Those searching for elusive work-life balance need do no more than get romantically involved with a co-worker — for nothing balances career suicide quite like a lousy relationship.
Dating at work gives you both! Grandpa may have been wrong about a lot of stuff — hard candy, Arthur Miller, segregation — but no amount of trendy, counterintuitive nonsense can erase the fact that Gramps was right when he grumbled, “Don’t s – – t where you eat.”
Advocates of at-work dating seem to forget it’s work, as in “you’re there to . . .” These waters need not be muddied — and they shouldn’t be, because the unavoidable fact is that dating on the job is like taking a stroll across a minefield.
“Whenever you date somebody at work, you’re bringing in so many complex issues into the dynamic,” says John Heckers, an executive and career transition coach.
“It’s not just the two of you — it’s all the other relationships that are affected by the two lovebirds. It interferes with the functioning of the workplace. And very few people are mature enough to manage those dual relationships.”
Remember all those passages in Jack Welch’s autobiography where he recalls how his dalliances with co-workers helped him land the CEO gig at GE? You don’t, because they don’t exist. The best case scenario for your career if you date an office mate is you survive unscathed.
The worst case?
“You can be terminated. You can be denied a promotion. You can be transferred or reassigned, certainly, if the company had a written rule forbidding social relationships between management and lower-echelon employees,” says employment attorney Steven Mitchell Sack, author of “The Employee Rights Handbook.”
OK, but what if there’s no such rule? “Guess what: They can [still] fire you. You can fight it, but that would only be the counterpunch.”
Still not convinced? Ask Roy Cohen, a Manhattan career coach who’s seen the damage up close.
One of his clients is in the habit of dating her fellow workers and finds what was once a career arc has turned into a bell curve.
“It’s been damaging to her professionally,” he says. “She just can’t seem to not get involved with colleagues.”
The result, he says, is that “she’s viewed as somebody who’s easy. And that’s not a label to have attached to you professionally.”
The only folks who dislike office nooky as much as management are co-workers. While a 21st-century Heloise and Abelard may only have eyes for each other, the rest of accounting is getting resentful, not to mention nauseated. Better to puke once at the office Christmas party than spend every morning watching this pair play out a cubicle version of “Wuthering Heights.”
“It gives the appearance of impropriety, especially if one person is in a superior position to another,” says Heckers. “It creates friction.”
And if a happy relationship affords you all these workplace advantages, just imagine what a breakup will do! At least when your BFF gets dumped, you only have to deal with her over drinks. When two co-workers discover that once-beloved quirks are now pathological traits, office morale can hit Valley Forge-levels but quick.
“The probability is it’s not going to work out and you end up in a situation that’s just uncomfortable for everybody,” says Guy Blews, a love pundit who wrote “Marriage and How to Avoid It,” and blogs at RealisticRelationships.com. “The whole thing gives people anxiety.”
Pro-romance types say these relationships have a better chance of working out because the two parties know each other better going in than those who hook up online. After all, they say, would you buy a car without giving it a test drive?
Easy does it, Mr. Spock!
What’s missing is “that chemical buzz of getting to know somebody you don’t really know. Having to think on your feet and be the best you can be is a great thing for a human being,” says Blews. “If I already know her and it’s all comfortable and relaxed, it’s not very sexy.”
Plus, since everybody’s under a microscope at work, it’s not an ideal place to cultivate the hothouse flower that is a relationship.
“It’s like a little seed you want to plant into the ground so it will grow. And it’s very fragile and delicate, and you’re doing it in this environment where you’re in the fishbowl being watched,” says Orna Walters, a relationship coach. “It’s not a healthy way to create a relationship.”
But what ultimately destroys workplace romance is the fact you never get a break from the object of your affection. If you don’t have a panic room, you’ll be praying for dysentery, because that’s the only break you’re going to get.
“I’m a big believer that space is one of the essential parts of a great relationship,” says Brews. “The problem with dating someone at work is you see them at work. You see them in the evening. You end up moving in with her. Then you get married. You never have the space to be who you really want to be.”
In short: “We should be different in a relationship situation than we are at work,” he says.
True, everybody knows a successful relationship that started at work. The idea isn’t unthinkable. People win Powerball jackpots, too.
But such success is an outlier and should be viewed as such. Advice to the contrary, like pride, goeth before the fall.