Allison PEARSON
So, farewell the office romance. No more lingering moments by the water cooler, no more unnecessary trips to buy a disgusting hot chocolate in the faint hope you might bump into him/her on the stairs. No more volunteering to be the fire marshal for the fourth floor, as one colleague of mine did, as an elaborate pretext for getting me out of the building. (His in-depth knowledge of extinguishers has never been called upon, but lies ready.)
Be gone the weeks of yearning expectation, the daily application of your best perfume/aftershave, the suspiciously frequent loo trips for fresh lippy, the sneaky glances across a crowded room, the consummation devoutly to be wished … Probably at the office party, a tragic affair in some pub with warm white wine that acquires the magic glow of a Disney ballroom, so heightened are your tender expectations when, at long last, two become one.
Or maybe that’s just me. I feel sorry for young people that the office romance is facing extinction with just one in 10 couples now getting together in the workplace, according to a Stanford University survey of straight Americans.
For decades, people met their partner at work, peaking in the mid-nineties when 19 per cent of couples (Himself and I included) reported meeting as colleagues. Two decades on, that figure has slumped to 11 per cent while the number of people “meeting” in the online cattle market has jumped to more than a third. In this anxious new world of Metoo, with its accusations of sexual harassment, people have become prudish IRL (in real life). Apparently, it’s perfectly OK to text a total stranger a picture of your private parts, but now chatting up someone at work is “creepy”.
What a shame. An office romance allows you to collect comprehensive data on your crush. Personally, I would highly recommend the slow-burn of the office romance. Twenty-five years later, mine is still going strong. The fire marshal for the fourth floor is the father of my children.