Posted by:
Stray Mutt
(
)
Date: September 18, 2010 11:29AM
I was eating lunch when I noticed a guy in the parking lot. He had short hair and was wearing black slacks and a white short sleeved shirt. His back was to me as he was getting something out of the trunk of a ratty looking car. A missionary? Where's his companion? Is he on splits with a local? If so, where's the other guy? I hope they aren't going to try proselytizing here.
After a few moments of wondering what was going on, the guy turned around. He had a name tag, but not the missionary type. Then he put on a cap with the name of the restaurant. Oh. A waiter.
Back when I was a missionary, we were required to wear a full suit whenever we were in public. The church had the delusion it made a bunch of 19-to-21-year-olds look like business professionals. It only made us look like we were playing dress-up.
A few weeks before the end of my mission, the rules were relaxed and suit jackets became optional. But we still had to wear long sleeved shirts. Rather than looking like junior executives, we looked more like retail assistant managers.
Now, with short sleeved shirts allowed, missionaries look like chain restaurant servers. Add bike helmets and backpacks (backpacks were strictly forbidden in my day) and they look like high school dweebs.
But it's good the LDS church still dresses missionaries in a way that makes them easy to identify on the street.