GUEST COMMENT: I have known men arrive on the trading floor in full lycra cycling-wear
It is a truth universally acknowledged that every individual on any given trading floor must be in possession of the membership card of a fitness centre or local gym. It is equally true that absolutely no one uses them.
This is partly due to all the clichéd and well documented reasons of time pressure, the pull of always open global markets, resulting long working hours and, in the old days, the incompatibility with having a drink at lunch time. But it's mainly because everyone else is also a member.
The dreadful risk of ending up pink, sweaty and breathing like a wounded buffalo on the treadmill next to your boss is overshadowed only by the potential for changing room nakedness next to a someone from operations you've just had a run in with about trade approvals.
This being the case, trading floor grooming is a complicated business, especially if you happen to be a woman. I have known men, and I mean senior men who expect to be taken seriously, regularly arrive in the office in the morning wearing full lycra cycling gear and sit at the desk for a good half an hour without getting showered or changed. In contrast, women have just about won the right to change their 'walking to work' trainers for heels after arriving on the floor (which means we all have pedestal cabinets with bottom drawers full of shoes) but that is about as much flexibility as we are allowed.
Women working on trading floors, therefore, follow a number of strategies to maintain (or attempt to maintain) a groomed and professional appearance. Women without children, or with full time staff, fit it all in over the weekend and therefore arrive on a Monday looking polished to perfection and, even more irritatingly manage to keep it up until Friday, looking only slightly more crumpled at the end of the week.
They achieve this by going to proper salons in nice, discreet places with soft lighting, whale song and aromatherapy. The rest of us go to the little place round the back of the office with two cubicles made of chip board up to about head height and where the whale song is replaced by the beauticians shrieking to each other over the top and screams of agony from down below. It's hard to look professionally groomed when going back to work with your tights stuck on the wax which remains on the back of your calf.
When you add this to the self inflicted manicure and pedicure that you fit in on occasion after the kids have gone to bed and which you carry out in the semi-darkness so you don't notice you're painting food onto at least one nail, the differentiation is complete.
To finish off the look, attempt to maintain a figure that fits through doors the right way round and which doesn't cause traders to point and laugh, there are two final rules. Always wear black and only eat at the salad bar (after all, as long as it's served on a bed of lettuce, even cheese is diet food). After all, it's not as if you can go to the gym.
