We’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the Columbia Business School Investment Banking Club meeting where someone decided (and convinced everyone else!) that sending this email was a good idea — via Brainiacs:
To: [IBC Members] Subject: [IBC] Personal hygiene
Dear 1st Year Members,
It has come to our attention (through complaints from IBC board representing firms they are going to full time) that some of you may not have followed personal hygiene basics during recruiting events. We understand that it is an incredibly intense recruiting period, and is very hard to find time for yourself, but this is a friendly reminder on some dress code and personal hygiene basics:
§ Brush your teeth regularly, or have a mint/mouth refreshers before going to recruiting events (avoid chewing gums)
§ Carry anti-perspirant with you if you are worried about sweating. Don’t wear too much cologne/perfume
§ Carry a sewing mini-toolkit, in case your suit hems need an emergency sewing
§ Professional haircuts
§ No backpacks with you
§ Men – no tacky cufflinks or watches (with no crazy patterns, silver is preferable to gold)
§ Women – wear (preferably skin colored) hosiery and always carry an extra pair in your bag
§ Women – if it rains, do not show up in rain boots, no matter how cute you think they are
And again, if you have ANY concerns, please do not hesitate to share with the IBC Board!
Sewing kits, skin colored hosiery, “professional” haircuts. Having previously been instructed by the board to stop being such petty, blundering unsophisticates, we suppose the club’s members are accustomed to this kind of nonsense.
But the email does remind us of something else:
(This brings to mind an idea I have long had: that high schools and colleges should have a course on “how to get along” and “how to do a day’s work.” This would include showing up in clean clothes, smelling well, having had a good breakfast, dressed in a businesslike way, calling the other employees “sir” or “ma’am” and not talking back. This would include a teaching of the fact that the employee is not there for amusement, but to help the employer make money and to get a job done. It would include the idea that once you are at work, you are not at play. It is an idea whose time has come.)
What fun. We hereby recommend that the club make Ben Stein an honorary president.
Trust us (or ask Felix Salmon) — you deserve each other.