What is your opinion of dating at work?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Tonight I was reading through this [thread=797536]thread[/thread] and I noticed a number of people expressing the strong opinion that one should never, ever date a co-worker. I was surprised, to be honest. I can definitely see not dating someone in the chain of command (superior or subordinate) but otherwise, why not? Most people spend more of their time at work than anywhere else awake. It seems likely to me that you might meet interesting people at the workplace.

Full disclosure: my husband and I started dating after I joined the company where he worked. We’ve been together 25 years now.

Thoughts: dating at work a good idea or not? Any stories to tell?

2

I’m a pilot, my partner is also a pilot with the same company. Before she was upgraded to captain we regularly flew together and now we still do occasionally fly together.

I wouldn’t recommend dating a colleague.

Not because it isn’t working out for us, on the contrary, we get on very well. Our relationship has never got in the way of our work. However I think if our relationship did break down it would make it very awkward at work and in this industry you can’t just up and leave a company.

It’s working for us, but the risks are high, so I wouldn’t recommend it.

3

Similarly, my wife and I started dating after she joined the company. We dated for three years before getting married 14 years ago.

4

The fact that it CAN work does not denigrate the fact that the odds are really, really against it.

Until very recently (as such cultural things go), women in the workplace were very low on the totem pole - the Secretarial Pool is within living memory. Then keypunch. Receptionist is not a high-ranking position.
The interpersonal dynamics have changed - you can’t just “get another one” now - she has as good of a skill set as yourself and is not likely to be easily replaced.

Now you are stuck with each other, even if the relationship turns ugly.

Don’t do marrieds, don’t do co-workers.

If your passions (plural) are so great, one of you should be willing to find another employer.

Generally speaking.

5

I just posted to the other thread.

  1. The percentage of co workers dating each other worked out great is really low, and the percentage where it ended badly/awkwardly/under arrest is pretty high. IMHO
  2. If it’s one of those perfect fit, mutual attraction, no baggage, perfect scenarios with your soul mate, well that’s an exception.
  3. You need 10 degrees of Kevin Bacon to find a connection.
6

Some years back I dated someone who worked with me in the same department. Didn’t end well and I wouldn’t do it again.

Someone who happens to work for the same company but you are in different areas with different bosses and don’t actually have much work based interaction, why the hell not?

7

It’s just common sense. If your job is your career then you do not want to risk turning a coworker into an ex-lover, because there is absolutely no ‘undoing’ that. Ever. This is someone who you will have to continue to see and/or work with if you want to continue with that current career, and things will **never **be the same after a relationship.

8

Given the large number of people in my company whose husband/wife also works in the company, it seems that it works out much less rarely than some people here seem to assume.

That.

9

Two of my exes were coworkers, When management got wind we were involved, they immediately transferred one of us to another location.

This is par for the course not only where I work now but for most of my former employers.

I know couples who didn’t start dating until one of them left the company altogether.

I’ve also known couples who were laterally transferred to other departments.

I get it. Management doesn’t want the work flow disturbed by raging hormones. Makes sense to me.

10

Met my wife at work. I know a lot of couples who met at work. It’s very common, you meet people at school, at work, maybe church or some hobby activity, or you meet in a bar and have to make up a story about how you met to tell your kids.

11

For me, it’s primarily an ethical concern, and I’ve never even attempted dating someone I met at work. I think it can work, perhaps as well or better than meeting in other random ways because at least you two share that in common. That means maybe you have common interests, or at least you can commiserate about whatever happens there. Then again, meeting someone at the gym, church, a concert, or wherever likely means you share that in common, so that doesn’t really mean a whole lot unless you met someone in a place where there isn’t commonality, like at the grocery store or a dating website. So, I dunno.

However, back to my ethical concerns, I see two major issues. First, and most obviously, if things don’t work out, particularly if it ends awkwardly or badly, it not only damages the ability for the two of us to work well together, but can create issues for others, either just feeling uncomfortable or gossip or whatever. Hell, even if it ends neutral or amicably, if the office is large enough, there’s bound to be some rumors or other random things that can cause problems.

The second issue is, if it works out well, do we have the ability to control for our emotions and still treat eachother appropriately at work. I’d like to believe I’m capable of that, and I think I’ve generally succeeded in the past of not showing favoritism to people I like, but I really can’t be absolutely sure. If something does come up where we have to butt heads, either as part of our jobs or because we disagree, it will be difficult for even the most mature people not to feel a little personally hurt. And even if the two of us are absolutely able to make that life/work separation, I doubt that everyone around us can. Confirmation bias could very well set in that, if I were to take her side or her mine, someone else could easily assume it’s because of favoritism, and we’d both have to work that much harder to back up our decisions and actions. And, again, in a large enough office, rumor mills can be poisonous to everyone.

So, sure, it can work, but there’s definitely some major obstacles that just wouldn’t exist if you’d met somewhere else. That said, I don’t think it’s necessarily the worst thing in the world, just keep those things in mind. Do not let work and personal life bleed into each other, others at work just generally don’t need to know. If things do start to get serious, to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, make sure you have minimal direct interaction, even if that means one of you requests changes in duties, a transfer to another department, or even start looking for another job. When I HAVE seen couples that work together, they always were in different departments. They could still drive to/from work together, have lunch together, even chat on and off through the day and all that, but they dodged the vast majority of the pitfalls.

