EUGENE, OR—Jacob "Jake" Berkowiz, 34, is known around the office as a bit of a rebel. "Yeah, I guess he's a little unconventional," says coworker, Haley Bradford, 27, who has worked with Berkowiz since 2013. He often mildly surprises clients and new hires who expect to find the associate manager of operations wearing a suit, clean-shaven, and with a more traditional haircut.
"Yeah, I know I'm not your typical associate manager of operations, but if you're looking for typical, stay away from Bradford Financial, right?"
Berkowiz, who is married and has a dachshund, regularly arrives at work by 8 a.m., drives a 2014 Hyundai, and predictably brings his ham-and-swiss sandwich lunch from home each day. But he is noticeably different from the stereotypical middle aged, white man working in finance. Berkowiz, in fact, has hair that reaches his shoulders, a 4- to 7-day beard and mustache, and is frequently seen in business situations wearing a button collar shirt with no tie or jacket.
"What can I say? I don't feel like I need to fit into the cookie cutter mold. I need to be me, which is a guy who meaninglessly and unimaginatively pushes lightly back on the unspoken and weakening social expectations that were already broken in the 1960s," said Berkowiz.
His employer, Denise Velasquez, 48, reports that, despite his barely noticeably alternative fashion choices, Berkowiz's performance and client ratings have been about average. "If I'm honest," she said, "I do wish he would trim the hair a few inches, even though there is no official policy about it. But as long as he's not stealing from the company, give the baby his bottle, you know what I mean?"
Trisha Berkowiz, 32, married Jacob in 2011 in a traditional ceremony with family and friends in a local church. She remembers fondly what attracted her to him in the first place. "I remember bumping into him at the supermarket. The way he kept his beard trimmed, but not like, super-trimmed, was a real turn-on. The more I got to know him, I just fell for the way that he only follows almost every one of society's rules."
Jacob Berkowiz, who regularly bathes, has not had a traffic ticket since 1998, and pays his taxes on time, said of himself, "You can't go through life being what everyone else expects you to be, man. That way lies madness. You just have to follow your own drummer. And my drummer tells me to have a hairstyle that requires brushing, blow-drying, and at least two cycles of shampoo and conditioner each morning."
"That's what being yourself looks like," he added.