When Candy and I get going about bad, bad romance cliches, the boardroom romance is way up there in the list of Top 5 Plotlines We Love to Hate, But Also Make Us Cringe.
There’s a whole slew of work-romance plots out there, from Expecting the Boss’s Baby to Expecting the Boss’s Baby: The Babies of Doctors Circle, to Having Her Boss’s Baby: Positively Pregnant—and even the succinctly titled retro treasure, Boss’s Baby. Even without the babies we have Boardroom Mistresses and hey, even Baby in the Boardroom. There was even a line of Harlequin romances subtitled The Corporate Bridegroom.
All of these workplace humpity-hump-humpings make me cock an eyebrow. Hasn’t anyone heard the wisdom of, “Don’t get your sausage where you get your bacon?” I mean, many workplaces (and I’m not speaking from personal experience since I while away my hours eating bonbons while wearing those feather-boa shoes with impossibly high heels and also I never blog about work) have specific rules about workplace relationships. And come on now: three out of five pregnant boardroom mistresses agree, boinking in the conference room is a bad, bad idea.
But then I was watching tv last night, and it struck me how many shows are about (a) workplaces, particularly if those workplaces have to deal with death, crime, guts, gore, or all four, and (b) how many have romances up, down, right, left, and in between (especially in between) the characters. I caught a commercial for an upcoming episode of The Office wherein two characters are going to – hold on to your hats – start a relationship.
I got to pondering, because I was half-asleep on the bus this morning, about American workaholic culture, and how those of us who work in offices spend 8 to 10 and possibly more hours a day with the same group of people. Some folks spend more time with those they work with than the person they’re married to, and not because they want to maintain that arrangement, either. So is the workplace romance still a forbidden temptation, or is it more accepted and I’m just an old married throwback who met her husband in high school and… well, hooked up with him at a summer camp where we were both working so technically, I guess I did have a workplace romance.
Are there any romance novels where the protagonists work together and the romance actually… works? I know Candy has a special place of love for The Real Deal, which is a workplace setting. Anyone got any hot workplace action to recommend, literary or otherwise?
Leanne Banks has a series (trilogy?) of books where the romances take place at work. Do they work out? I’m not sure. In Feet First the heroine ends up getting fired. It Underfoot it works out, but this is well after the heroine has had the baby and, while they did work together, they did not work at the same company. I haven’t read Footloose yet.
I’m not a big fan of workplace romances, just because my brain insists on thinking “Bad idea!” the whole time I’m trying to read stuff like that.
Just so you know, I’ve never heard that saying before and I will be getting it printed on a t-shirt!
I always liked SEP’s Hot Shot. The heroine marries a guy she doesn’t work with and they build a company together…and when the marriage falls apart, she has another office romance.
I don’t have a problem with the work romance generally, but the boss-secretary thing tends to bother me because of the potential sexual harassment. Plus, conference room sex? Soap operaish (to me).
I work in a big, big office. No rules (that I know of) against dating/romance, but family can’t work in the same division, so if you date and then marry someone you work with, one of you will have to either switch divisions or leave.
Jennifer Crusie’s Charlie All Night is about a workplace romance. As a former radio station owner, what bothered me most about that one wasn’t the romance—that crap happens all the time. I was much more bothered by plot devices that would have caused the station to lose its license in a New York second.
Where I work we have a married couple, one of whom reports directly to the other, and 2 sets of brothers. This in a staff of 24 people. That aside, whenever I go to Wal-Mart I always see an overabundance of those boss’ babies books. Makes me ill. Women fight to be accepted in the workplace and then HQ puts out this crap? It’s demeaning.
Kathy Reichs has a bunch of Tempe Brennan novels out (basis for the series Bones) and Tempe has a thing going with a homicide cop while she works for the Coroner’s office in Quebec. Kinda / sorta works, although those aren’t romances per se. Good books, though.
I don’t know about the romance novels, but in real life tons of people meet their mates at work. In my circle of friends alone I can think of five couple who met at, or through, work.
If you’re still single after college I think the odds go up significantly that might meet “the one” via your job.
Heh. I always chuckle at the “office romance” cunundrum.
I’ve now worked with my husband in two different companies—totally 10 years of working together.
The company we work for now have hook-ups all the time. 2 hook-ups got married last year. Our company policy is that you can’t work in the same dept together. But really, that doesn’t even apply.
I haven’t read many office hookup romances that I would recommend. But, I do think the premise is a realistic one. Not so sure if the “boss’s baby” premise is something I wanna read though.
