By Susan Hagan / Photographs by Jessica Fern Facette
I was in my 20s when I experienced that illicit kiss at an office party meant to bolster morale. I had retreated to the fringes to watch the festivities, as if studying animals in the wild. I’d been observing people for years, trying to figure out what we’re all hiding, and was close to an epiphany when he appeared beside me. A shiver ran down my spine. We were standing in a dark corner, drinks in hand, no desk between us. I spoke and sounded like an idiot, so I shot back some tequila to loosen up. I was concerned about watching my tongue when I found it lodged in my co-worker’s mouth.
At least I didn’t say the wrong thing.
Sexual tension quivers beneath suits and coveralls in offices and factories worldwide as, side by side, we forge creative breakthroughs and slog through another shift. We spend long hours together. We celebrate victories and complain about bosses, often over beer, especially if we’re young and single. We wear jeans on casual Fridays – which make our butts look awesome. We become fond of each other. Despite rules and propriety, we might daringly make the beast with two backs on top of the photocopier. We might even marry one another, elevating the office tryst into a proper union.
What we don’t do, or don’t do enough, is talk about this tension. And I don’t mean gossip. According to Rosemary Agonito, the author of Dirty Little Secrets: Sex in the Workplace, these dangerous liaisons must be acknowledged and understood to maintain peace at the office. Desire “punches in with the rest of us,” writes Agonito, a former U.S. college prof who specializes in workplace gender issues. “Sex bubbles around in the daily comings and goings of the workplace.”
Although they can generate, er, boosts in productivity, office romances are generally viewed as car wrecks waiting to happen. Unlike traffic accidents, however, they’re hard to quantify. Two friendly people at Statistics Canada giggled at my request for intra-office dating data; they don’t track it. Yet. Feeling like a stat floozy, I talked to anybody who would listen about their company policies and personal experiences. Turns out that, while there’s debate about whether sex between co-workers is acceptable, it’s as much a part of corporate culture as employee evaluations, unpaid overtime and lame email forwards.
“At our company, we have an unwritten rule,” says Ed Murphy, the general manager of Calgary’s Diversified Staffing, which has about 140 employees. He sounds confident.
“And that rule is?” I ask.
“It’s a loose policy.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“About how to… how to… how to act with co-workers.”
Right, as long as we’re clear then.
You can’t tell people what to do as far as their personal relationships go,” Murphy adds. “We deal with it as it comes.”
“Do they happen or not?” I press.
“It’s happened,” he says. “Most of the time, it turned out pretty well, actually.”
“Really?”
“Most got married.”
Agonito’s research supports that claim. She concluded that 40 per cent of couples who meet at work and form relationships – drunken one-night stands notwithstanding – eventually make it legal. Monic Willner, 28, and Greg Pratch, 30, met a few years ago while working at the law firm Duncan & Craig LLP in Edmonton. They got to talking at the company’s annual dinner, realized they shared common passions, went out for a beer, and shortly thereafter fell in love. “People are surprised when they find out we work together,” Pratch says. “We just both have jobs that happen to be at the same place.”
At first, Willner was nervous about telling colleagues about the relationship. She was aware of their every interaction at the office and how it would be perceived. “I’m really private when it comes to work,” she says. “We hid it for about three months. Well, not really ‘hid’ it, but we didn’t make it public.”
While having no policy about dating can breed sexual anarchy, Agonito writes that crafting rules that cannot be enforced is pointless, and forbidding sexual liaisons only pushes them underground. Speaking of which, very few of the employers, academics, human resources consultants and therapists I contacted wanted to talk about sex at work. Are they repressed, I wondered, or just too busy having it?
Category: Work
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