In the 18th Century, Dubliners started painting their house doors in bright colours. Some say it was done by the women, in order to help orientate their drunken husbands back home after an evening in the pub, a theory that somehow seems plausible if you have been to any St Patrick's day celebration. But some other historians point that Dubliners wanted to rebel from the strict British Georgian Architectural rules that controlled almost every single detail of the exterior look and feel of the home and somehow contest the British rule in general.
And in a similar way, after centuries trapped in hideous outfits, engineers have finally found a way to rebel. But lets start from the beginning. Engineers have been criticized for years for their looks. We have been mocked and laughed about in every corner of the office and at any water cooler chit chat.
It is about time someone tells the whole picture about this. We don't dress like this by choice.
We have never been allowed to dress in black, the colour for widows and architects. I always wonder why archaeologists waste their time studying why different cultures, with no apparent contact among themselves built pyramids, and they don't get intrigued by why every single architectural colleague in the world produces architects dressed in black.
Engineers cannot dress in orange either. When getting your degree you are immediately sentenced to spend most of your life at the office, so we don't want to make it even more obvious and look like a prisoner.
Blue is also forbidden, engineer profession is so often downgraded to manual labour, that we cannot further highlight that by dressing like a blue collar worker.
So, for centuries, engineers were forced to dressed in whatever was left on the rack, short sleeves shirts with patterns closer to a table cloth than a garment and ill-fitting pants.
But engineers are tenacious and after years of suffering the mockery of architects and interior designers they finally found a way to rebel: their hair.
I have been recently conducting a study following Engineers where nobody has seen them before. Like Diane Fossey and her Gorillas in the Mist, I begun witnessing the behaviour of engineers in our office bathroom and discover a ritual never documented before.
My office engineers spent hours carefully grooming their hair in front of the mirror. You can clearly observe how they enter the bathroom, face looking down, with a defeated sad look typical of any engineer but suddenly their faces light out when they pull out their favourite comb and grooming tools. It is remarkable how much they save to buy all this equipment on an engineer's paycheck.
The ritual can last for a long time. Some of them even compete in front of the mirror to determine who has the most dominant hairdo.
I have also heard rumours that female engineers rituals include hair washing. Apparently even other odd watersports activities occur daily. A few brave women have managed to break the silence about this, but I have not been able to venture myself into that wild territory, so I can only report based on the legends and on the rivers of water coming out below the door to give some veracity to the rumours.
So next time you see an Engineers please before laughing, please think about the hard life we endure and look at the glamour hair if the outfit hurts you eyes
Traditional Dublin Doors
And in a similar way, after centuries trapped in hideous outfits, engineers have finally found a way to rebel. But lets start from the beginning. Engineers have been criticized for years for their looks. We have been mocked and laughed about in every corner of the office and at any water cooler chit chat.
It is about time someone tells the whole picture about this. We don't dress like this by choice.
We have never been allowed to dress in black, the colour for widows and architects. I always wonder why archaeologists waste their time studying why different cultures, with no apparent contact among themselves built pyramids, and they don't get intrigued by why every single architectural colleague in the world produces architects dressed in black.
Engineers cannot dress in orange either. When getting your degree you are immediately sentenced to spend most of your life at the office, so we don't want to make it even more obvious and look like a prisoner.
Blue is also forbidden, engineer profession is so often downgraded to manual labour, that we cannot further highlight that by dressing like a blue collar worker.
So, for centuries, engineers were forced to dressed in whatever was left on the rack, short sleeves shirts with patterns closer to a table cloth than a garment and ill-fitting pants.
But engineers are tenacious and after years of suffering the mockery of architects and interior designers they finally found a way to rebel: their hair.
I have been recently conducting a study following Engineers where nobody has seen them before. Like Diane Fossey and her Gorillas in the Mist, I begun witnessing the behaviour of engineers in our office bathroom and discover a ritual never documented before.
My office engineers spent hours carefully grooming their hair in front of the mirror. You can clearly observe how they enter the bathroom, face looking down, with a defeated sad look typical of any engineer but suddenly their faces light out when they pull out their favourite comb and grooming tools. It is remarkable how much they save to buy all this equipment on an engineer's paycheck.
The ritual can last for a long time. Some of them even compete in front of the mirror to determine who has the most dominant hairdo.
I have also heard rumours that female engineers rituals include hair washing. Apparently even other odd watersports activities occur daily. A few brave women have managed to break the silence about this, but I have not been able to venture myself into that wild territory, so I can only report based on the legends and on the rivers of water coming out below the door to give some veracity to the rumours.
So next time you see an Engineers please before laughing, please think about the hard life we endure and look at the glamour hair if the outfit hurts you eyes
