NOTE: This story is entirely fiction. None of the people or places is real or based on any real person or place, past or present. This story deals with public reaction to legalized public nudity. An amount of nudity is included as part ot the story and some sexual activity is alluded to, but never specifically described. If this story were a movie it would probably be rated PG-13 or R, depending on how much of the nudity the director includes and the angles used. Read and share accordingly.
“Thanks to the Bear ruling, this latest example of judicial activism, we have an opportunity coming to us here in Conway Corners. You may not agree with the ruling. We’re not all sure we do, but remember, we aren’t writing the rules. The rules will change on Thursday and we’re just trying to figure out how to best play the game when the rules change.”
Edna Mays Malloy, flanked by some of her family and others in the town’s leadership, was speaking to a group of local businesspeople who had been invited to gather in the conference room of her business, Malloy Northern. None of the people invited had much of an idea why they had been invited [or summoned, depending on one’s perspective] to meet with Edna and her relatives and others in the business community, but they had come, assuming that it must be about something important and while they had all heard of the Bear ruling, most of them had not caught its import immediately.
“How’s that, Edna?” Ashley Wilkinson, the owner of the town’s independent pharmacy, asked. Others inquired similarly.
Edna answered, “Well, we’ve all heard of what our supreme court has ruled in Bear v. Beardsley. They just ruled that in most cases the state is powerless to force people to be clothed and added that cities and townships and counties can’t do it either.”
“But didn’t they put that on hold so the legislature could straighten it out?” somebody asked.
“Well,” Edna answered, “they issued a thirty day stay so the legislature could meet and suggest action. Since their ruling was based on the state constitution, it would take a constitutional amendment to totally change things back. That takes time, but there are some things they can do right away, so Governor Billings did call a special session so the legislature could take actions. And as you have probably read the special session has not been productive and now our people at the Capitol is pretty certain that the legislature will be unable to agree on how to approach things and will most likely go home today, having taken no significant action, just tightening up some language dealing with the definition of lewdness and not producing a single constitutional amendment or even a major law to .carry things over.”
“But the Attorney General said that she would appeal all the way to the federal supreme court. Won’t that take a while?” somebody asked.
“I’ll let Gordon answer that,” Edna said, looking to a younger man sitting next to her.
Gordon Mays was an attorney with Davis and Mays, a long established law firm of which his grandfather had been one of the founders. He was Edna’s much younger brother. . He was in his late twenties, tall and short-haired, looking not a lot different from what he looked like in his days as a wide receiver in high school. He had not been a lawyer long, but he was the only lawyer in the room.
“General Havercomb is just spouting and demagoging,” he said. “Any first year law student knows that federal courts cannot interfere with a state court’s ruling on a state constitutional matter. There would need to be a federal issue involved and it would have had to been raised already and from the transcripts I’ve seen it doesn’t look like that was done. And the stay which was granted specifically said that it would not be extended unless the legislature made significant progress to resolve the matter. It is a pretty good guess that if they actually do produce a constitutional amendment that the stay will be extended until the amendment can get to the voters. And they probably would extend it if a statutory plan comes out, at least long enough to rule on its constitutionality. But it looks like our legislators will do neither. Some don’t want anybody else to get credit for anything. There are a few libertarians who maybe never wanted this new freedom to be publicly naked and may not be really fond of the ruling, but will do nothing to compromise any freedom. Some want to do nothing so they can rail against the court or judges in general. When Havercomb gets rebuffed from the federal courts, and she will, they will join her in attacking the activists in the judicial systems, maybe even confusing state and federal systems. That’s been her thing all the time, to blame all of our problems on supposedly activist judges. The biggest reason that some judges get labeled ‘activist’ is poor legislation, poorly drafted. I know that some of the career lawyers in her office are embarrassed about a lot of what she does for politics. The supreme court handed the matter to Judge Stevens and she’s not an activist judge at all, just a good career jurist who likely won’t do a thing if the legislature does as little as it looks like they will.”
