How does a woman wear a pager and still look stylish?
I don’t think you’ll be able to wear the thing and still look stylish. I used to grudgingly carry a pager: if I wore jeans/trousers, I clipped it on the back of my waistband; if I wore a skirt/dress, I carried it. Actually, in retrospect, I generally clipped it on my notebook (paper, not computer) because I could still hear it and it didn’t look so stupid. As for ID badge, my current office is rather lax so I just have it in my purse to get inside the door. If I had to wear it, I’d keep it in my back pocket or, again, clipped to my notebook.
I used to “wear” my pager on a notebook I carried ewith me everywhere. It meant that I almost always had pen & paper for some impromptu or critical conversation, too. My job wasn’t sooooo special that I had to have it on me at all times, so if I ran down to the cafeteria, I’d just leave it at my desk for 10 minutes. If I were going anywhere longer than that (out to lunch, for instance) it went into a bag. I favor the retractable ID badge over the lanyard. It’s slim enough to hide at your waist under a sweater or jacket and on days you wear a tucked-in blouse, it sits below the table or desk and doesn’t interrupt the fashion statement of your upper body like a lanyard. Sometimes I wore that on the notebook, too, though, clipped through the spiral binding so it doesn’t come flying off when you pull at it. I was more sensitive to leaving that at my desk since it was a security issue, so I wore it more often than carried it.
I have to wear a pager, pretty much 24-7, and I’m afraid there’s no good solution. If I’m wearing jeans, my default, then I put the pager *inside* my pocket, and hang my badge on a retractable clippy on the outside of the opposite pocket (so I don’t get scratched when fishing for my pager). I am firmly opposed to wearing a lanyard for badges, and there is not the faintest chance I would put something heavy (the pager) onto a lanyard that would flop around when I move. If I’m wearing nice pants, or fancier, at work, and can’t use my pocket, I generally clip it to something that I will be carrying around – say a notebook. (In other parts of my work, in which i have to wear a certain dorky and pocketless goretex jumpsuit, I clip the pager to the straps of my booties, or to the collar at the back of my neck. ) When out, and dressed in other-than-jeans, I mostly just put it in my jacket pocket (if I’ll feel it) or in my purse (and check it often).
I wonder about getting some kind of small, stylish wallet-on-a-string bag, kind of like this, and wearing it cross-body (as in one of the photos). That would leave your hands free, wouldn’t require a belt or pocket (i.e., would work with a dress), and from my own experience with such bags really isn’t very obtrusive; it becomes quite unnoticeable after a while.
