Sometimes things happen at work that make you realise that, whatever the good and clean lives people profess to lead, they often leave their morals and their manners at home. Every day I come into an office largely populated by high earning consultants, PAs definitely earning above the national average, and our corporate clients – the senior executives in the form of Managing, HR, IT, Finance, Strategy etc Directors of our noble FTSE100 companies. We’re mostly rather good at our jobs. We have shiny homes and large mortgages (or none). We have corian and granite works tops in our kitchens at home, and probably Villeroy and Boch bathrooms. We wear designer labels or clothes that look that way.

Apparently though we don’t know how to use a loo brush.

I thought maybe this was just a trading floor thing. A close friend found a turd neatly laid on the loo seat in the bathrooms off a top investment bank many years ago. This was in the heavy days of non-electronic futures trading when rumours also circulated about a LIFFE trader eating a sh*t sandwich for a £5 bet (he won). My friend had a mouse living in his desk drawer – it had chewed a hole through a series of research reports and built a nest. It then lived on food left around the place. Brokers sent in meals each day to the FX traders. There was always a ready supply of broken poppadums around the place. It was all generally a bit disgusting.

So the good and the great pass through our revolving doors each morning, ready to be put under the microscope. Yet the fear of the task ahead, and perhaps the simple time constraints of getting out of the house then getting here on time, mean that clearly morning ablutions are saved for arrival. This makes sense. The worst thing about morning commuting by tube, contrary to popular belief, is neither the crowding nor the body odour, but the vile stench of cologne mixed with a leaked peeping turtle fart. Heads firmly and deeply ensconced in the Metro. No dog to blame.

On arrival people head straight to the loos. They leave the stripes, the splatters, the slides. The sludgy whirl of half flushed paper.

I hope to god they wash their hands before they shake mine.

They definitely don’t look behind themselves and use the brush.

And here the metaphor shapes up. Roger Steare http://www.ethicability.org/ (sorry to mention you here Roger) has done extensive research on morals in the corporate world. One of the most interesting findings I think from his work is that even seemingly highly moral people from the perspective of their home lives often leave that part of them behind. Behaviour – from petty theft, ill manners, dubious decision-making – is fair game at work where it isn’t at home. And that is a worrying thing. We all need to challenge ourselves, our standards and when we let them go. Everyone deserves the best of each of us, even the poor buggers about to put you through the mill on the corporate couch.