“In other words,” Edna went on, “it would seem that at noon next Thursday there will be no state or local authority who can outlaw simple nakedness. This gives us a challenge. I have talked it over with some of other businesspeople and my family and we think this could be a good economic development opportunity for Conway Corners.”
“How can that help us?” Ashley asked.
Edna was ready for the question. “Well, there must be a lot of ways, but let me suggest a couple right off. Look at your store. You’re surrounded by two national chains and barely hanging on. They have things which put you at a definite disadvantage. Economies of scale, preferential deals with the big insurance companies and HMOs, national reputation. But they’re big and they’re headquartered elsewhere and they don’t move so fast. But if the cashier who rings up the sale or the janitor who mops your aisles were doing it naked word would get around and people would pass by Walgreen’s or CVS and come to your place.”
She turned to Phil Eaton who ran the town’s independent book store and Laura Lyon who owned a local coffee shop. “Phil, you can see how that kind of approach helps you compared with Barnes and Noble. And Laura, Starbucks wouldn’t touch the idea of a naked barrista, at least not for quite a while.”
“Wait a minute,” Phil answered. “I do almost all of the staffing at my place myself. I can’t see me selling books without clothes on and I can’t imagine that anybody would want to see me naked. They say that you can’t judge a book by its cover but people do and my cover ain’t none too good.”
Laura chimed in, “I’m kind of like Phil. I do a lot of my own staffing. While I think I do look pretty damned good dressed or undressed --,” She was interrupted by somebody across the room muttering that he was sure that she did indeed look good undressed.
She continued, “Never mind the compliment. I don’t think I can see where this fits in my business model. And my staff probably would not be amused that we’re even talking about this. I want people to come for the coffee and the menu, not to ogle us.”
Donald Mays took over the discussion. He was about fifty, balding and thin. He was the CEO of Mays Machinery and Edna and Gordon were his cousins. The extended Mays family had long been prominent in Conway Corners’ economy. While they did not flaunt their prosperity as much as some with their means do, most of them did live in a cluster of adjoining properties on Weed’s Hill on the western edge of the town, an area much of the town called [probably originally from a derogatory comparison with the Kennedys and Hyannisport] “The Compound.” Most of the Compound was not visible from outside and what a lot of the town did not know is that the Compound was for the most part a clothing optional most of the time for members of what was often referred in the town as “the Family
Donald Mays soon made it clear that he had been in on earlier discussions.
“I think that Edna may have gotten us started on the wrong phase. We have a limited tourist industry about here. We have a few lakes and some beaches and resorts which do modest business. This is a small state and a northern one. But we are only five miles from the border and ten from the interstate. This new freedom to be nude, what some media people so cleverly call ‘Bear rights’ is a limited freedom but it is one which people in forty-nine states will not have. Our town is not on most people’s travel itineraries, although a lot of people come pretty close to us on their ways to or from who knows where. Anything which gets people here and spending money helps us all. What if one or two of our resorts became clothing optional? What if people knew that they could come into town and browse in a bookstore or sip some cappuchino and know that they would not have to cover up? And if somebody working there is also in the same spirit and voluntarily naked, what harm will that do?”
“But nobody visits a machine shop. You and your people wouldn’t be contributing anything.” Phil noted.
Donald came back, “No, not many visit machine shops. And even if total nudity is legal, I’m not going to suggest it to my machine operators. Even if they wanted to, there are safety concerns and my insurers would go nuts. But we are a part of this community and we do want it to do well. Maybe this is time to distribute the memorandum that we have worked on and give you all a chance to read it. Why don’t we refill our coffee and have more pastries while you read it and we’ll talk some more?”
Edna and Gordon started distributing the memorandum. It was on plain, white paper without any letterhead and bore no signatures. When Phil noted it, he thought to himself that if the ideas on it bombed that nobody’s name could be associated with it. It contained evidence of being hastily and/or sloppily written with both grammar and typographical errors.