I met my guy at work, now I admit that was not a professional place, but it does seem to me that it’s pretty common. The hard(est?) thing about dating and marrying people you work with is what to do if that relationship tanks. That’s when it gets interesting for your co-workers.
Now that I think about it, another Jennifer Crusie, Fast Women, is a workplace romance. So obviously, this plot device doesn’t squick me quite as badly when I already enjoy the author’s work.
The place I work now (and am writing from at this very moment!!!) actually encourages inter-employee dating. Of course, they encourage binge drinking (we always have several kegs at Memorial Day, Labor Day, Any Day In Which We Have A Management Sponsored Pig Roast, not to mention a bi-weekly pub crawl) and other things I, personally, happen to feel are unprofessional and therefore do not participate in. Ergo, I’m not signing up for the local eugenics program. Well, the unprofessional aspects of it as well as the general level of manly samples that get hired. Most of the managers are men, so most of the employees are a) female, b) under 25, c)thin. I really have no idea how I managed to get hired, as I only fulfill one of those three!
But I’ve noticed that around here, people tend to be very civil about the relationship tanking stage—probably because it’s embarassing enough to have dated a co-worker two cubes down the wall without having hysterical “That Bastard!!!” scenes played out.
Personally, I wouldn’t. It’s unprofessional in the extreme, imho. Not to mention telegraphs to the entire world that you have no other social outlets. :-p
Yeah. My mom and stepdad met at work. So did my stepmom and my dad. The first wasn’t a pretty professional place, but the latter was.
I totally know what you mean about workplace romances being squicky, though. For me it’s more the “Boss” part than the “coworkers” part. If you’re both either on the same-ish level as each other, it’s cool. But if one person is another’s direct superior in the workplace, the romance thing starts to ook me out a little.
Another great workplace book is Hot Shot by Susan Elizabeth Phillip, about the birth of the personal computer industry. And one could claim that It Had To Be You by SEP is also a workplace romance.
…but, she said, after realizing that she sent the last message too soon, one workplace book that I loved for the writing but hated for the situation was Double Standards by Judith McNaught, or as I refer to it, “That Sexual Harassment Lawsuit Waiting To Happen” book. It’s a boss/secretary novel, and it’s all about secretaries expected to bake cakes for their (male) bosses’ birthdays and similar offenses.
The shame of it…The Boss’s Baby…eeew! But then again HQ has no shame. Makes me want to cover the daughters eyes while in the bookstore…“don’t look at those honey, total brain rot.”
I recommend Ayelet Waldman’s “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.” It all starts with an affair in the workplace. Hang in there, though, cause this one ain’t quite a romance.
“Yeah. My mom and stepdad met at work. So did my stepmom and my dad.”
Haha! I was about to type this very thing. The difference was, my stepdad was in the same office as my mom as a freelance something or other for a few weeks. My stepmom was a secretary (but not my dad’s secretary) in his office. They got married in 1987. He said to me once that, five years later, he’d never have approached her, due to new understandings of sexual harrassment in the workplace. (I don’t mean to weigh that either way; I just thought it was interesting.)
True story…
When my husband and I were signing the papers to buy our house we were ushered into the “conference room”…
There were !BUTT PRINTS! on the edge of one end of the conference table. Swear on a stack of bibles!
Office romance IS a messy thing!
Nothing to add as respects book recommendations, but I did want to chime in about real life office romances. I have a friend (no really, it’s not me – I swear) who has had 2 office place romances, one of which was just a dalliance on both parts and the other which was something deeper.
I looked around at the men I worked with and couldn’t figure out how she got over the squick factor so I asked her about it. And her response made a kind of sense to me: the office is a place where you can see people in a way you usually don’t seem them elsewhere.
Meaning, work is a place where you can see a man in a way that’s kind of like the shorthand for knowing a guy’s personality by how he treats wait staff and tips at the end of a meal. In the workplace you can see how he handles power and how he handles dealing with people with more and less of it than himself, how he deals with stressful situations, how his moods go both within the week and within the day, whether he’s exhilirated by challenges, whether he’s perpetually early, late or on time, whether he treats people with respect all the time or does that to someone’s face then snarks about them behind their backs, whether he’s intelligent in a way you find attractive and, of course, whether he has good taste in suits (or clothes in general). At work you can ferret these things out within a very short amount of time which, in dating, can take a lot longer to observe. And I suppose everything I just said about observing and interacting with men also works in reverse as respects interacting with women.
So while I’ve never been tempted or intrigued by anyone I work with (in fact, I still squick at the very notion), I can understand why other people can feel comfortable with thinking interacting with someone at work is not a bad way to get the measure of someone they find attractive (and more). Plus, as you said, when you’re spending *that* much time together it only makes a certain kind of sense that someone’s going to want to test out the weight capacity and relative comfort for accommodating two people in the executive chairs.
