
T-shirts are currency - patrick-james
http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/19222915731/t-shirts-are-currency
======
simonsarris
"T-shirts are underwear"

-My father, who was born in 1941, didn't like me dressing in just a t-shirt.

I'm only 24, so maybe there was a skipped generation of influence and
otherwise I'd be wearing t-shirts too. But I don't like to wear t-shirts,
except under collared shirts or on extremely warm days or while gardening,
etc.

I feel much more confident, professional, suave, etc when I'm wearing a
collared shirt. I love a watch poking out, I love rolled up sleeves.

And yet I'd _still_ be behooved into doing something for a t-shirt. I can't
explain it.

~~~
biscarch
"And yet I'd still be behooved into doing something for a t-shirt. I can't
explain it."

I finished the Stripe Web CTF for a t-shirt. Felt extremely compelled to
continue until I achieved t-shirt-vana...

~~~
viraptor
Male-geek version of "she who dies with most shoes wins"?

------
wallflower
"As our new CEO, Eric [Schmidt] wanted to control costs and to lay down the
law his first day in Dodge. And I also wasn't surprised that Larry and Sergey
hadn't bothered telling him our marketing group wasn't like others he might
have worked with, or, if they had, that he hadn't believed them.

We nodded our heads and interjected, where we could, muttering amens and
hosannas when he let us. He seemed to hear some of it. When we let him know
that Google t-shirts were our biggest expense, he smiled approvingly.

'That's fine keep doing that. If someone likes our product enough to want to
wear our brand, we should do everything we can to make it possible. And it's
great for staff morale to have everyone decked out in the company logo.' He
would soon be signing off on expenditures for preshrunk cotton in the _seven-
figure range_...

'Why don't we have Google t-shirts for women?' Sergey demanded of me after a
female visitor left the office with our standard extra-large men's t-shirt. He
was as upset as I'd ever seen him. When a woman in France chastised him about
American companies and their enormously oversized t-shirts that no French
woman would wear, he insisted that we address the problem once and for all. I
ordered women's shirts - more than I thought we could ever give away - but we
couldn't keep them in stock. I didn't understand why they were so popular,
given our limited female staff, until my cousin thanked me for the one I had
sent her and added, 'They're quite see-through. Was that intentional?'

-"I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee 59", Douglas Edwards, p221-222

~~~
chii
great anecdote! Also, see thru female t-shirts ftw ;)

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joseph_cooney
I remember when I used to think like this. Now to me, a free t-shirt says the
person wearing it doesn't really care about their appearance.

~~~
jacalata
well, that's fair. I'd say I don't really care about my appearance. So?

~~~
joseph_cooney
I didn't say it was bad. Just a shift in perception from 'something of value'
to 'something to send a social signal that maybe I don't want to send'.

~~~
rjd
Exactly, I remember one day throwing out (to good will) 20+ industry shirts,
from events, vendors, prizes etc... because I reached an age where the social
value wasn't there anymore, infact it became prohibiting towards being taken
serious.

I look at the young guys I work with now getting all excited about vendor
gear, smile, and reminisce about being the same age, but to me shirts are
worthless (and as noted a stigma in some situations).

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msluyter
One caveat: if you're going to make a t-shirt, do it right and spend the money
to print it on decent material, i.e., soft, not scratchy, fitting decently,
etc... (American Apparel's t-shirts are nice.) Any cheaply made t-shirts I get
go straight to Goodwill.

~~~
lizzard
American Apparel's sizes for women are truly horrible. Large ones fit an
average sized 10 year old.

~~~
mwetzler
It is very strange. I love the AA women's cuts, but they are way smaller than
most women's clothing sizes. It's really awkward to give them out because I
have to tell people that they're going to need a bigger size.

------
JacksonGariety
I don't quite get the analogy. Yes, things have value to people even if it
isn't paper money. But saying "t-shirts are currency" carries about the same
weight as saying "hugs are currency". Title seems misleading.

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mwetzler
That's why we mail tshirts to customers who find bugs :)

~~~
frankdenbow
we should talk, working on something to do this. would love to find out more
about how you do this <http://swagmate.startupthreads.com>

~~~
mwetzler
nice. packing and shipping tshirts is a real drag, so I could see this being a
really great service. signed up!

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hkmurakami
When the companies are 'current', t-shirts can be used active in trade, much
like valid currency in circulation in our economy.