ADAPTING CONWAY CORNERS’ ECONOMY TO MAKE USEOF
A NEW CLOTHING=OPTIONAL ENVIRONMENT
As a consequence of the case of Bear v. Beardsley, at noon next Thursday, it seems that people will no longer be required to be clothed in public or private places. There will be some exceptions for health or safety reasons, but for the most part how much and what a person wears will be their choice. We think that this gives Conway Corners chances for economic development. We also think that many people will find the new freedom exciting and will enjoy the opportunities that this will establish, but this memorandum deals primarily with economic matters.
We calculate that there will be many people who will once they know about our new freedoms here will wish to come to our state. We are a good place of entry for many of them. Within a two hour drive south of us there are about fifteen million people to whom we are the closest city in our state. Our limited lake resort industry has been aware of this, but we really don’t have any ability or lakes to expand the number and size of our resorts. We don’t have any Indian tribes close enough to build a casino. But we will be in what will be an almost clothing-optional state and there will not be any easier place in our state for these fifteen million people to drive to.
We also know that no matter how much we might to develop our region’s economy that we don’t want to do so in way[s] which would offend our peoples sense of dignity or which would interest an undew number of visitors here for other than legitimate reasons.
People will come here anyway even if we do nothing, so we will soon be hosting people from out of our state who will be moving throughout our community wearing no clothes. [We will also find some of our own people making use of this new freedom, their Bear rights.] We think it important that we attract the right kind of naked person. We think there will likely be three kinds of naked people coming through. There will be nudists who are now free to leave the confines of remote beaches and nudist colonies. There will be freedom-loving people who just want to enjoy life without being forced to be dressed. And there will be perverts, exhibitionists, voyeurs, and others. We will not be able to keep any of these people out of our community, but maybe we can skew the mix to the first two types of people.
To keep things in perspective, let’s just look at what will and won’t happen when the legislature goes home. Some of this is tentative since we do not know exactly how much or what the legislature will pass, but this is our best guess as of now.
Private residences will continue to be private and people can require that all of their guests remain clothed. This may seem obvious but we know that there are rumors to the contrary circulating in our shops and streets and on the internet.
Nobody can require that anybody else disrobe. Incentives may be given, but nobody can require it. This includes employers who will not be able to make employees work naked. Violations of this law can under some circumstences be considered felonies. That has always been both the law and common sense, but it seems thatn one of the few things this special session will do is to further codify this. It seems that this prohibition will apply even to bars. Only bars which are licensed as adult entertainment places would be allowed to require nudity from their employees and we have no such place in this area. As of now it is not clear whether the Alcohol Control Board or any local authority will be able to regulate nudity by either staff or patrons of other bars and taverns or that they would chose to do so, but it does seem that they would have that power. It seems likely that patrons who behave themselves will not be forbidden, but it is not certain. [see below]
Employers may be able to require that all employees remain clothed. This will undoubtedly be the case where uniforms are involved or where health/safety regulations dictate. It is likely that it will be the case elsewhere, at least until further litigation happens Of course, at will employees are bound by employers’ rule making abilities regardless.
Private business will be able to keep naked people out of their private property. While this is not stated in the court decision, the best minds we have found feel that it would seem to be implicit under property rights laws. And every bill drafted in the special session has included it.
The future of public facilities is not so clear. It seems that nudity will have to be tolerated in public parks, except perhaps when the park is being programmed for a specific use. Court rooms and maybe Court Houses will likely be under the control of the judges and county officials who work there as they have been already. There is a chance that local authorities will not be able to control places such as tax and records offices or public libraries, but the special session still might clarify that. The public schools already have dress codes for students, teachers, and staff. It seems unlikely that they would modify them just because nakedness is not illegal. We think they will implement some kind of dress requirement for school visitors, but are not certain that they can make such requirements hold up to judicial scrutiny if matters reach court.
What is lewd was considered lewd will still be considered lewd. This is made very clear in the opinion. This may lead to a lot of strange test cases, but we would caution all to watch out for lewdness constantly.
Strangely, there are still laws against indecent exposure and disorderly conduct, but nudity by itself is no longer considered indecent or disorderly. This will undoubtedly create more interesting test cases.
