The Husband works at a coal-fired power plant. The coal is brought to the plant by boat all summer long, so there is a LOT of coal that is piled up before the shipping season finally ends. And because of the coal, the plant is very dirty. Coal dust is everywhere--except for the control rooms, which have to be clean(er) because of computers, etc--and because K works in maintenance, he cannot wear street clothes while working. His clothing gets terribly dirty, but we're lucky that he is able to wash his work clothes at the plant. This is one 'perk' that the union has been able to keep for the guys with every contract. And I am one grateful person for that. If we had to wash his clothes at home, we would need to have a dedicated washer and dryer specifically for his clothes.
All of the coal is in huge piles on the plant property and needs to be moved year-round. This, of course, means that there are people who work on the coal piles--the coal handlers. Needless to say, they get pretty dirty while doing their jobs, so they are in no way concerned about what their clothing looks like when they go to work. These guys would wear the crummiest things they could find and then throw the clothing away when it got too dirty to wash. And they were fine with that. But several years ago, the company decided that the clothing that the guys were wearing was little more than rags--which it was--and they were ordered to start wearing something a bit more 'appropriate.' As you can imagine, this didn't sit well with the coal handlers, but they decided to comply with the company's wishes. All of the guys went to the local Goodwell and bought themselves new work clothes:
Yup, the guys bought leisure suits in every pastel color they could find--and wore them while working on the coal piles. The powers-that-be weren't very amused, but all of the other guys working at the plant definitely found it hilarious. :D
I don't believe there ever was anything said about what the coal handlers wore, again.
