Working home office is a great alternative for choosing your own uniform. However, when working from the main office you have to follow the rules. Even if it’s an unwritten norm, the bosses won’t always stand employees with no sense of duty. Steve Jobs in Atari for example, was banned from the main headquarter because of the clothes he wore.
Although he didn’t wear pajamas to go to work, when Steve Jobs worked in Atari there were several incidents regarding his fashion style. A lot of testimonies from those years can be found on different media about the youth days of the creator of Apple.
Steve Jobs in Atari and the aura he gave
Jobs performance at Atari was very good. He even received a 5000 dollars bonus for the interface design of Breakout. The game is one of the most popular ones from Atari and it was launched in 1976. It’s also known as Arkanoid closer in time.
Nolan Bushnell offered jobs a 100 dollar bonus for every chip he could reduce in the final design. Each chip was very expensive and reducing the final number could save Atari thousands of dollars. Jobs wanted to make more money and convinced his friend Steve Wozniak to work on the project.
Wozniak reduced the number of chips to the minimum, but the design was very complex and it was not adopted as the final one. Jobs never said anything about the bonus and he kept most of the money for himself. That would latter generate a rift between the two friends.
Nonetheless, Stepehen Bristow who was their supervisor, revealed a curiosity. Steve Jobs was not allowed to the main production plant because he wore sandals instead of shoes. Bristow remembers Jobs as a person with a different aura, and the prohibition was meant for security. The main production plant is where most of the work was done.
You can’t go to Atari looking like that
The prohibition for Steve Jobs was a sanction because he wore those sandals and he skipped the showers. It’s a style he didn’t fully brought to Apple, but he was still an odd person. Every worker who shared an experience with Jobs remembers some of his peculiarities, most of them regarding food.
Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson tells several anecdotes about food. Most of the oddities ended up disappearing when Steve Jobs grow older. From the Birkenstock sandals with the simple and functional design and a minimalist focus, to eating habits. Steve Jobs is the man behind one of the most influent people on the technology world.