The Alcohol Control Board or local authorities will likely be able to control nudity in places which serve alcoholic beverages. Other court rulings have held that governments can place controls in places where alcohol is served or used when they otherwise might not. However, the process of establishing such policies and ordinances and implementing them probably means that there will be no place in the state who would have any such prohibition in place by noon on Thursday. Town and county authorities here might want to consider such action, but we are working on a strategy which would not make such a ban desirable.
It is likely that exploitation of nudity for commercial reasons will be banned and likely is illegal already anyway. The ruling specifically stated it was based on arguments dealing with disorderly conduct laws that it was not based on any commercial purpose arguments. While that leaves open the possibility that they might make a similar conclusion if the issue were argued about commercial purposes, this is certainly not a given. It is best to believe that Businesses will not be allowed to use the nudity of staff or other clients to draw more business. However, naked staff people likely will convey an attitude of goodwill to visitors.
WHAT WE ARE SUGGESTING IS A SEVERAL-PRONGED APPROACH TO HELP THE CONWAY CORNERS REGION MAKE THE BEST OF THE NEW SITUATION. IT IS A STRATEGY WHICH DEPENDS ON THE PRIVATE SECTOR FOR ACTION. GOVERNMENT ACTION IS NOT REQUIRED FOR ANYTHING MORE THAN A FEW TECHNICAL THINGS.
Strategy One. Develop a reason for desirable people to visit us. We would view desirable visitors as those who are of good moral character and who have a fair amount of disposable income.
We suggest that the resort industry in our area seriously consider not requiring guests to remain clothed in the common facilities of their resorts. There seems to be agreement among the people in this industry that their facilities are largely antiquated for this era, that they are too-much oriented to the mid-twentieth century style of resorts and that there are limited possibilities for expansion or re-orientation. While they maintain almost full occupancy the owners tell us that it is harder to do every year and gets even more difficult as aging, long-time customers are no longer able to keep coming. At least one couple who own a resort have told us that they will not erect any signage to disallow naked visitors. Another owner has told us that he will not erect such signage as long as most or many of the other owners do not. This presents opportunities for the owners, probably more for next year than this since it is already August. With no additional advertising required we imagine more people seeking to spend some or all of their vacations here and paying more for the opportunity. Expensive advertising will not be necessary because internet communications among the nudist and naturist community will spread the word for them.
Since nudity would no longer a crime there really would not be any need to institute signage indicating where it is accepted. There only needs to be signage if the business chooses to prohibit it. We suggest that other businesses in this town also not be hasty to take action or erect signage to discourage nudity at their places of business, except in those cases where there may be health or safety codes requiring other wise.
Strategy Two. Show a welcoming attitude towards the new visitors.
Although to some degree our new visitors will become some kind of tourist attraction themselves and in most cases we would not be able to control this much, in most cases will they not want to be considered as such.. And while there may be a few visitors who may not be fully socialized, most of our new visitors will likely not be people who would wish to be viewed as freaks or perverts and won’t be. Our citizenry, especially those in the hospitality businesses, will need to be careful to communicate this sense of welcome. As a corollary to this we strongly suggest that, to the extent that people and businesses involved are comfortable doing so, that staff at hospitality businesses be allowed or encouraged to work in little or minimal clothing so that visitors will realize that they are visiting a community of like-minded people instead of a community of people just waiting to take their money or put them on show. This would not be something which we could or would wish to actively advertise. Active advertising of our welcome would not only entail costs, but would possibly be illegal since the court ruling explicitly notes that nothing in it authorized nudity for commercial reasons. But in a clothing-optional state a naked person or topless female can hardly be considered to be naked for commercial reasons simply by being naked. There would need to be something specific indicating otherwise. However, we need to remember that nudity cannot be a condition of employment or thought of as a required work uniform.
Strategy Three. We need to work the college and college-age community into this.
