It’s just that we’re not used to wearing a tie. Or a dress shirt and jacket while we’re entering data for Yes and Trace Adkins. Heck, we feel so… so… professional.

But management says that’s the whole idea. You see, a business consultant visited us last week. He loved the way we listed the schedule for Tim Mahoney, and how we alphabetized the venues for Bob Dylan and Joe Satriani. In fact, he loved everything about this place, including the astrological extrapolations for Lynyrd Skynyrd, Avril Lavigne and John Prine.

Everything that is, except the way we dress.

The tour date business has always been a casual environment. T-shirts, tank tops, studded dog collars, heck, we’re about as loose as can be when it comes to working apparel. Which didn’t please the consultant at all.

“You gotta dress for business if you want to give them the business,” said the consultant. And that’s when he unveiled the Pollstar.com dress code.

Needless to say, we’re more than a bit uncomfortable wearing our new clothes. The ladies are already complaining that the long-sleeved, high-necked blouses make it nearly impossible to process schedules for Lou Rawls and Audioslave, and the men aren’t too crazy about having to proof the routings for Ja Rule, Jim Brickman and Sigur Ros wearing dress shirts, ties and sports jackets. And nobody is happy about having to wear beanies whenever we’re traveling on Pollstar.com business. If only the propellers didn’t squeak so much.

But a job is a job, and we’ll just have to put up with it. We endured eight years of college so we could work here, and we’re not going to let a little thing like a dress code bother us. After all, when you consider that we get to look at the itineraries for Gov’t Mule and Rainer Maria every day, a little thing like a tie or jacket is just that, a little thing, and complaining would be beneath us.

That is, as long as they don’t start making us wear pants.