Have I mentioned I love Crain’s NY Business, despite knowing yay-much about business in general? Outside of the concept that I should “mind my own,” which I sometimes remember to do, I’m not so much business savvy.
But oh, the Crain’s. So much to think about, and absolutely nothing to link to online. So I transcribe.
This week’s “Business Lives” section has a few inches devoted to “Expert Opinions” and this week? “Office Romance: Making It Work.”
Helaine Olen, co-author of the upcoming book Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding – and Managing – Romance on the Job, offers the following tip for anyone who has a romance at work.
If you do begin dating someone from work, make sure to protect your paycheck and keep the relationship professional. Don’t argue in the office, and don’t come in and tell everyone about your great night together. Avoid emailing one another at work. If you think your co-workers know about the relationship, go ahead and tell your boss. It’s better that he hears it from you than from someone giving him a nudge in the elevator.
In real life? I raise a brow at the part of the title that references “finding romance” at work. My philosophy has been, to quote an old friend, “Don’t get your sausage where you get your bacon,” but as young people entering the workforce find themselves in jobs, particularly in Manhattan, working long hours around the clock, the circle of eligible acquaintances becomes more limited to workplace folks, and I suppose there may be an increased readership for a book offering advice on how to navigate workplace romance. However, my initial reaction is still that it’s Not a Great Idea.
Of course, I could mention that Hubby and I got together when we were both staff members at a sleep-away camp in West Virginia, AND that our bosses were his parents… but that kind of takes the wind out of the very small sailboat that is my argument.
I found various statistics, most of them, to give an example, uncited except for that oh-so-useful phrase “various studies reveal” and “research indicates” which discuss how much workplace romance there is in the world, but I didn’t find anything conclusive. But the reality vs. “studies reveal” makes me ponder: what about my favorite fantasy place: romance novel land?
What would that advice be like if it were set in the world of contemporary romance, or even Harlequin Presents – where the boardroom tables, they are so very, very sturdy, if you catch my meaning, and I think you do.
Workplace romance is so common in romance novels, but really, is there a moment when the heroine has to tell her boss that she’s head over Louboutins in love with Fred from accounting? In my somewhat-unreliable memory, so please feel free to correct me, most of the time I find that the boss, or the company owner or whomever, is half of the protagonist pair, so chances are he (and it is usually a “he” in the boss role) is well aware of what’s going on.
Flipping over the many-times-written male boss/female secretary pairing, which plays into positions of power, authority, and, ahem, other positions, I have to say, I’ve never seen a female boss/male secretary pairing in a romance – which would turn those same positions on their respective ears. To quote Wise Editor Friend, “Can’t have the ‘ice queen’ taking advantage of the young earnest mailroom clerk.” Existing power structures continue to play out in romance, though there’s a subtext of growing power for the heroine in many of these stories where the hero realizes that a large part of what’s missing in his life is the heroine, and only the heroine.
As for positions of equal power, I’ve read stories about couples who establish a company together (Hot Shot comes to mind) and a few stories wherein a high level female executive is beaten out for a promotion by another high level male executive, and the resulting tension becomes sexual as well as professional.
But most often, the male is in the position of power in a romance novel workplace nookie-thon, and I am intrigued by the shadow of that element in the advice given in Crain’s. The boss in the advice element: He. And am I reading too much into the advice, or is it directed at women – don’t email, don’t talk about it?
What’s your take on workplace romance in real life or in romance? Is it one of your favorite romance cliches or something that left such a sour taste in your mouth in real life that it can’t qualify as a fantasy?
The Leopard Prince, by Elizabeth Hoyt, has a female boss falling for her male servant (steward, not secretary). And no, he doesn’t make the power imbalance more palatable by inheriting gobs of money or a title or anything lame like that. He’s just her servant. End of story!
My first published novella was an office romance between two high-powered investment bankers after the same promotion. Her funds outperformed his, hands down, but he thought he might get the promotion because of the good-old boys network. They make a bet that if she wins the promotion, she gets his bonus. But if he win, she has to be his sex slave for 24. Well, you can guess who wins. They both do.
I think some companies have new employees sign waivers saying they won’t date in the work place, but I know of three professor/ex grad student marriages where she was his student, and those seemed to lead to real life HEAs. At least if you work together you have the potential of finding someone with whom you share interests.
Sending non-professional e-mail might be dangerous—we’ve all clicked that ‘send’ button before we double checked the sender! Don’t want the boss to read how you’re dying to meet him in the john after lunch!
The thought of dating where I work is just… erg, no. No, thank you!
Susan Napier, who often wrote stories with the boss/secretary relationship wrote one in which the woman was a female executive competing with two other men for a promotion (the new head of the company is the hero). She doesn’t get the promotion: instead, she is chosen (by the more than hero) to take over the whole company. So she ends up in charge.
Of course, the hero then goes back to his real love, bridge building. So perhaps it’s not the best example of Woman In Charge romances. But the Hoyt, above, was a good example. Especially given the time period.