President Brandon has told us that he is not certain what approach JGC will take about matters on campus. He assumes that they will maintain some kind of clothing required policies, but says that he cannot envision that the college will make any attempt to control what students do off campus since he questions whether the school would have the legal power to do so and is certain that any college-instituted ban would be unenforceable. We need to be sure that there is nothing we do which will alienate this market. College is on break right now so it will be hard to immediately guess how much people there will make use of this new freedom, but nationally, the college age population has been more open to the idea of social nudity than the population as a whole. The businesses which make the most from theJGC community know who they are. The rest of us should encourage them to think this matter through.
Strategy Four. Remember that we do not know how long nudity will continue to be legal. This may become a long-term public policy or it may be gone in a few months. We cannot say for sure that it won’t be killed in a matter of hours, but the language of the thirty-day stay strongly suggests that no additional stay would be considered if nothing significant were done during while it was in effect, even if next year’s regular session brought a constitutional amendment out. So it seems like it would be at least next December before any constitutional amendment could be put into affect. As noted above, some statutory restrictions could still be possible, but the basic right seems likely to last until late next year, at the earliest.
Our business community will understandably be averse to putting a lot of resources into capital improvements or advertising based on a right which may be so temporary. Fortunately, a lot can be done without extensive capital investment or advertising expense. Signs of welcome for naked people are relatively cheap and, although not actually required in most cases, may help make our new visitors feel comfortable. Since we legally cannot do a lot of active advertising on the matter we can keep advertising budgets small. Some well-placed notes on the right internet places and a couple of staged news events can get the word of welcome out to most of the people we need to reach and they can spread the word to others.
Strategy Five. Have a kick-off event at noon on Thursday to get things going.
We are suggesting that Conway Corners have some kind of a kickoff event when the court stay expires and authorities are no longer able to enforce nudity laws. This would be one of those staged news events. Since it will be in the middle of what for most of us is a workday and we are doing this on short notice it may be small and largely impromptu. But with well-placed media coverage we can be ahead of the rest of the state in getting our message of welcome out.
After there had been time for people to read the memo, Donald Mays resumed the discussion.
“Are there comments? I know there have to be.”
“I like the idea. We’ve been on a decline, albeit a slow one, for decades. This might pump some life back into this town,” Paul Peters commented. He was a principal in one of the local banks. “I know that bankers are usually thought of as a staid group, but I have to say that this sounds good. I’m not sure how good the research is, but it seems to make sense.”
“Edna sort of just suggested that I should strip to bring more people to town,” Laura noted. “But would you do that, Paul? People have heard of naked servers, at least female servers. But who ever heard of a naked banker? And how about you, Edna? I’m younger and could still have some stuff to strut and could do a pretty good job of it, but you and Donald are both old. I doubt if you’d have the nerve. And, I don’t want to be rude here, but would anybody want to look even if you did?”
“Well,” Edna answered, “I for one will, as you say, strut my stuff. I can’t say that anybody will want to watch, but Gary seems to be happy when he sees it and I really don’t think I’m so bad for an old broad.”
There was a moment of silence as most of them picked up what Edna had perhaps inadvertently confessed to. The Mays family were the leaders of the city’s business and civic communities and since her great-uncle Simon had pretty much retired and the intermediate generation passed on or moved away, Edna Malloy was often thought by people in the community to be the de facto leader of the family. People knew that Edna had been widowed for many years and that Gary Matthews who was quite a bit younger than Edna was her frequent escort at times when one was desirable, but most of them did not know that there might be more to that relationship. This revelation along with the fact that Edna seemed willing to do something so unconventional as go naked in public surprised them.
After a bit, Ashley Wilkinson broke the silence and asked, “Really, Edna. You’d run around without your clothes on in the name of community betterment?”
Edna answered. ”Yes. After a lot of thought and conference with some of the business community and my family, I have decided that if I want our town to do certain things, that I need to be ready to do so also.”
“Yeah, where?” asked Laura. “You want me to show it all in my shop to everybody. Where you gonna do it?
