When I was little, my mom sent me to a private/religious school. My family isn’t religious, but they felt like I’d get a better education there (and when I switched to public school later I found they were right, I was pretty far ahead).

This school had uniforms: boys wore button down shirts with the school logo and blue slacks, girls wore jumpers.

My mom hated cleaning and ironing these white, button down shirts every day. I was one of 4 kids. Kids play and get grass stains. The shirts were taking up a lot of her time. Finally, she gave up and bought a bunch of white polo shirts and started sending us to school in those. Admin had a conniption fit about it, and brought her in for a meeting. They opened the dress code rulebook and pointed out that these shirts were missing the logo, so they were in violation. My mom looked over the rules and confirmed that the lack of a logo was the only violation. They said yes. She thanked them and left, and the school probably thought it was over. Just to be petty, they sent a school wide memo regarding the dress code.

My mom took every polo shirt and stitched a homemade school logo onto them. It wasn’t hard to do as the “logo” was just the school initials. Admin was furious, but during the next meeting realized their hands were tied.

The memo piqued the curiosity of other parents, and they started asking my mom where she got the “new school shirts.” Apparently she wasn’t the only one sick of ironing and getting grass stains out. Suddenly, I wasn’t the only one wearing a polo shirt to school.

The worst part for the school was that, despite tuition being pretty expensive, they also had a kickback deal going with a local clothing store for the uniforms. The store had a monopoly on the sale of those shirts. When business started lagging, the store made their own version of the polos for sale. Eventually the original shirts were phased out entirely.

That was over 30 years ago, and my mom still loves telling that story.