The glorious arrival of Friday means three things for Capitol Hill Staffers: 1) we survived another week, 2) we are now seven days closer to the election (try not to panic), and 3) there will be a lot of unwashed miscreants roaming the marble halls.  Because, for whatever reason, some of my Capitol Hill cohorts  take a more lax approach to bathing on Fridays, and believe me, it shows.  And smells.

The most easily identifiable non-bathers are the young women and men who walk into the building with greasy, matted hair (see photo at left).  While I understand that to have shiny, glossy hair you’re only supposed to shampoo every other day, a good scrub-a-dub-dub, isn’t your only personal hygiene option.  So there is no reason why a grown person with a professional job should show up to work looking like they had a close encounter with Slimer.

I am a big believer in dry shampoo.  Whether you like Ojon or Pssst, spray on shampoo absorbs oil and reignites volume.  No more flat, slippery locks for me. After applying the dry shampoo, you can either style as usual or create a braided/twisted up-do to avoid the midday blahs.

Miss M prefers the “wet but don’t wash” method where you rinse your hair, condition the ends only and style as usual.  She finds that with her thick, somewhat wavy hair, not rinsing is not an option.

There is absolutely no good reason why a person should come to work with greasy hair.  Nothing exempifies the qualities that I want in an employee like the smell and look of morning-after-Happy-Hour-hair. You might as well wear a sign that says, “I don’t really care about my job. That fifteen minutes I saved this morning was so much more important than my career.”

So here are the rules: bathing is not optional.  Deodorant should be worn at all times. Greasy locks are unacceptable.  Oh, and if you need to come to work with clean but still wet hair, at least pull it into a braid, a ponytail or an updo.  This is a place of business and you should style accordingly.