Nothing spices up a drab day at the office like knowing glances across cubicles, stolen kisses in the supply closet or hasty lovemaking in the back stairwell.
Dating a co-worker can be so very naughty and so very exhilarating.
But is it a good idea?
For the many people who end up marrying an office flame–which happens with anywhere from 30 percent to 60 percent of office romances, according to various estimates from career and human resources experts–it certainly seems so.
But if the flame fizzles, the problems can multiply.
Derek Dudek, a 32-year-old sound technician who lives in Edgewater, has had several failed workplace romances and recommends treading lightly.
“Know going into it that you have to see that person every day,” Dudek said. “If you have a bad date and then you see each other at work, it’s kind of awkward.”
Dudek said he recently had such an awkward moment. As he waited for the elevator in his downtown office building, Dudek said he spotted a co-worker he’d gone on a first date with several days before. They made eye contact–and then the woman ducked behind a column, never to emerge until after the elevator came and whisked Dudek away.
“She saw me, and then it was like, ‘Oh, I think I left something behind this pillar,’ ” Dudek laughed. “And she disappeared.”
It can get much worse than junior high-style evasion, especially when jealousy turns professionals into punks.
Stacey Mandich, 25, said she dated two different co-workers while working at Murphy’s Bleachers in Wrigleyville last year–one during the first half of baseball season, and the other during the second half. One day, during a Cubs game when the bar was packed, her former and current beaus got into such a messy brawl that they both had to be sent home from work, she said.
“There were constant fights because of jealousy,” Mandich said, no doubt because bar employees constantly were involved with one another and didn’t do a good job of hiding it, she said.
“You would walk into the walk-in cooler and find two co-workers making out,” said Mandich, who lives in Wrigleyville and no longer works at Murphy’s.
While that scenario may seem like reason enough to back away from office flirting, the risk actually is what makes workplace affairs so enticing, said Dr. Paul Dobransky, a Chicago psychiatrist.
“Because it has that element of danger, it’s sexually arousing,” said Dobransky, author of the upcoming book “The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love.” Men generally are aroused by the challenge of obtaining the forbidden fruit, and women are excited by the mystery of how the secret relationship will unfold, he said.
As a result, people often are drawn to co-workers they wouldn’t be interested in outside of the office environment–like they have “office goggles,” as one woman interviewed by RedEye put it.
Enter trouble. People who don’t consider whether their co-worker is actually a good match usually end up in a fling, which complicates life at the office because it’s hard to behave professionally with someone you’ve gotten to know intimately, Dobransky said.
“It can interfere in the functioning of the workplace, at least in the boss’ eyes, and can make your life a living hell,” he said.
Office trysts that lead to stable relationships, on the other hand, generally smiled upon by employers because they bring stability, he added.
Finding love at work is popular, in part because people are able to vet potential partners’ intellect, character and teamwork before embarking on the first date. According to careerbuilder.com’s 2007 Office Romance survey, 43 percent of U.S. workers say they have dated a co-worker.
“The workplace is the singles bar of this era,” said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a Chicago-based outplacement firm. Offices in a sense are ready-made for coupling, he said, because companies put so much effort into recruiting people who fit together well that they almost serve as a giant selective dating service.
And it’s a pretty successful one. Thirty-four percent of office lovers end up getting married, according to the CareerBuilder survey.
Kate Walker, 29, will take that step in September, when she marries her fiance Steve Szczudlo, 30, her co-worker at Murphy’s Bleachers. Walker and Szczudlo, who live in Roscoe Village, started dating after working a bartending shift together five years ago.
Worried their bosses would frown upon them dating, Walker said they tried to keep it secret, absconding for late-night burritos after work and refraining from PDA in front of co-workers. But, inevitably, workplace gossip outed them. Their bosses were accepting.
Walker said having work in common with her fiance is good for their relationship.
“We have all the same friends, and we can talk about our work day with each other without having to go into great detail about who’s who and what’s what,” Walker said. “It makes it easy to vent to each other.”
