Death, Taxes and Panties

The only certainties in life, as everyone knows, are death and taxes. That is to say, they have been the only certainties in life until now.

Today I offer a third. Death, taxes and the assurance that women employees in the Bank of America branch at Newhall are wearing panties.

Well, anyhow, they’re supposed to.

I get my information by way of history’s most reliable source of troublemaking: a disgruntled employee.

The willingness of disgruntled employees to tell all has always been an accepted method of toppling governments, exposing fraud and ending religious crusades.

But I don’t think one of them has ever been involved in the area of human underwear before.

Call my source Holly. She is no longer with the Newhall branch, but she did furnish me with a copy of the dress code given to all employees.

Item one under the category for women: “Undergarments: Bra, slip, panties and nylons are a must at all times.”

And if you’re not wearing them, you’ll be sent home to get them.

This naturally raises a question. While it may or may not be apparent that a female employee isn’t wearing a bra or a slip, how will anyone know she isn’t wearing panties?

Has the Bank of America hired what Gloria Allred calls panty police?

Holly was given the dress code by a branch officer she knew as Becky. So I called her.

Becky answered the telephone in the rigidly cheerful manner that has come to characterize large institutions with Our Best Interests at Heart.

When I told her who I was, the cheer lessened slightly. When I told her what I wanted, it hissed from her attitude like air from a child’s balloon.

“What is it you want to know?” she asked cautiously.

“I’d like to know who checks to see whether or not your female employees are wearing panties.”

“You will have to talk to our area manager, Mr. Pat Leaver,” she said.

“He’s the one who checks?”

“You will have to talk to Mr. Leaver for information ,” she said.

Click.

Pat Leaver thought Newhall’s dress code a little more . . . well . . . specific than most.

“Generally,” he said, “our standard is shirts and ties for the men and”--he mumbled a bit here--”we ask that women wear hose and bras.”

Leaver is district operations manager for the West San Fernando Valley. He is a friendly gee and gosh kind of guy. One imagines him smiling and scuffing at the dirt as he speaks.

“I don’t know about the underpants,” he said, a little embarrassed. “They must have had an incident in Newhall that prompted that.”

“A pantsless incident?” I suggested helpfully.

“Braless maybe,” he said.

If I were casting a movie about Pat Leaver, he’d have to be a young Jimmy Stewart.

“How would you check a thing like that?” he wondered aloud in reference to the panty code.

“I was going to ask you that,” I said.

“Golly, I don’t know.”

Individual branches can establish their own dress codes as long as they are within the parameters of common decency and good taste. Like pornography, local custom prevails.

“They might not have the same dress code in Malibu that they have downtown,” Weaver said. “In fact, they used to wear swimsuits under their clothes in Malibu so they could go to the beach during their lunch hours.”

He didn’t know of any other branch, however, where panties were an issue.

“They really have that kind of dress code?” Gloria Allred said, salivating. “That’s an outright invasion of privacy!”

Everyone knows Gloria. Get kicked out of a restaurant for nursing your kid and Gloria is there. Get booted off a cheerleading squad for having big boobs and Gloria comes sweeping out of the night.

She is to sexism what the Pope is to sin, a mortal enemy.

“Does the bank insist men wear shorts?” she demanded when I told her about the dress code.

Negative. The only intimate attire for men that is mentioned is socks.

“Then it’s blatant sexism,” Gloria said.

I love it when she snorts and paws the ground.

“Dress codes are so dated it boggles the mind,” she said. “Bank of America must have invested in panties. Are they opening factories?”

Then she added darkly, “I wonder how the men on the corporate board would feel about having their underwear regulated?”

I don’t know about them, but I know that Holly sure didn’t like it. She stayed at the Newhall branch for three weeks then quit. She didn’t wear panties the last day, but no one checked.