Casual Friday: a gift from Hawaii

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For a long time, office workers in America wore a and every day. Today many offices have a more , and the change started with one day of the week: Friday. But the idea didn’t come from New York or London. It came from Hawaii.

In the middle of the 20th century, Hawaii had a called “Aloha Friday”. On the last day of the working week, people who usually wore clothes came to work in colourful Hawaiian shirts. The custom travelled to California, and in the 1990s it became known as “casual Friday”.

Companies which adopted it said it was good for . By 1994, almost half of the 1,000 biggest American companies had a casual Friday. A colleague who wears jeans on Friday must feel more relaxed, and maybe that is the point.

Words from the text

Grammar in the text
  • Companies which adopted it said it was good for morale. — which for things and organisations
  • A colleague who wears jeans must feel more relaxed. — must: almost sure
For your diary

Describe the dress code where you work or study. Who decides it? What must people think of someone who breaks it? Use who, which, where and must / might / can’t.