Flip-flops top list of office no-nos

With all the skimpy, sporty, revealing items men and women might wear to work in the summer, what’s the No. 1 most egregious?

Flip-flops.

That’s according to the 2011 summer workplace survey conducted for Melville-based staffing firm Adecco, in which 71 percent of the 1,000 adults polled named the thonged footwear as the most inappropriate of summer wardrobe choices. (Men were a little more forgiving, with 67 percent of guys giving a thumbs down, compared to 75 percent of women.) Miniskirts came in a very close second on the fashion faux-pas list.

So, what’s at the root of the anti-flip-flop findings? The sight of colleagues’ unmanicured feet, perhaps?

“Flip-flops are not appropriate for the office,” says Lois Cooper, vice president, corporate social responsibility and inclusion for Adecco. For one thing, “they’re noisy. Everyone can hear you coming.”

Says Gladys Ahrens, “No matter how casual a workplace is, remember, you are at work and one shouldn’t detract by dressing as though going to the beach. Unless of course they work at the beach, in which case, flip-flops are just fine,” says Ahrens, vice president of administration, Chernoff Diamond Co. Llc, in Garden City.

Still, some business types have a lighter touch with the footwear rules. The dress code indicated for today’s Summer Social Media Bootcamp, presented by the Fair Media Council at Briarcliffe College in Bethpage.

“Shorts and flip-flops expected.”

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