Job Requirements: Must Be Responsible, Can’t Have Pockets

Pocketless uniforms are “a really nice area of growth” in an otherwise static industry, says David Crace, vice president of marketing at VF Imagewear Inc., a Nashville, Tenn., uniform manufacturer with $600 million in annual sales.

When placing pockets, “we start with the demands of the job,” Mr. Crace says. Mechanics who spend a good chunk of their workday on their backs under machinery still get front pockets. Workers on sensitive, computerized assembly lines mostly get none. Anyone who has ever secreted cash in an underwear waistband, threaded a house key onto running-shoe laces, or stowed a credit card in a brassiere knows the problems posed by pocketlessness.

Via our pal Jon Custer, comes this interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about “pocketless uniforms” which are less about functionality and more about preventing theft by employees in industries like marijuana farms, casinos, and nuclear facilities (because people were apparently stealing highly enriched uranium or separated plutonium!).

You don’t really think about pockets until you’re wearing something that doesn’t have them — including if you’re an actor on a popular TV show:

“I hated my uniform…it was skintight, it made you sweat and…why were there no pockets? How do you work with no pockets in the 24th century?” Jonathan Frakes, the actor who played Commander William T. Riker on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” groused on NPR this month.

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