But sharing both worlds can be suffocating.
Dudek, the sound technician who had the awkward elevator moment, said he had a “great” relationship with his former wife until they started working together at a truck parts company three years into their marriage. It became claustrophobic, he said, as his wife assumed they would have lunch together every day, and she would get jealous when she saw him talking to female co-workers.
“It was just too much,” said Dudek, who got divorced two years later.
If office lovers aren’t careful, it can be too much for the other people at work too.
Cliff London, 27, an actor who lives in Rogers Park, said he was once in a show in which two cast members started dating. When the couple was on good terms, they’d fall into passionate embraces that no one else needed to see, London said. When they were on bad terms, it was even worse, because they’d bring their fights to rehearsal.
“It was a very negative vibe,” London said. “It made it hard for me to concentrate.”
Romance in all its messy forms are best checked at the office door, he said.
“If you want to [date a co-worker], you should do it,” London said. “But be ready for the consequences.”
FOR COMPANIES, IT’S FRISKY BUSINESS
With inter-cubicle romance as inevitable as jammed printers, employers are becoming increasingly accepting of office love, as long as it doesn’t interfere with productivity, said John Challenger of the Chicago outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas.
But while the social taboo is lessening, the legal restrictions are growing, especially for love that blossoms between bosses and subordinates, Challenger said. Forty-five percent of employers surveyed this year by Challenger’s firm said they had policies forbidding supervisors from dating their employees.
Joni Johnston, president and CEO of Work Relationships, a California-based corporate consulting company, said the companies she works with are increasingly formalizing their dating policies to protect against perceptions of favoritism and claims of sexual harassment. Companies usually require employees to let them know if they start a romance with a boss or a subordinate so that the company can eliminate any supervisory relationship between them, she said.
“I think that employers are much more aware now of the potential pitfalls than they used to be,” Johnston said.
Still, many employers prefer to keep their hands out of workers’ personal lives. The Challenger, Gray and Christmas survey found that 35 percent of employers had no formal dating policy, and a 2006 poll by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 72 percent had none. Of the human resource pros that did report romance policies, 66 percent permitted but discouraged office relationships, and 9 percent banned them outright, according to the SHRM poll.
Some companies try to seek middle ground by asking lovebirds to sign “love contracts,” in which they affirm that the relationship is consensual, said labor and employment lawyer Brenda Feis, a partner with Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago. The contract is designed to protect the employer in case, for example, a disgruntled lover decides to later claim sexual harassment.
But Feis doubts the effectiveness of such contracts. Not only are employers relying on the honor system for couples to come forward, but an employee who does sign the contract also could later disavow it–saying he or she felt pressured to sign, for example–and file suit against the company anyway.
“For my money, I don’t think those [contracts] are worth the paper they’re written on,” Feis said.
While Feis said it’s important to regulate boss-subordinate relationships and others with potential conflicts of interest, policing office romances may be a losing battle.
“You’re going to wind up enforcing it unevenly,” she said. “Largely, employers recognize that relationships are pretty hard to legislate.”
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aelejalderuiz@tribune.com
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Cubicle coupling
Make all the jokes you want about the dangers of dipping your pen in the company ink. It’s a part of life for many Americans, who are spending more time than ever at work. Careerbuilder.com’s 2007 Office Romance survey, which polled more than 6,000 workers nationwide in December 2006, found that 43 percent of workers had dated a co-worker. Other surveys have put the number much higher. The CareerBuilder survey found that among workplace flirts:
34%
ended up marrying their office love.
22%
dated a married colleague.
14%
dated their boss.
12%
began their relationship after running into each other coincidentally outside of work, the most common way. Following close behind were office romances sparked at lunch, happy hour and late-night working.
34%
kept their office romance a secret.
Tsk, tsk
According to career Web site vault.com’s 2007 Office Romance Survey:
17%
of office lovers have been caught in the middle of an office tryst.
— Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz, RedEye
