Buddha babble on Real Life Fiction

In the modern day professional landscape of urban offices and call centers, one of the most common events next to high cost parking and street lunch food is office romance.

The work place, whether it’s the office, the factory, or a school, is fast becoming a prime location for dating and meeting your mate (whether temporary (of course you know what I mean) or long term) because the average hot-blooded legal aged individual spends a clean third of his waking hours and more (for overtime) in the office so the chances to meet and get to know people from very choice walks of life is highly possible.

While office courtship and relationships are a very prevalent practice, ask most people whether the office is a suitable place for romance and they’ll probably say no — if only because of the potential for awkwardness if the relationship ends on a sour note.

Before Cupid strikes in the work place, here are a few tips to ensure your office love match doesn’t disrupt your concentration or your career.

1. Check the Rules

Consult your human resources department, to determine your company’s code of conduct; one universal expectation, whether official or not, is that bosses should never date their subordinates.

Not to misconstrue as leniency, many employers or managers do not ban office relationships as long as both people do their jobs and aren’t engaged in any form of unprofessional conduct.

Should there be a direct reporting relationship, that’s indeed a problem, either from the conflict of interest point of view or the potential for a sexual harassment claim.

2. Friends Zone First

Get to know a coworker outside the office as a friend before crossing a romantic line. This is so mainly because people generally show up differently in their office environment from their personal lives. Get a good idea of who the person is out of their workplace attire by not confining your meet-ups with work related chances. Take time to mingle outside of the office arena so as to clarify that the guy isn’t just picking up a girl in the office out of convenience of the work place encounters.

3. To Tell or not to Tell

You don’t tell your bosses because they don’t care who you’re intimate with. You don’t tell your co-workers because they’ll be like flies on bicho-bicho. The office is too small a community for juicy news like this to spread around and you don’t want your juice or your news spreading around. Whether you like it or not, you’re mostly on your own, maverick. Keep your counseling from bridges to a minimum. Generally, advice from different quarters tend to be the same and the odds are, she either likes you or not.

You don’t tell because you don’t want to attract undue attention on you. You don’t tell because you’re absolutely clear that this personal relationship is not affecting your professional duties.

If you have to tell, then it means you’re screwing up and shit is about to hit the fan. You keep the low-down on the down low.

4. No More Drama

Don’t start a "relationship" by hooking up with a co-worker at the company Christmas party or team-building picnic. Most of all, don’t even think to begin hooking up after getting sauced with a little (to a lot) of liquor. If it’s alcohol-driven, there’s often a lot of regret (lalo na pag pumikit). Impulsive passionate meet ups the night before don’t normally continue until the light of day the next morning when everyone is sober.

Impusive hook-ups tend to make wild-eyed drama queens so be very careful being hooked up with people who share in that love of drama. That’s not a reliable foundation to build a positive relationship on.

5. Avoid Office ‘Canoodling’

If you do get involved with a colleague, don’t even think about holding hands in the company cafeteria, playing "footsie" under the conference table, or showing any signs of intimacy in front of your coworkers, because it simply IS NOT professional.

TOO MANY complications.

Forget sending any flowers or abusing cigarette breaks and dark corners, because if there’s any sound advice that cannot get any sounder, it’s never shit where you eat. Because shit tends to hit the fan. When that happens, everyone gets really dirty.

6. Prepare an Escape Plan.

Whether or not the relationship endures, be ready to change jobs.

What almost inevitably happens is that one person ends up leaving the company just so to make it comfortable for the other. In this case, it’s not just the spurned lover who suffers the consequences, it’s the company who pays the price.