I read somewhere the the most common way for couples to meet once school is over is the workplace since people are spending so much more time at work. I met my ex-husband at work and my current boyfriend because of my job. I get to take the money to the bank and he was one of the tellers who waited on me. Since I use a different bank myself we would have never met otherwise. Since school is long over for me it will have to be either through work or some guy being hit by my car or something freaky like that.
There’s also Jayne Krentz’s Perfect Partners..
“If you’re still single after college I think the odds go up significantly that might meet “the one†via your job.”
NOOOOOOO! Say it ain’t so! I work in a high school, and though we were encouraged to date our students (it’s a long story – we were also told “don’t get TOO pregnant, it’s not covered by our insurance plan.”), all of the men at my workplace are over 40 or are young but have started families. I am finished! I don’t want one of them! I’m too young to be alone (and too old for the students)!
we were encouraged to date our students
?@! Please to elaborate!
I hate those boss’ baby romances too, but for the dated gender roles (boss=male, underling=female) & sexual harassment overtones rather than the workplace environment.
I met my now-husband when he was a customer at my workplace. Of course, that workplace was a bar, so not exactly concerned with the non-fraternization rules there. In fact I hooked up with about 3 or 4 boyfriends in a row at that place.
The spouse likes to say I married him because he was 30% better looking than all the rest. It’s true, he did tip outrageously.
I, for one, prefer the sloppy-drunk-in-bars romances. Other people’s workplaces, unless they’re like the setting in the 1930s movie Freaks, are a yawn.
Well, Nerd in Shining Armor might be my favorite humorous Romance. The hero and heroine work together, but none of it takes place in the office after about the exposition. I’m not sure if that counts.
There are a crazy number of married couples and mother-daughter sets in the library system where I work. I’m not sure if there are dating rules, but the nepotism rule just says that family can’t report directly to each other.
I just wish erotica would drop their version—woman gets caught in some naughty thing like embezzling and in order to avoid prosecution and/ or firing, she has to become a sexual slave to the boss/whole office.
I can’t face any kind of workplace romance in my books or anywhere else ever since the prep chef at my last job grabbed my ass to prove to his ex—who dumped him for the snotty albino cashier—that he was “so over” their relationship.
I was probably the only person who didn’t go light up a joint out back on their “coffee” breaks.
I’m starting to wonder why I didn’t.
How about “Mirrors and Mistakes” by Kathleen Gilles Seidel?
It is an oldie (Harlequin published in 1984), so the cover is very cheesy and some of the story is really dated—all that discussion of those new-fangled word-processing machines for one!—but it is an unusual twist on the boss/secretary romance, despite its more conventional elements, and the characters have real depth.
I also disliked “The Real Deal”, BTW.
How about “Mirrors and Mistakes†by Kathleen Gilles Seidel?
Love. This. Book. Not only does it demonstrate how great series Romance can be, it also shows a great sensitivity to the challenges women—in particular—have in workplace relationships. In other words, how women and not men ultimately must bear any negative consequences.
Yea, what bugs me about those workplace romance books is that it’s ALWAYS the guy who’s in charge, and the woman an underling. Even if you’re playing into that whole alpha male fantasy thing (which admittedly, done well is very hot) but come on, can the woman at least be a fellow co-worker on equal level? An outside consultant maybe?
**shameless plug
That’s why in my book, Ninja, I wrote a female boss taking charge of her male secretary. But then again, she doesn’t know he’s a ninja.
**end shameless plug
I’d love to read more workplace romances, but please, WHY does the woman always have to be the underling secretary?
Someone already mentioned Jenny Crusie’s Charlie All Night—that is a workplace romance where the woman is not the underling or secretary. The workplace in question is a radio station, the heroine is the producer and the hero (Charlie) is the new DJ. I liked it, although I don’t know much about the radio industry so I didn’t spot the inaccuracies mentioned before.
Seven Ways to Seduce a Martian (Triskelion Publishing) by Cynthianna Appel is about a workplace romance.
I always laugh when I’m reading things like this and think to myself “Dang, I actually WROTE one of those!”
And then I run through all the “Yeah, but I didn’t do
in mine!” and feel moderately better.
Yes, I have a office romance – actually beign released in December. No ‘Boss’s Baby’ though… not… really. *wincing*
But, absolutely NO conference room sex! They do get a little hot and heavy on his desk… but no clothing was removed!
he he he
Oh, well… you love it or you hate it, right?
Katelyn Hughes