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Dress Codes that Need Decoding

While actress Whoopi Goldberg was in Atlanta recently for her one-woman show, she stayed at the downtown Ritz Carlton Hotel.

She was refused entrance to the Ritz restaurant, however, because she didn’t look like the Ritz thinks you ought to look when you eat in one of their hotels.

Let’s just say that Whoopi will never make the cover of Mademoiselle.

I often have wondered why restaurants and bars are so picky about how somebody looks or dresses when they come in and offer their business.

Take the sign that says NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE.

Does this mean as long as I have on a shirt and shoes I can take off my pants and still get the bacon cheeseburger?

The least they could do in a restaurant with a sign like that is to say, “You can’t come in without your shirt or shoes, but I’ll take your order if you’ll just wait outside while it’s cooking.”

I’ve never been fond of the sign that says GENTLEMEN ARE REQUIRED TO WEAR JACKET AND TIES.

I’ve always figured restaurants have rules like that to make certain they don’t get any riffraff.

But some very riffraffy people wear ties. Ed Meese. Jimmy Swaggart. Al Capone wore ties, didn’t he?

I don’t know if medical science has looked into it, but I would suppose that wearing a jacket and tie and trying to eat in a place where they won’t allow you to drink your beer from a bottle would not be that good for the digestion.

The jacket restricts movement and the tie probably is some detriment to circulation. This dress code, then, could lead to such maladies as heartburn, indigestion, and even ulcers.

If it turns out such restaurants have a deal going with the Maalox people, I wouldn’t be surprised.

I saw a sign in a hotel bar in Jacksonville, Florida, recently that completely baffled me.

It said CASUAL, STYLISH ATTIRE ONLY.

The first thing I did when I saw that sign was to look and see what I was wearing. I was wearing a golf shirt, khaki slacks, and loafers with no socks.

There was no question that I was casual, but was I stylish as well?

It depended, I suppose, on various personal points of view.

“Something out of a 1956 Sears catalog,” detractors might say. “Definitely not stylish.”

A more mature person might say, however, “Middle-aged preppy, huh? Very stylish, please come in.”

With some trepidation, I walked into the place and took a seat at the bar.

“Before I order,” I said to the bartender, a woman, “do you think my outfit is stylish enough to be in here?”

“You’ll do,” she said. “Now, what ya drankin’?”

Whoopi! I ordered a beer in a bottle.