12

I don’t date people that I work directly with. There is a lot of stuff that I do in my private life that I have no desire to bring into the office, and that dating someone would probably drag into view. If the relationship mildly doesn’t work then it would be unpleasant to be around the ex- for a while, but if it really doesn’t work then all of a sudden you have an angry/obsessed/crazy/etc ex who’s already intertwined with your career and means of supporting yourself. (Most breakups will be mild, but the cost of a bad one is extremely high when it puts your job/career at risk).

I like a nice steady paycheck with no drama at work and no risk of drama at work.

How big is the company, and how closely do the husband/wife pairs work together? IMO there’s a pretty big difference between ‘we work for different divisions at the same large company and don’t really directly interact at work’ and ‘Bill and Betty in accounting are an item, one of them will handle the invoice’. Also, did the people have a functional marriage and then later ended up working together, or did they start dating at work? “Already married and working at the same place” is a bit different than dating co-workers.

13

Gosh, I’m glad you asked; this is something I think about a lot. One thing is clear: good company-wide standards are important. Now, the European system has the advantage of going from smallest to largest unit, which is logical, but it can cause confusion in the U.S. because it’s not obvious whether you’re writing the month first or the day first, and then…

Wait, what? Oh, *that *kind of dating. I got no opinion on that.

I’m not Randal Munroe but sometimes I think like him

14

Yes it can work but you have to be very very careful, and both parties have to be very mature. I met my future wife when she interviewed for her job. It was a peer interview, in a small Silicon Valley start-up. During the interview, and for the first few years when we worked together in the same group of about 6-8 engineers with the same boss, and our desks about 10 feet apart (cubicles), there was no attraction whatsoever. I was going through a divorce with 3 young kids after an 11-year marriage and I had to be a father to my kids, first and foremost, that’s what they needed.

Work can be a great place to meet someone and you can tell a lot about that person by their work ethic and quality of work. But you have to be very careful and mature, if the relationship doesn’t work out.

Fortunately for us we’ve been married 14+ years now, still greatly in love, the kids are great (they’re now 32, 30 and 28, and we don’t have kids of our own) and our marriage is a true blessing. It can work, and work out well. My wife and I worked at the company together from 1997 until 2015 when I left. She is still there.

15

I can easily understand why an employer would want such a prohibition. And, like incest, it has become a cultural taboo, simply through repetition, regardless of any demonstrable or empirical evidence of adverse effects…

It’s obviously not good for business to have the employees bringing their personal problems to the work place, and even worse if you arrive for work in the morning and your personal problem is sitting there.

It would be reasonable, in my view, for an employer to say that your personal business is your own business, but if the firm is negatively impacted by such a development, you’re fired.

Personally, I’ve done it several times.

16

Terrible idea. We have a handful of husband-wife pairings at my company, and in 80% of the cases it’s really awkward due to management structure. We have more incidents of ‘tried it, fell apart spectacularly’ and it’s always weird trying to rebuild after those. People can be really weird about even potential workplace romances- hell, I was best friends with a guy at work and the office busybodies were so convinced we were having an affair that I ended up quitting rather than continue to deal with the constant harassment from them and HR.

One of my former coworkers was desperate to date a fellow coworker, but she held tight to the ‘don’t shit where you eat’ rule. After a few months of running into that brick wall, he ended up quitting so that she would go out with him. Now in my mind this was INSANE, but the recently got married so apparently she thought it was charming.

Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

17

But the odds are always against it, at least in Western dating culture. Most relationships won’t work out. If you standard for attempting a relationship is that it has to probably work out, you’ll never go on a date.

18

It’s all well and dandy for the people in the relationship, but I have seen very few people who can keep it from spilling over into their work. No one wants to see you making kissy-faces, and definitely no one wants to see your acrimonious breakup.

People aren’t honest with themselves. They think they can handle it but they really can’t.

I flat out will never, and have never, dated a coworker. I can control my pants-feelings at least that much!

19

I hated it. I met my ex at the same company. We worked in the same facility with multiple connected buildings, and although we never worked in the same building we saw (at her request) each other way too often,

We drove in together; we drove home together. She called me to go for coffee; she called me to go for lunch. Did I mention i hated it? I need space and I was asphyxiating. I wanted to lunch with the boys, which I did sometimes.

20

But if I date someone from almost anywhere else, if we end up breaking up I can probably find ways to avoid him. Someone from online dating will probably be really easy to never see again. Someone who was a friend of a friend might make some parties awkward, but things can possibly be figured out. Someone who I met through common interests I could maybe find a new place or time so I don’t end up running into him. But if it’s someone from work it’s much more likely I’ll have to see him often, and maybe talk to him on professional matters.

I’m not 100% against workplace dating, but I think caution is definitely warranted. I would take into consideration how closely we have to work together and how it might be in the future, how much I like my job and how long I’m thinking of being at it, and how interested I am in the potential date.