I'm still undecided who's right here or who should have done what: I'm not for stupid dress codes, but it also seems silly to get hung up over if you can easily comply at no detriment to your performance or anything, so idk, just saying that it does seem like an option to stay home if you disagree when you're someone whose absence would be very conspicuous
(Plus, its not really clear to me that Carlson actually cares about the dress code rule? By his own admission, he broke it by accident, not like a concious act of rebellion, and his issue seems to have been with the way it was then enforced rather then the rule itself.)
Part of what makes showing up in jeans way more valuable than not showing up is how normal it seems otherwise. Show, don’t tell, basically. If you didn’t know about the rule it wouldn’t have seemed out of place at all.
Kind of goes to show how silly the rule is then, right? It’s not like he was wearing a swimsuit. Sport coat and jeans is pretty formal.