"One of these days," she always threatened, "I’m going to come in here without my pants."

To my knowledge, she never did it. But my grandmother was quite a character, so I wouldn’t swear to it in a court of law.

To her, the message of that sign was that as long as you had on your shirt and your shoes, you could come in sans slacks and they’d still serve you a bacon double cheeseburger.

Of course, that’s not really what the business intended with the sign. They were just trying to establish a little decorum and ensure that people that visit their restaurant are dressed appropriately, which is really not such a bad idea, if you think about it.

I generally agree with dress codes. We have one at the newspaper, but it’s fairly lax because journalists will never make anyone’s best dressed list. But I believe people need to dress appropriately for their environment.

I don’t expect you to wear a coat and tie to the beach. On the other hand, you can put a little effort into what you wear to a nice restaurant. It’s not really appetizing to sit across from someone wearing a stretched-out tank top and flip-flops while you’re trying to choke down dinner.

On the other hand, I don’t like snooty restaurants that require men to wear a sports coat in order to be served. I don’t mind wearing sports coats, but it’s hard to eat while you are wearing one. I’ll invariably brush my sleeve in the Thousand Island dressing while trying to pass the bread to one of my dinner companions.

Sadly, we’ve become a nation of slobs. We don’t care what we wear or how we look. As long as we are comfortable, it doesn’t matter to us whether we are dressed appropriately or not.

As a result of this growing epidemic of people going out in public looking like they just rolled out of bed, a lot of places have become stricter about their dress codes.

But as much of a stickler as I am for dressing appropriately, some places go too far.

This brings us to United Airlines, which last week kicked a business executive out of first class on a flight to Hartford, Conn., for wearing a track suit.

Track suits were originally only worn by athletes, but later became popular with regular folks, as well. In the picture I saw, the businessman who got kicked off the United flight didn’t look much like an athlete.

But no matter, the businessman probably felt it wasn’t necessary to wear a coat and tie to sit on an airplane for a couple of hours.

Still, the airline has its rules, and they bumped him back to coach. In this case, I’m on the side of the businessman. Airplanes are crowded and cramped, and the bag of peanuts they give you only has about six nuts in it, so at least we ought to be comfortable.

I admit openly and without shame that I am guilty of similar behavior myself. I’ve been known to get up on Saturday morning, throw on a pair of sweatpants, an old T-shirt and a baseball cap to head to the grocery store.

Invariably, when I look my worst is when someone will come up to me in the store.

"Aren’t you that Mitch Clarke who writes for the paper?" they’ll ask.

Such is God’s way of telling me I could have at least showered, shaved and put on a clean pair of jeans before going out in public.

I’m going to try to do better. So if you see a guy in a pair of sweatpants, an old T-shirt and a baseball cap at the grocery store and think, "Is that Mitch Clarke?" just relax.

It’s not me. It’s someone who looks like me.

Mitch Clarke is executive editor of The Times. His column appears Sundays in The Times. Read previous columns here.