It's a quiet night in, ideal for doing laundry. As I sort through a hamper that could only... and generously... be defined as "malodorous," it strikes me that 95% of the clothes in it are work-related. The shirts are work shirts, the pants are work pants, and the socks are ones carefully selected with a mind on how they will hold up in work boots that are covering 10 miles a day in wet conditions.
So far, no work-specific underwear options exist, so at least I have some freedom of choice there.
Outside of my few and far-between days off, I only have two outfits - work clothes, and pajamas. I go to work, I come home and shower, and then I go to bed. That's the result of being physically exhausted at the end of a long day, and not having a tremendous amount of disposable income for going out afterwards. No real complaints on the later - at the end of a long day, there is nowhere that I want to be more than home anyway.
A standard zoo uniform consists of a T-shirt (long-sleeved in the winter, sometimes coupled with a sweatshirt or fleece), khaki shorts (long-pants in the winter, or when I foresee a job that's going to be rough on my legs, like working in thick brush), and socks with sturdy boots. It's essential that the pants have lots of pockets... Lots of them, for keys and treats and fecal cups and bits of litter picked up along the ground. I've been told that we zookeepers are pretty much the only thing keeping cargo pants in production. A belt, of course, is essential, seeing as one's pants are constantly being forced down by the combined weight of a semi-functional radio and 86 pounds of miscellaneous keys. I keep a small number of shirts in reserve, saved for special occasions like tours or press conferences as which I may be expected to do something in front of a camera. My hamper aside, I think it's safe to say that three-fourths of my clothing has the name of my institution on it somewhere.
My parents, on the infrequent occasions when I make the trip to see them straight from work and in uniform, occasionally scold me for the state of my clothes. They'll insist that I go shopping in the near future to replace the khakis with the inconvenient rip near the crotch with a new set. What I have so far failed to convince them is that, on the day that those pants received that tear, they were "the new set." Clothing does not have a long shelf-life in a pristine state in my wardrobe.
As it were, my uniform is a rather benign one. The color of our shirts is one that doesn't make your eyes ache, and if I untuck my shirt and have my back to you (with no radio or keys visible), it would closely enough resemble street clothes. I'm grateful that my zoo never felt the need to adopt the ridiculous safari-chic garb, complete with phony pith-helmet. Likewise, I am glad that we've changed since the dawn of the last century, when zookeepers wore shirts and ties, with formal jackets and peaked caps. That strikes me as a horrible thing to have to wear under a summer sun when knee-deep in muck.
The one drawback of zoo uniforms is that they tend to have the zoo logo on them. This makes perfect sense at the zoo, but can be a headache after work, when you're stopping at the grocery store and intend for it to be a lightning raid, only to be stopped constantly by visitors who want to tell you about their last visit or ask about the newest baby, or a cashier who wants to start a lengthy philosophical debate on the ethics of zoos. Also - no drinking in zoo uniform, on or off of grounds - a logical if slightly irksome rule which has resulted in most of my friends keeping a spare non-zoo shirt squirreled away at all times.
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