I see it as part of a whole bag of “close relationships at work”. There are companies which do not want relatives; others which encourage it. So long as the rules are clear and are followed, it’s ok. I have more of a problem with situations where for example it is banned for relatives to work together so hey, there’s a couple who’ve been together since before they got the jobs, each gives his/her parents’ address as the address of record, and they haven’t gotten married: they’re following the letter of the rule all right, but only the letter.
My current job gets many of our hires from the local university, there are whole teams which happen to be half of a group of friends who’d met years before joining the company. Sometimes they pair up, split… whatever. They’re of an age to be pairing up and splitting, might as well try to stop the rain from falling. As there is a general “no drama” rule, not so much in the company as in the local culture (I find it quite refreshing, others think people from Valladolid are cold… guess we agree after all), it works out ok.
I am amazed at the near unanimous condemnation of the practice. Two of my three children are married to someone they dated at work. (The third married a woman who occupied the same coed dorm he did and they were mated by graduation.) My daughter dated this guy against policy. They did stop eventually. Then she took another job and they stayed friends, although not dating. Then came 9/11 and they got together and really bonded. Within a year they were living together although they didn’t marry till 2004. My older son explicitly trolled among the administrative staff until he met one he liked. They were married for a couple years, then she had a baby and decided to be a stay-at-home mom. They are getting near their 23d anniversary. There was no prohibition and it worked well.
A girl at my last job dated not one but five co-workers over the years. In every single case, she got the guy fired. How? After she dumped them, any contact whatsoever at work was reported as harassment, and HR acted on her behalf with extreme prejudice. Regardless of what you might think of the young lady - this was possible because these guys dated someone at work.
A friend of mine was engaged to a guy at her job for two years and he ended it. She quit her job rather than go face him every day, fend off questions about what happened from “well-meaning” (nosy) co-workers, listen to rumors about “his side” of the story and avoid his new girlfriend, who worked on the same floor.
Ironically, that same friend caused something similar years before. She dumped a co-worker and he spiraled into depression, showing up unshaven/unwashed when he could show up at all, going into crying fits - he quit rather than go to counseling.
I’m glad it worked for them but I wonder how their coworkers felt. “Trolled amongst the administrative staff”? Sorry but that’s a little bit eww.
Regardless can you believe we’ve all seen cases where it didn’t work? Nasty, loud, obnoxious cases where the whole office was involved whether we wanted to be or not.
Yes the dating relationship is not likely to work out, but if the parties can be mature about it, it’s not the Absolute Taboo No that many here claim. It does not have to end badly. Having worked at a small company, I’ve seen relationships end. One ended not very well and we lost an excellent employee when she had to leave - she was so broken hearted that she could not stay.
Then there was the giggly adolescent 30-something couple who wasn’t always appropriate - she was known to call out over the cubicle wall, when she was mad at him, things like, “No nookie for you tonight!” Awkward.
Dating at work is a double-edged sword, as the replies here indicate. According to this article:
*some 38% to 59% of people have dated a cow-orker at some point in their career
*31% of office romances lead to marriage, higher than any other meet up type
So, according to polls, many people do it and a relatively large percentage work out. OTOH, some 70% do not lead to marriage (and available stats say that half of those that do will end in divorce). That’s the very definition of a high risk activity for a potentially high reward. I tend to be much more conservative when it comes to my career.
I got engaged to, and have a child with, a contractor at work. It works fantastically. We physically separated our workstations when we announced that we got engaged (mostly to avoid the disruption it was causing with our coworkers).
It’s really nice to come home and say “Bob missed filing his TPS reports again” and have your partner completely understand what a TPS report is and who Bob is. Makes venting about your day so much more fruitful.
It doesn’t hurt that upper management thinks she walks on water, either.
Funnily enough, we rarely carpool for a number of reasons. Despite having the same start time and end time. We do eat lunch together almost every day, which is like a tiny date sans child.
For me (and many others in this thread it seems) I met someone at work, formed a relationship, and have been married to them for many years. At the beginning of the relationship we went on dates, certainly (still do, I guess).
But it seems to me that how some people experience the phenomenon of “dating” is different than me. For them it is more varied and temporary and consequently open to more drama and risk in the workplace. For someone like me it is a much slower, less varied process (find one someone you like who likes you back, get together and stick together), so the workplace risk is lower.
I’m going to argue against the consensus of this thread and say that a dating at work relationship can be well worth it, with one caveat: Since there is significantly more risk involved than with a non-work relationship, your partner has to be really worth it - a really good person.
In both cases, the parties involved were mature, discreet and, most importantly, WERE ON DIFFERENT TEAMS SO THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO INTERACT WITH EACH OTHER CONSTANTLY.
But to begin a romantic relationship with someone you work with closely? That’s a minefield!
It certainly can be! But as in any minefield, there are more safe places than there are unsafe places.
But, if you hit an unsafe place in that minefield, you can be, shall we say, FUCKED.
In my case - which worked out well as I’ve posted above - we were both engineers in the same small group. Then later we both became managers when the group grew to about 20-25. As I like to say, my wife has enough maturity for the both of us! Our group was tight-knit, low turnover, slow growth. In a very stable small company, almost like a family. If our marriage was an issue for anyone, neither of us heard about it and our boss or other powers that be would have said something. One day I asked another engineer if he sensed any awkwardness from anyone in the group about it. He was tied in well with most of the others, and he said none, whatsoever.
It can work, but it can also be dangerous.
Someone posted upthread a statistic from a linked article about how couples met, and if they met at work their marriage had a high chance to succeed. Interesting.
And how do you tell that the person is actually a ‘really good person’ and ‘can be mature about it’ before you start dating them? I know plenty of people who started dating a ‘really good person’ and then found out they weren’t, but only after months or years of being close to the person. There’s a lot of crazy and/or mean that hides itself very well until you’re close enough to be stuck in. I mean, there’s former friend I knew for years who I thought was a ‘nice, but a bit socially awkward’ who actually has been quietly and efficiently sexually assaulting women for decades and hiding it behind ‘oh, he just doesn’t understand’. So many people find prince(ss) charming, then after a time or moving in together find they’ve actually got the direct opposite.
I started working as a temporary, part time cashier at a store shortly after they hired Erika. Erika got together with aisle worker Marco, and asked to be transfer to aisle working. When aisle worker Bianca left the company, Erika took over her aisle and I got her permanent, full time spot.
Statistically it’s a bad idea. Most relationships come to an end sooner or later, and usually not on great terms. The workplace should be as drama free as possible since you spend so much time there.
To clarify - a higher chance than other meet up places, but still slightly less than a 1 in 3 success rate. I wouldn’t define that as “high” unless you’re a major league baseball hitter.
You risk looking unprofessional - even if you get married and live happily ever after, some people will look sideways at the fact you dated someone at work. And if you get a reputation as a work serial dater, it can kill your career.
It can put co-workers in an awkward position.
It can limit both of you in terms of promotions, transfers, or projects you work on.
If you breakup, and one of you turns batshit crazy - its bad. And it will be bad for both of you.
So, being high risk, it had better be a fairly good chance of success. You don’t start banging the cute new programmer who started last week on the first date and then decide that you don’t like him on week three and expect everything to go fine with your career. Or maybe you work at Pizza Hut and its the new delivery guy, in which case, go for it.
Yeah, I’m thinking of career office jobs in my answer, if you have a job that you don’t care much about and/or don’t have long term plans with, then the risks I listed aren’t a big deal.