Donald Mays stepped in. “I think maybe Edna didn’t approach things the best way, maybe and maybe you’re reacting just a little too much, but we’re taking this thing seriously. We don’t want anybody doing anything they’re not comfortable with. This includes everyone in town, you and all of your employees. We don’t expect anybody to be naked who is not comfortable being naked. But if you or somebody at your place felt like doing it, it could send a powerful message to your patrons. I’m not sure how I can implement that at a machine shop. We have a lot of things we have to use like heavy shop aprons and goggles, but maybe we can do something to put people in the new community mood. You probably all know that I and others in our family have an interest in quite a few concerns here, including Yankee Joe’s water park, so maybe we can do some things at Yankee Joe’s and some of the other places. I think that is vitally important, but I can’t do it by myself and we still need to talk to some people. But I do think are things we can do.”
“Pardon me just a moment,” Mary Clark interjected. She was a short, mousy, forty-something woman who was the local public library director. “Our water park is like our library. It’s a place where children and families go. I don’t know that I’m comfortable with all of this. I think that even though there is a good chance that most of our new visitors will be good people, I really don’t want to expose our families to those who don’t fit in the picture we want. The library won’t open up to naked people, I’m sure, and I want the water park to take standards similar to what the schools likely will do and I hope that that’s strong.
Then she surprised them all, by adding, “But some of this sounds like fun. I might enjoy strutting my stuff too, but probably not here in Conway Corners. After all, librarians have to present an image.”
Edna switched the subject a bit, “Back to the memo. I don’t know what kind of kick-off thing we will do for sure, but we have suggested an impromptu picnic at the Central Park pavilion. We can all go over at the noon hour and have a meal. We could do it rain or shine. Those who have to go back to work can do it later and those of us with more flexible schedules can stay around and welcome those who can’t come bright and early at noon. Catering can be taken care of. And I am offering all of us a chance to get us oriented to the new situation. If there is some degree of acceptance on these ideas, we can think about them and discuss them more over the weekend and Monday evening we can have a barbecue at my place where those who wish to get more oriented to the concept can do so.”
As much as the Family influenced the city, most of those at this meeting had been to the Compound seldom or never. They found the prospect of being invited there interesting. Visiting such forbidden territory might be a temptation by itself and Edna and Donald knew that.
“What do you mean, get more oriented?” Phil Eaton asked.
“She means that you can strip at her barbecue, right Edna?” Ashley Wilkinson said. Ashley had once dated Edna’s sister Emily and knew of the Compound’s arrangements.
“Right, Ashley. Maybe nobody will take us up on it, but I figure that a clothing-optional barbecue would be worth doing. And bring your spouses or significant others and families too if you think they’re mature enough to handle it. In a few days everybody will have to be mature enough, like it or not.”
“But it won’t be legal yet on Monday,” Phil noted.
Edna merely answered, “My back yard is only visible from two other properties and they’re both in my family and nobody will complain.”
Donald Mays corroborated his cousin. “I’m one of them. Emily is the other. Nobody will complain. Emily likely will join us.” Emily Antonelli, who had dated Ashley Wilkinson between her first and second marriages was the thrice-married sister of Edna and Gordon, currently married to a football coach in California who was not living with her.
“Well, feel free to come if you want. I know it’s a weeknight and most of you will have to come from work and we will have to start a bit early because there is business to do also, but we’ll keep the food ready for those who have to come later. So why don’t we shoot for six o’clock? Let me know or call me when you can, but come anyway, even if you don’t clear the time ahead of time. Gary will do a pig if we get enough response, but we’ll make sure that there are brats and veggie burgers and other things, anyway. We’ll break about seven or seven thirty to discuss the development and what we can do. I see some of you are sneaking peeks at your watches and phones and I know that a lot of you need to be going on, so we’ll break this up right now. Some of us will stick around a bit and talk more if you have a desire to talk more.”
People started to leave. Gordon whispered to Edna, “I don’t think they’re buying the idea.”
