Making A Mess At Work
Workplace relationships can poison an office
About a year ago, I was sitting at my desk in my office with the door closed looking at this absolutely amazing data visualization that one of my analysts pulled together for me over the weekend.
A really well-done spreadsheet with deep insights into a situation and accompanying interactive graphs and charts can be something like a religious experience for people like me.
While I’m feeling the data wash over me, there’s this knock at my door that interrupts my “moment” with this data set.
“COME!”
I often just tell “COME!” like Jean-Luc Picard telling people to enter his Ready Room on the Enterprise because I’m a complete Trek nerd. The millennials who work for me in my team of analysts have no idea where it comes from.
Heathens.
As the door opens slightly, Dave pokes his head in, “Do you have a minute to chat, DJ?”
He’s broken my concentration so I invite him in to sit down and offer him some Earl Grey Tea. He doesn’t get the significance of that either…
Heathen.
“What’s up, Dave?”
Normally when these analysts come into my office they’ve made a giant mistake in a model they’ve submitted or they’re looking at another job and want me to give them more money for them to stay.
“DJ, I have a personal problem.”
Fraternizing In The Workplace
I’m a smart guy and I have an incredible amount of compassion and empathy for people… But we have a trained psychologist on staff and a full People and Culture team to deal with this kind of thing, so immediately, I was uncomfortable.
I offered to call our psychologist and get Dave an emergency session right away, but he says that he needs advice from someone that he “respects as a man.”
Something inside me dies a little knowing that this won’t be a fun conversation, but I sit on the edge of my desk directly across from Dave and say, “Sure man, I’m here to listen.”
Dave starts to cry.
I wasn’t expecting this.
My office is like a giant glass cube in an otherwise open-plan office. Thankfully, my office is a position where Dave’s back is to the outside and nobody can see him.
“Hey, Dave… Buddy… It’s ok. Get it together, let's talk.”
I hand him some tissues and he gets himself together.
“I have been living with Tammy for nine months.”
Tammy is one of our relief secretaries. She works in our admin secretarial pool under our Office Manager, Georgia.
I didn’t know this.
“Tammy has been having an affair with Rowan from Debt.”
Rowan was an up and coming star in our firm. I had tried to hire him into my team about four months earlier, but the Debt Financing team promoted him to keep him.
I sighed. “I see. That’s awful, I’m sorry.”
“I need Tammy to be fired.”
I laughed out loud thinking he was kidding, but the look on his face suggested that he was serious.
“Dave, that’s not going to happen. Georgia would probably do unspeakably painful things to you if she heard you say that.”
“But Tammy was fraternizing in the office and that’s against our terms of employment.”
He was right, our previous CEO was Veteran and he put that rule in there despite not adhering to it himself. We never enforced it, thankfully.
“Sorry, Dave, so were you. In fact, there’s probably an argument that you were in a senior position to her which would make this all a bit more awkward.”
Dave’s face was a complex web of emotions.
“I understand, you’re right.”
And with that, Dave went back to his desk.
Chaos Ensues
Not long after lunch, our office manager, Georgia, sways into our office.
“Come with me, we have a problem.”
I follow behind her as we make our way to a conference room where I’m greeted by our psychologist, Dr Annie, and Prishana, our head of People and Culture.
Sitting across the other side of the conference table are Tammy, Dave, and Rowan.
Georgia closes the door behind me.
“Right then, shall we start,” says Dr Annie.
A cacophony of bickering commences from the three young people sitting at the table.
I look at Georgia and she gives me a hint of a smile while shaking her head as if to say, “Can you believe we have to deal with this?”
After about thirty seconds, Dr Annie, who is the baddest bitch I know, slams her fist on the table, “Shut it, pigeons.”
Instant silence, Prishana looks up from her phone with a frightened look on her face.
Dr Annie tears into them about their teenage romances spilling into the workplace and not being properly formed adults who are able to deal with even the simplest emotions.
When Dr Annie gets on a run, you don’t stop her… Poor Rowan tried.
“Dr Annie, I didn’t know Tammy was seeing him.”
Tammy is shocked, “Fuck you, Rowan, you asked me if your cock was bigger than Dave’s.”
Dave looked like he was going to cry again.
Prishana looked like she was going to have a stroke.
Dr Annie hit the table again, “You’re all like children with prematurely developed genitals who don’t know how to control yourselves. Pull it together.”
Georgia chuckled out loud at that.
“Ok, let’s deal with these relationships quickly. Tammy, are you still seeing Rowan?”
“God no, he told Dave just to piss him off.”
I looked at Rowan somewhat shocked. Despite Dave being a whimpering idiot at the moment, he had four inches and 30 pounds on Rowan, that would probably not had gone well for the little guy.
“Ok, so Rowan, I’m recommending to Prishana that you are getting a week’s suspension for violating the fraternization clause of your employment contract.”
Rowan made a face like he was going to complain, he saw the fear in Prishana’s eyes and he nodded.
“Go home.”
Rowan got up and left the conference room.
Dr Annie put on the role of a friendly couple’s therapist, “Now, Tammy and David, we need to discuss your relationship.”
I interjected at this point.
“Both of them are getting suspended for the week. Georgia, any objections?”
She shook her head in the negative.
“Good, Prishana, go do the paperwork, Annie, you take these two to your office for whatever you’re going to do with them, and Georgia and I are going back to work.”
Workplace Relationships Are Hard
I’ve had more than a couple of purely sexual relationships with people in the office over the years and always enjoyed them. It adds a layer of excitement and tension to the office.
But the reality is unless you’re smart and selective about who you tangle with, the results can end up being quite messy.
I can’t help but think of the phrase, “Don’t shit where you eat” whenever I come across one of these types of relationships going wrong.
There’s an element of truth to that because when they go badly, they become toxic not just for everyone directly involved but the people around them.
Less than six months after this episode, Rowan left for another firm — we didn’t try to counter offer because, to use a famous Seinfeld line, “He wasn’t Penske material.”
Dave and Tammy broke up and Dave took a job in Asia within a month of the event happening.
Tammy left shortly thereafter because the other teams in the office found out about the whole situation and Georgia used her extensive contacts to find the young lady a better job in another firm.
We ended up losing a great analyst in Rowan, an incredibly capable administration assistant in Tammy, and a mediocre analyst in Dave.
The whole situation was toxic.
My advice is, unless you’re a sociopath or you don’t care about your job, don’t have sex or establish relationships with the people you work with.
It’s just too hard, and if the relationship goes south, you put your job at risk as well, so it ends up being a lose/lose proposition.
Author’s note: Names and places changed to protect everyone’s privacy.
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