I met my second hubby on the job. OK, well in the cafeteria at my job. Dating coworkers isn’t that odd in a hospital setting….you’re there so much, you clearly have common interests etc
However, now…erm, the only single men I see are either 99, dying or ‘Hi pretty lady!’ out of it.
To quote Wise Editor Friend, “Can’t have the ‘ice queen’ taking advantage of the young earnest mailroom clerk.â€
Why not? If the mailroom clark looked anything at all like David Tennant, I’m signing up to play the ice queen…or at least read the book and play pretend.
(OK, what is wrong with me? Thinking about sexy celebs constantly for the last two days!)
But as for office romances, I didn’t think sexy thoughts about my bosses or co-workers. Except maybe David. He was 6’5” and BUILT. He gave affectionate hugs to everyone, which I didn’t mind at all. In fact, maybe I’d get in line twice. Would I have gone through with anything tho? HELLA NO. Coz that’s just…no.
Had a crush on a co-worker once. It was both incredibly exciting and awful (when it turned out the crush was not reciprocated). We became really good friends, but while I grieved it was just not good.
I generally don’t enjoy romances set too much in offices. Too much reality sneaks in.
The worst I’ve ever read was an old Jayne Anne Krentz ( which I usually love) where the woman wants to escape her ex-fiance in California and gets a personal assistant job for older dude in Oregon who persuades him to marry him without love 6 weeks after she starts working for him. He thinks of her as like a spooked horse who needs “gentling” and they playact at marriage until they realize of course that they are deeply, madly. It was freaky awkward.
I’ve never seen a female boss/male secretary pairing in a romance
—>The TV show Friends did this one, with Rachel getting involved with her assistant, Tag. They took the view that she was being shallow and irresponsible, and that relationship was short-lived and played mainly for plot complications.
Dating a coworker is risky – it’s not good professionally and can be uncomfortably on a personal level. Don’t know if it’s still true, but it used to be that if coworkers got into a relationship and it didn’t work out, the woman was almost always “let go.” It might work if the place people worked was huge, with hundreds of employees, and the two didn’t work closely together – especially not in a supervisor-employee situation – but in a small place, it’s a gamble. One place I worked even had a rule that if two employees got married, one had to quit (or be fired).
ok, so I can’t think of any female boss stories off the top of my head… although it sounds intriguing.
relationships at work are verra tricky, so the boss/secretary plots (hellllllo HQN Presents!) don’t do much for me. in fact I can only think of one I ever was crazy for, unfortunately I can’t remember the name. *sigh* Old HQN Temptation, hero had silver hair, ice heroine-with-a-secret’s house burned down/blew up, landing her in the hospital. Elise Title? Argh! :off to google:
Shit.
Workplace “romance” isn’t ever about romance. It’s pretty much about nooners with people you truly don’t like very much. And they happen because (a.) you’re trying to crawl up the ladder, or (b.) you’re experiencing some insecurity crisis and whatever affirmation is afforded by the married dweeb in the Emo outfit must, alas, suffice.
~copyright, 2007, The Biography of WryHag
Oops, forgot to add my collaborator’s name.
Well, fuckinsowhat? She’s just another fantasy- and smut-peddling peddling nobody who wants to ride on my semen-stained coattails!
Woman in charge, not painted sympathetically: Michael Crichton’s Disclosure. God, I hated the press for that book. He portrayed this evil boss-lady who hired her ex-lover, tried to seduce him, then cried sexual harassment when he turned her down. The press went wild with “See? Women can’t handle power”.
Of course female-male harassment has happened. But the small number of women in executive positions means very few have even had the opportunity. Some of the press demonized women in power to a frightening degree.
(Of course, when Crichton wrote State of Fear some people hailed him as a climate scientist, and when Brown wrote Da Vinci Code some treated him as an authority on the Vatican. People love to feel they’re in on a secret.)
In fiction – its usually a lame device exploited for the boring cliche of a powerful man boss/feeble woman secretary or woman striking out on her own to start up her own company. I can’t imagine anything worse than having to start a company or having sex wars in the office, so thats the element of escapism gone for a start.
In real life – erm, well, ok we met through work friends, starting going out when we were working in the same office and now we’re married. It would have made a boring book though.
Hmm, my experience with workplace romance is a little different. I started at IBM right out of college and it was a site with ~15000 employees. All the new hires were straight out of college from all over the country and usually didn’t know a soul when they moved to start working. So it was more like dating someone from your social network all of whom happened to work for IBM than dating a co-worker. But, for the most part, all the daters were the same age, same level, so no ickiness there. We had the mainframe equivalent of instant messenger way before anything like that existed on a PC – that could get you into some trouble.
HATE the boss-secretary/duke-governess plots. Women’s inequality in the power structure is way too much of a reality for me to want to read about it in fiction. Now when it’s reversed – that’s interesting.