I used to work in one of those types of places. It was a university, and I had been wearing ties to work (a throwback to when people actually saw me), but when I switched to the department of sysadmins, my manager told me to stop wearing them.

It also didn't help that due to some positive reinforcement of the heater on the floor below, my cubicle would get over 85F. (took us a while to figure it out, and it wasn't because they actually called in facilities over it ... it took a machine room hitting 110F one evening) ... but anyway, I got in the habit of wearing in t-shirts, and keeping a dress shirt and tie in the office for meetings. Of course, one day, we were trying to clean up a problem, and then our manager rushed us to some 'all hands' meeting. Of course, in getting there late, we were forced to sit in the front ... of a circle. And they were introducing the people in our department to everyone else. ... and I was wearing a shirt that said 'Some people are alive simply because it's illegal to kill them'.

Needless to say, the executive director wasn't pleased, and decided to issue a memo on his interpretation of the dress code. I tried explaining that a t-shirt qualifies as a 'shirt with a collar', as it has a 'crew neck collar', and they'd need to amend he dress code to say 'dress collar'. They also didn't appreciate my purchase of an embroidery machine to put 'a collar' on a shirt. Or that I pointed out that their restricting logos on shirts meant that the shirts they distribued to some of the other departments vioated the dress code. They also didn't appreciate when I wore a gorget to meet the 'collar' requirement (although, I think it had more to do with the platemail).

I kept it up, until I finally got fired for 'use of sarcasm'.

Whereas, at my new job, I wore a tie in for the first week, and by Friday, I was told 'if you wear a tie in again, I'll string you up by it'. It's much less stressful, but unfortunately, now I don't have an outlet for all of my obnoxious ties.