How responsible are we for giving off an incorrect impression about who we are and what we’ve accomplished?
A reader we’re calling Prudence regularly watches the live feed of a radio program that features local experts on various topics ranging from world events and entertainment to sports and home cooking. On a recent episode, a local chef with whom Prudence was familiar was being interviewed about how to re-create in the home kitchen favorite dishes from area restaurants.
“He was wearing a college T-shirt from a college I know he didn’t go to,” wrote Prudence. “Isn’t that misrepresenting himself?”
My high school classmate Mark MacIntyre is fond of saying that we should “never underestimate the power of imprinted wearables.” But Prudence’s concern that the radio chef might be misrepresenting himself by the college T-shirt he chose to wear overestimates just how much that power can be. Simply donning the garb doesn’t translate into a self-declaration of a specific membership or any entitlements by garment association.
Many of us wear imprinted wearables from colleges or institutions. Sometimes these items represent places we attended, work for or buy stuff from. Sometimes they don’t. I alternate the baseball caps I wear between one from the University of Rhode Island (URI), where my youngest grandson is a senior, and one from the 4th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, in which his older brother serves. I never attended URI, nor have I ever served in the 4th Infantry Division. I also occasionally wear a Stihl baseball cap when I use a battery-powered chainsaw to clear up fallen tree branches. Few people would assume I work for Stihl simply because I wear a cap with its name on it.
Don’t get me wrong. It is wrong to misrepresent yourself. Claiming to have earned a degree from a college when you’ve only completed a one-week executive education course, for example, is wrong. Listing jobs on your resume you never held falls into the category of lying and is not good. Posting a 20-year-old photo of yourself on a dating app that asks for a recent photo? Totally misleading and certainly bad form.
But wearing a T-shirt from a college you didn’t go to? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, many colleges have a side hustle selling imprinted wearables for all to wear regardless of their affiliation. At a store near the university where I teach, you can even purchase T-shirts with names of the various sports teams. My youngest granddaughter wears a Harvard field hockey shirt that we sent her because she’s a field hockey goalie at her high school. To my knowledge, she hasn’t once pretended to be a member of the Harvard field hockey team, nor has anyone asked her if she was.
When it comes to stuff like this, the right thing is to not assume someone is claiming to be something they’re not simply because they wear affiliated imprinted wearables. They may or may not have an affiliation. When my oldest granddaughter graduated high school last year, we gave her a baseball cap from the college she was planning to attend. It’s bright red with bold letters. A handsome cap. We bought one to wear ourselves.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin
(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
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