Office romance: Convenience or career suicide?

• A new, hot employee has just joined your department. Everyone is jostling for their attention. Beware if what you are after is a serious relationship

We spend the better part of our waking hours at our places of work. More often than not, our colleagues are our closest friends, confidantes and supporters in times of difficulty.

Places of work therefore offer fertile opportunities for romantic relationships to cross the limits and become thriving and intimate.

But how workable are they?

A Pandora’s Box

That new, lovely and well-appointed marketing girl that you cannot stop thinking about could be leaving some higher authority in knots as well. Or that tall, dark and handsome new guy in accounts with all the cool moves?

He may make your girlfriends green with envy and turn them against you. Unless you can establish that there is no possibility of conflict (which is challenging), it could be the one move you may live to regret.

For Jeremy, a freelance marketer, office romance yielded a wife but at a price. He used to work at a leading Internet Service provider. For him, workplace affairs were always a no-no. But that was until Jackline joined the company.

“Jackie had the kind of looks that you just could not ignore if you are normal. Every man in the office was drooling over her,” he reminisces.

“Very quickly, I knew she would be the subject of an intense scramble. The man who could get her would be the office First Among Equals. I got the headstart every man in the office craved when Jackline was assigned under my immediate watch. Tuning her was not easy with all the men circling around her like vultures. But in the end, I got my way and we started dating.”

While Jeremy paraded his new love for the entire office to appreciate his hunting qualities, the Managing Director was anything but impressed.

All along, he had his eyes set on Jackline as well but he had not yet found the opportunity to strike. Being the MD, and married, he had to be subtle in his approach. When word went round that Jeremy and Jackline were dating, he revealed his hand.

“He called me into his office and asked whether it was true that we were dating,” says Jeremy. “He rambled on about office romance being unethical and distracting and said he would be reassigning Jackie. Of course by then, it was too late. Jackie and I continued to see each other.”

“The MD did make romantic attempts towards Jackie but she refused his advances. That is when the war against me started. He put me under immense pressure, harassed me all the time and in the end, I had to leave the company. Jackie had to follow me soon after as the boss pursued her seriously after I left. Our affair cost us our jobs but Jackie and I are today happily married. It was worth it but with jobs hard to come by, I would never recommend office romance to anybody because of all the attendant drama," Jeremy says.

Dirty Linen

Every time you open your heart to somebody, you also give them an opportunity to know you extremely well. Unless you are Angel Gabriel, you definitely have your dark spots, yes...we all do.

Your mother may be a tigress who sends your dad ducking for cover every time she sneezes. Or how you once abused drugs. Or did a jail term for stealing the neighbour’s chicken.

Or how you were forced to walk around high school with all the panties and petticoats you had stolen from fellow girls...There is always the risk that your best kept secrets could end up being whispered around the office corridors - sometimes with grave or very embarrassing consequences. Achieng was so humiliated she had to leave the country to save face.

“Hell hath no fury like a man scorned,” she recollects the experience that changed her life.