MO-ve on up, seriously…

Good grief, it’s like a Burt Reynolds convention around here. The Movember craze has well and truly caught hold with nearly every man in the company capable of growing hair on their top lip, letting it all hang out for a good cause.

But while moustache growing banter is all well and good while you’re in the office – the concern we’ve harboured for when our sales team have been out and about has been a different matter!

First of all: is the person you’re meeting able to see through the moustache to the person underneath? Like an enormous mole, surely it could become a distracting source of fascination?

Secondly – is the moustache creating barriers to business being done in other ways? For instance, could its capacity to snag bits of breakfast cereal and coffee-froth disgust business associates to such an extent that meetings are curtailed suddenly or interrupted by the need to vomit? Or does the tremendous sex appeal generated by a bushy ‘tache (to either inclination) provoke such distraction that sales orders are forgotten or swept off the table altogether? However, the big question is – does growing these moustaches compromise your ability to be taken seriously?

One thing we have learnt is that many of the people we meet each day are taking part in Movember, and united we all stand. This brings a commonality not just to our shared business profession, but on the trials and tribulations of growing a moustache: How will it look? What colour will it be? How long will it grow? Do we need to buy moustache wax? Most importantly, we’re all showing our support for what can only be a good cause.

In case you didn’t know, Movember is about raising awareness around men’s health, particularly prostate and testicular cancer. In 2008, over 37,000 new cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed in the UK and over 10,000 men died. Nearly three-quarters of UK men don’t visit their GP for regular check-ups.