It can prove quite useful. Maybe not to the company, but certainly to me:
When upper management (the CEO) ordered suits for everyone (and they meant
EVERYONE) in the company. Including the bench techs. Then it's appropriate.
He wanted even the techs to look good in the once every six months we had
people walking through the workshop.
In the first three days, we lost two ties to soldering irons. More due to
things that generally happen when you dangle nylon in front of printers and
other hot bits in the workshop.
Since we weren't going to replace ties our of our own pocket (and none of us
agreed with the move anyway) we just wore the cut, melted and otherwise
damaged ties anyway.
No matter, this 500+ employee, several decade old, multi million dollar
company that had been doing well under previous management, folded about a
year later.
It wasn't ties alone of course, but the other multitude of bad moves this
idiot made. The suits were just the first sign.
This was a good learning environment for me, engineering issues aside, it
was office politics (that I hate) that turned out to be more valuable to learn
for me.
I've been through a few folded companies over my career, and learned to jump
from a sinking ship a bit earlier than everyone else who was left wondering
what had gone wrong.
And I owe it all to a burnt tie.
Never wore a tie on the bench since though. And never intend to either.