I've been coping a bit of flack recently over my beard, it tends to happen from time to time. It's got to the point were some people have queried if I'd shave it off for money. I've set the price at $1000 to go clean shaven, no one has accepted the offer. People scoff until I explain the time and money invested in growing it to this length.
Would I actually shave it if I was presented with that money... I honestly couldn't say, but I know it would still take some arm twisting.
Ooh you may have screwed yourself with that because $1000 Australian is a feasible amount of money for someone to cough up, especially if someone gets it into their head that they could use your beard to raise $1000 for some sort of charity. It's not unheard of for someone at a hair-cutting charity event to raise an amount like that especially if there is something unusual about that hair. Worst part about it, you'd be guilted into shaving for some homeless blind orphans and wouldn't even get to keep the money!
The one time since I was about 19 that I have shaved my beard was when I was forced too for work, they quoted it was in the rules, but wouldn't show me where it was. I fought them on it for months, but one day I was sent home from work before my shift started, and at the time I was young, and needed the money to get to uni, and really it came to the point it didn't feel worth losing ym job over. So I shaved it off. That day I told them once they saw me clean shaven that I was utterly embarrassed and we were going to have to come to some kind of agreement, on and there was the part about me being totally furious and refused to talk to anyone for the rest of my shift (was sent home to shave then return to work).
You were young. That kind of stuff happens. At that age people probably view the employer / employee dynamic as the same thing as a parent / child dynamic and therefore surrender to unreasonable demands. One of the benefits of getting old, I mean real old like nearly 40, is that I'm getting a better appreciation for what is and what is not appropriate behavior for others to impose onto me. I'm no longer a kid and therefore do not need to surrender to some manager's pathetic quest for dominance. If you "follow the rules" you'll go insane because I've heard it all:
"You have to wear a tie!"
"You can't shave your head!"
"You can't grow a beard!"
"You can't wear white pants after Labor Day! [Aussie tutorial: That's the holiday that informally ends summer in the US]" Those are all rules of life I was instructed to believe at some point, all are nonsense, some have fallen out of popularity, and that's basically the order I abandoned them once I decided to grant my own opinions the priority over things that directly impact my life (yes the white/light colored pants thing is recent).
It's funny because with each one I literally consciously became aware of the decision and decided I was not going to go back on it. I'm looking forward to the moment some "professional" at an unprofitable company tries to tell me that I do not fit the nebulous, undefinable definition of professional. Businesses are in business to make money and the role of a professional is to make more money not to go off on a power trip playing mommy by telling their employees to go home and shave.
Now that I look back on it, I probably really should have done them from discrimination or work place bullying, something like that, and made a packet off them. But as a 23-24yo university student, I personally didn't have that kind of money.
A lawsuit wouldn't have done anything because you are just a guy, now if you had been a woman suing because she was told to trim her long, ugly fingernails then you'd have owned the place!
Anyways, the agreement we came to is that I could grow my facial hair however I wanted as long as I supplied my own beard net, and that it didn't interfere with my work. So I refused to work any more customer service shifts, and stayed in the kitchen.
I don't think I would have any problems with wearing a net, hell I roll mine up most of the time anyway, but my big problem is when someone thinks they can dictate
permanent changes in me. When it comes to things I can correct at the end of the day I'm pretty flexible, except I hate ties and won't wear them on even a temporary basis. Stupid, goofy looking things... I mean, seriously, who thought it was a good idea to wrap a rope around the neck for fashion?