The Naked Truth

I saw this piece recently, just the headline, a few words and I was a bit taken aback. It’s actually been bugging me whether it was true or just a prank or some kind of publicity stunt, so I’ve gone and read the article.

Much to my bewilderment, a company in Newcastle, England, did actually have a ‘Naked Friday’ day in their office and everyone spent the day at work naked. In the nip! No clothes on. At work. For the day. It was an idea from the MD that prompted this in order to boost team spirit and morale – Lord knows I hope it was the only thing ‘boosted’ during the day in the mixed office, ahem…

I just don’t get it. Why on earth would you want to spend a day in work, naked? And neither do I get that even though I’m sure it was greeted with perhaps more than a little hesitancy from co-workers, somehow they were persuaded it’d be a good thing to do – makes you think that getting away with a 10% reduction in salary in order to keep your job mightn’t be the worse that could happen, huh? It was done to boost morale, in these difficult times and I’m sure the company has been hit hard as it’s in the Design & Marketing industry, but what about seeing fat Freddie or stick thin Tracy in the bare naked flesh as they type or make phone calls at the desk beside yours could possibly be appealing? I think it’s great if you’re very comfortable with your body, but very few people are and then the flip side of that is if you’re comfortable showing it off, there’ll always be people that don’t really want to see your bits and pieces. In the run up to ‘the day’, people were encouraged to photocopy their eh, bits and pieces to get more comfortable about what would be on show and the company brought in a nude model so that employees could do a bit of sketching and ask questions.

I’m still not convinced. I would not like to see a parade of willies in front of me as I try to talk a client into spending some money with my company. Nor would I like to be hit in the eye by some wayward boobs if someone leaned over my desk to borrow a stapler. Oh God! I’m getting all kinds of visions now! Toilet paper stuck between someone’s arse cheeks, skidmarks on the chair in the kitchen. Huge skin moley type things, all uneven in colour and shape or a bit of sagging skin akin to a turkey don’t seem anyway as bad in retrospective – but I’m still not rushing to see what my colleagues have underneath their clothes yet!

And just in case you’re wondering, it has all been filmed as a documentary to be shown on the Virgin satellite channel.