When the companies shut down or get bought out, the t-shirts instead behave
like old, defunct currency that become collectibles and memorabilia. They're
items that evoke memories and eras gone by. I have a Conner Peripherals [1]
shirt from 1994 that's in my drawer which someone in my family must have
gotten from Finis; the t-shirt was made in celebration of a product launch
that year [2]. The t-shirt design is godawful but it's endearing.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conner_Peripherals>

[2] I think Mozilla does this with their team shirts and shipping products,
which like the OP says, definitely helps with team spirit.

------
tlrobinson
Protip: if you want me to actually wear your tshirt often, get American
Apparel 50/50 or comparable quality/comfort shirts.

I just donated 30 tshirts I didn't want to Goodwill. Only one of them was a
50/50 and it had a particularly ugly design.

~~~
frankdenbow
Agreed, 50/50 is the best you can get (in terms of feel). I'd also add that
you should work on making a design thats more about the essence of what your
company does, rather than just a logo

------
aiiane
And yet companies still continue to ignore the potential added value from
giving the option of women's sizes.

~~~
lizzard
We have some advice on women's tshirts on the geekfeminism wiki - maybe
someone will find it useful!

<http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/T-shirts>

------
gtr32x
Make sure you read the comment below by Mukund as well at:
[http://bestengagingcommunities.com/2011/12/31/why-mentos-
is-...](http://bestengagingcommunities.com/2011/12/31/why-mentos-is-now-legal-
tender-in-india/), where he talked about how Mentos act as currency in India.
It's a short blip and there's nothing about its geographical significance nor
how widespread the effect is. But it's still some post that provides an
interesting look at other cultures and quite a fun read.

~~~
Fargren
The same thing happenend in Argentina a few years ago. Not enough coins were
coined, and since the bus used a machine that only took coins, thye were in
high demand (there was even a point where you could sell coins for up to 120%
of their nominal worth). It was obnoxiously common at teh time for drugstores
to give you candy instead of change in coins, simply because they didn't have
enough of them.

------
frankdenbow
I remember last year at SXSW, I was taking my box of tshirts back to the hotel
so I could sort through and organize them. I put the box down for a second to
give my friend a shirt. A mass of people flocked around me and within 20
minutes my box of 200 shirts was gone. People didnt even have a clear idea of
that the shirts were for, but it had a heart on it so that was cool enough.

------
Shank
I'll heartily agree. New Relic got my business based on e free T-shirt, and I
wouldn't have considered it without some enticement to try.

It's the testament that you were there or you did something that's the reward,
over just cash.

------
dllthomas
At a tech company where I worked tech support ages ago, it was amazing how
happy otherwise furious customers got when we offered them a t-shirt...

------
gyom
The insight here is that everybody takes t-shirts as alternative payment
method for situations where paying real money would be a social faux-pas.
T-shirts are more like letters of gratitude.

You can give your friends funny t-shirts to thank them helping you move, but
you can't give them $20 instead without insulting them by implying that their
time is worth so little.

------
porlw
Confession time:

The first and only software T-shirt swag I ever received permanently
traumatised me and set the internet back 10 years.

I downloaded Internet Explorer 3 on launch day and received a "Midnight
Madness" T-shirt for my efforts.

I'm really sorry. I was young and didn't know any better. Every day I boot up
my Ubuntu laptop and try to make amends.

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unimpressive
My problem with a T-Shirt is that I will never wear it.

Yet at the same time, I can't think of anything quite as universal to use for
showing an achievement or membership.

I guess if worse comes to worse I can enchant it.[0]

[0]: <http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/shirt>

~~~
Shorel
A jacket ?

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andrewflnr

      ...A t-shirt says something. It’s visible. You can show it off. It’s an
      invisible handshake among those who know what the t-shirt symbolizes. ...
    

Doesn't that actually make T-shirts the opposite of currency? The point of
money is that it's all the same.

------
jamesbritt
That most give-away T's do not have pockets makes them more or less useless to
me.

I've become so used to wearing pocket T's (white or charcoal grey) pretty much
every day that any T-shirt without a pocket now feels incomplete.

~~~
biscarch
Do you use the pocket?

~~~
jamesbritt
Yes. Are there people with a preference for pocket Ts who don't use the
pocket?

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ntumlin
The main reason I actually completed the Stripe CTF was for the t-shirt.

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maximem
Even Cheaper than Indians ! ;)