Edna whispered back that the whole concept of legal nakedness was only seeping into the minds of the community and that the business aspects would still take a while. “I suspect that several of them haven’t even given much thought of what they’d do if a naked customer came to their place of if one of their employees came to work undressed, so how to capitalize on the situation is still a ways off for them. Actually, if Donald hadn’t discussed this with me I don’t know just when I would have started thinking about all of this. One of the things we hope we have going for us is that we might be the first town in the state to move to make use of all of this. If somebody else gets on it right away we with the best location to work from should do well.”
When most of the people had left, Phil Eaton approached them.
“Thanks for the thinking about this,” he told them. ‘I don’t think that most of us had thought about this much. I had decided that I wouldn’t throw any naked customers out, at least not at first, but had never thought of this as a business opportunity for the whole town. But I don’t think that I’m going to work without my clothes.”
“What about Danielle? You going to let her work without clothes. She’d really be a draw for you?” Gordon asked.
“You want that, don’t you little brother? You’d be there every day?’ Edna interjected. Danielle Irons was Phil’s part-time clerk, a fortyish divorcée who looked ten years younger, a thin, small-breasted woman of Korean ancestry.
Phil responded, “Well, Gordon, Danielle looks good dressed and I suspect that she looks good when she is not dressed also, but I cannot imagine that I would ever ask her to work naked, or even topless.”
Gordon answered, “Well, you don’t dare ask her anyway. Legally, it would be risky and you cannot actively market nudity. But if she were naked because she wanted to be, people would be able to find out about it by word of mouth and/or internet, but I bet they’d find out pretty quick.”
“Well, I’m not sure I’d let her work that way anyway,” Phil answered. “I’m running a bookstore for the general market, not a porn shop, and somehow it doesn’t seem that naked staff would fit in with the philosophy.”
Edna jumped in, “You’ll need to make your own choices, but you’ve got the kind of place which can make the best use of the new law. You’ve got a big chain store a mile away. They’re probably going to be corporately paralyzed for a while. They probably have a dozen lawyers looking things over and getting a dozen different ideas, but will have a hard time deciding. I can almost bet that not only will they keep their staff in uniform, but they will make the clients dress too. They have hundreds, probably thousands, of employees in the state and they will be afraid that some of them will be scared or intimidated by undressed clients. The signs will probably start reading, ‘No shoes, no shirt, no pants, no service’ or something like that. You can talk with Danielle ahead of time to make sure that a naked browser or two won’t upset her too much, but I don’t think that she will have much problem with it. That’s where our local stores have the break over the chains. We don’t have a lot of people’s attitudes to worry about. You just have to talk things over a bit with one or a few people you know. And you’ll probably get more of that college crowd.”
“Well, maybe you’re right,” Phil answered. “But Laura would have more to gain from this than I would and she seemed downright cool.”
Donald Mays had come by and had been listening. “Well, we’ve all got to think things over. You and Laura have more to think over more quickly than Edna or I do. Maybe you want to talk it over with her. I’m a little cool on naked staff, myself, unless it is clearly voluntary, and even then I would have reservations for the first weeks. It might seem like pandering. But opportunities are there. You will have customers in both of your businesses testing the new rules from the beginning, likely before the noon hour is over on Thursday. I pretty much have to keep my shop employees clothed for safety reasons and we don’t invite the general public to do business in my office area, so whatever we do there can’t really be open to a charge of pandering. Most of my office staff never sees the public and I haven’t had much of a dress code for them for quite a while, so I don’t know that it would be right to tell them to stay clothed. I’m still working on what to do with my outside staff. Since many of them go into places where clothing will be mandatory for safety reasons and many of the other places they go probably will be requiring clothes, I’ll probably make them stay dressed. But I’m still working on that one.”
‘Well, thanks for the heads up,” Phil answered. “This meeting has been good for us all. It has given us some insights we might have missed. But I better get back to work. I called Danielle in, but I know she didn’t want to work too long today and somebody has to mind the store. And I’ll do a better RSVP later, but I imagine that I’ll be talking about this with you on Monday.”
He shook everybody’s hands and departed. He also thought to himself that he would have to go on Monday if for no other reason to see the inside of part of the Compound. He had not been there before.
