One of the restaurants I worked for had a system that worked well for getting employees to want to wear their uniform. Well, part of it.

For the most part, the uniform code was simple and bland. Wear a collared shirt, tuck it in, wear a belt, blah blah blah. In short, dress was business casual. This always made for a great time trying to explain the mayonnaise stains on my slacks. “I swear I’m not a messy eater! I just work at a restaurant.”

The only thing the uniform seemed to represent was what our bosses felt our customers expected. And while attempting to meet customer expectations is an admirable goal, I often felt that our customers had more important expectations for us to meet. The thought process went something like this: “These guys buying sandwiches want me to tuck in my shirt? See, that’s funny, because every time they talk to me, they’re more concerned about whether or not they have tomatoes on their sandwiches. So, I’ll focus on the tomatoes for now and when everyone is happy with their tomatoes, then I’ll worry about tucking in my shirt.”

Overall, I’m a pretty cooperative guy, so despite my misgivings, I would grudgingly tuck in my shirt. Other employees were less likely to. I’d say the company was batting around .400 on getting employees to tuck in their shirts. And why? If you ask me, it’s because tucking in your shirt doesn’t affect the taste of a sandwich and the employees know it. Try it if you don’t believe me.

There was, however, a different area of the company’s dress code where my guess is they were batting close to .900 on compliance.

At this restaurant there were about six different areas of the restaurant in which we could work. One could make sandwiches, or be a cashier, or a barista, and so on. Once an associate was trained in any of these areas, he would receive a small lapel pin to show that he had completed that training. It was a small piece of recognition that said “Good job.” It was a little bit of bling to show that the company knew you could do your job.

Personally, I thought of the pins as another part of my uniform to lose - I had enough trouble not losing my hat. But to my surprise, many of the young employees loved the pins. They were the only parts of the associate uniform that we had to be sure to keep on order because they were being requested by the associates. This was a part of the uniform that young employees were asking for.

Now, as I’ve said before, if you can make your uniform something that employees want to wear, you’re going to win the war over dress code before it starts. In this case, the little pat on the back that the pin represented was enough to make Gen Whys want to wear their uniforms. How cool is that?