Whilst reading an article on ‘Office Etiquette’ in this week’s Stylist magazine, I had a little chuckle to myself as I remembered a recent embarrassing moment at work . . . 

My ‘cringe’ moment took place a couple of weeks ago, when I walked into a client meeting and goodness knows what came over me but I lent in for a smacker with one of the two clients (a double smacker whilst grasping onto both shoulders – Mediterranean style). As I was kissing him, a little voice in my head screamed ‘what am I doing? Boll*cks, I have to know kiss the other one so he doesn’t feel left out!’

Many of you are probably wondering ‘what’s really cringing about that? I always kiss my clients when we meet’. I partly agree, I do have clients which always kiss on hellos and goodbyes, but they’re typically ‘PR dahling’ types, these two clearly weren’t by the crimson coloured cheeks and wide-eyed look on their faces.

This was the tenth meeting over the course of 12 months, and I had never kissed them on any of these previous occasions, so why start now? I then spent the next hour of the meeting sweating about how to handle their departure, ‘as I’ve kissed once, do I kiss again? Will they expect it from now on?’

I didn’t, I stuck out my hand (abruptly) and sighed with relief as we were now back on familiar ground – the good old handshake.

Reeling with confusion after my illicit encounter, I approached one of our MD’s, Steve Earl and asked ‘to kiss or not to kiss?’ His response was simply ‘if they pay seven figures they get tongue’.

If only the guide to office etiquette had been published earlier!