I went to school and did what I needed to do there - my home life was absolute utter chaos but if I could kept it together 6 hours a day, I could cope when I got back. Looking at photos from that time I wasn’t best presented, but I showed up and got on with it. In my career I’ve supported a staff member who wasn’t well presented to just be at work while she also cared for a parent with dementia - all her energy was going into her parents care and she had literally nothing left in terms of self care.

I’m not sure how her appearance impacts you in your work, you don’t know whether her managers are aware and are supporting her to just turn up as an absolute minimum. It doesn’t however take much imagination or empathy to understand that sometimes self care if just a step too far for folks.

LOL at all the people whining 'Well, if there's a dress code, she should have to conform to it, it's not fair...' You all sound like a bunch of kids who can't wait to run to the teacher to tell her that so-and-so in Y7 is wearing the wrong colour socks. It's not up to the OP to enforce the office dress code or determine who might be excused from conforming to it.

Obviously, we would probably ALL notice this woman and we would probably ALL think she didn't look as presentable we'd expect - however, at the same time we'd recognise that it was none of our business and move on, rather than writing a pearl-clutching gossipy post on Mumsnet about it. If it is a problem, her line manager will address it.

I remember being very depressed in my early twenties. I couldn't have coped not being at work and hated weekends where I didn't have the distraction of work. I used to wake up in the morning, sit on my bed and cry. Eventually I would grab something to put on and head to work. I didn't think anyone would notice but maybe they did...

I used to manage someone who regularly came to work with food stained clothing and unbrushed hair. What 80-90% of the office didn't know, because she was a very private person, was that she was undergoing treatment for a serious physical illness, relying on work to give her some normality and to take her mind off dwelling on the 'what ifs' prognoses, but by the time she had got herself pulled round each morning and her two small children sorted for nursery (which is where the food stains came from), her appearance was so far down her list of priorities as to not even register. Under the circumstances I was prepared to cut her a fair bit of slack when it came to the dress code - I considered it a reasonable adjustment, since IMO she was already performing miracles to not only be making it into work at all but still doing her usual excellent job with virtually no dip in performance - and if anyone had stuck their oar in with me I would have made it quite clear I was aware thank you, reassuringly if I thought they were coming from a place of genuine concern like some posters here would be, slightly...less so if I thought they were just trying to dob her in it.

TL;DR: sometimes you have no idea what shit people are dealing with or what they may have agreed with their manager already.

My first thought was possible homelessness, too @OurChristmasMiracle.

Very hard to keep yourself and your clothes clean if you're sleeping rough/sofa surfing.

It's a difficult one OP. My MH is not good right now and I've gone from being " put together " ( shower, makeup, hair done, clean outfit, accessories etc) to someone who had one bath last week and I haven't washed my hair since Sunday. Every single scrap of energy is going on making it in to work because I'm even worse at home all day. My lovely colleagues must have noticed but no one has said a thing. I make sure I have a proper wash , brush teeth, scrape hair back and that's it.

Also if you are homeless and trying to save enough deposit and rent in advance for a room you need to be at work even though you can’t shower or clean your clothes.

And homelessness is on the rise.