Finding love in the office is no crime (and I should know...)

How many of the couples you know met at work? Quite a few, I bet.

westminster is full of political pairings. Journalism is a hotbed, too: when I married my husband, we were both working at the same newspaper ( though technically we met on a skiing holiday). And I’ve lost count of the number of teachers who’ve hooked up over a flirty staff-room cuppa.

It’s the most natural thing in the world, not least because you know you’re with someone who shares your values, interests, talents and ambitions. As long as you are both consenting adults — and ideally single — what’s not to like?

well, plenty, apparently, if you’re McDonald’s and you find out your chief executive has been moonlighting with another member of staff. or, as they put it, has violated your business standards policy which states that ‘employees who have a direct or indirect reporting relationship to each other are prohibited from dating or having a sexual relationship’.

Fair enough, he is (was) the chief executive, and so perhaps should have shown a little more restraint than your average Joe. But does your head man falling for someone who works for him really justify getting rid of a bloke responsible for almost doubling the company’s share price in just four years?

of course, we do not yet know all the facts, and maybe never will, but if it was as simple as two consenting adults getting a bit carried away, surely the matter could have been dealt with internally.

After all, Steve Easterbrook — a former watford Grammar School boy — and his unnamed partner wouldn’t be the first pair to encounter passion over the photocopier (or in this case, perhaps, a Quarter Pounder. who knows?)

Either way, the fact remains that the affair has highlighted a whole new area of censorship of the individual, and it’s a worrying one.

I understand the need to protect vulnerable junior staff from the advances of senior, more powerful bosses. Any organisation would want clear guidelines to safeguard against potential abuse.

But this goes beyond that. Although we don’t know the identity of Mr Easterbrook’s lover, there is no suggestion of coercion.

So why the censorious response? It seems less like a company trying to safeguard its employees — and more an example of the strange post # MeToo puritanism that seems to be engulfing us of late. From the ‘shy’ Cheshire teenager convicted of sexual assault for touching a fellow pupil on the waist, to the hysterical reaction to the notion Boris Johnson might have put his hand on a female journalist’s thigh at a boozy lunch two decades ago, any hint of a physical overture is becoming taboo.

In seeking rightly to curtail the actions of a minority of wicked individuals, we seem to have pitched up somewhere in the late 1800s.

Pretty soon, junior employees will require a chaperone when attending meetings, a sort of corporate version of the maiden aunt, complete with smelling salts and disapproving frown. Those upcoming Christmas parties will have to be supervised by specially trained sex-monitors intent on ensuring that only those with commensurate pay packets and equal status disappear into the broom cupboard together.

I find this a grotesque intrusion. why does the fact that someone pays your salary mean they get to make deeply personal choices on your behalf? More to the point, how will anyone ever sleep their way to the top again if the boss is off limits? (Please don’t write in, I’m only joking.)

SURELY an office romance is healthier than choosing a random partner based on their Tinder profile? who cares if one of you earns more than the other? That doesn’t mean the relationship is abusive, it just means at least someone can afford to pay for dinner.

The irony is that at the same time as placing restraints on people’s private lives (who they love, their political opinions, the food they eat), organisations never stop reminding us how much they support acts of ‘self-expression’.

So we end up in the bizarre situation where M&S invites customers to choose ‘which fitting room they feel comfortable to use, in respect of how they identify themselves’ (in other words, a bloke can now use the ladies’ just by saying they are a woman), while a relationship between a boss and an employee becomes a sackable offence.

For most of us, the double standards of modern culture are an amusing inconvenience. But when they become an insidious tool of private censorship, we need to take notice. Because there is such a thing as the thin end of the wedge; if we’re not careful, it will open up an irreparable crack in society.