the sandwich maneuver, the poison ivy, and other stories of workplace romance

Last week, we talked about workplace romance gone either wrong or right, and here are 12 of my favorite stories you shared.

1. The emergency deployments

The company I worked for occasionally had to respond to statewide emergencies (think every two years). When these happened, you had to go work in a different location and fill roles for the emergency. So a team lead on emergency could just be a support staffer at their day job or a middle line manager could become the states liaison with the feds. Somehow this change in location and status made people lose their minds. The sudden power made the person “sexy”: coworkers (often married) would begin affairs with this person. There was drama and fights as this newfound power showed itself in personal favors, petty revenge, and love triangles.

And then … the emergency was over and we returned home and there was (somehow as a surprise) fallout as people realized they had to still work with the coworkers they had slept with/ backstabbed / caught in affairs / tried to seduce.

Mind-boggling. And guess what happened on the next emergency deployment?

2. The sofa

Many years ago, we had a sitting area adjacent to the women’s bathroom that had a beautiful sofa in it. We redecorated one year and I asked what was to become of the sofa because I really liked it and if they were donating it, I would be happy to take it off their hands.

I was promptly told by our Administrator that I would not like that sofa due to the fact it was the ‘after hours meet up sofa.’ Apparently, on SEVERAL occasions, housekeeping walked in on numerous employees throughout the years, having sex after hours on said couch. I did not take the sofa.

3. The declaration

Coworker and I were best work buddies for two years at a distribution center. One day he walked up to me and said, “OP, I love you.” I cheerily told him I loved him, too. He said, “No. I mean I really love you.”

I was stunned, thought about it, and eight months later we were married. We retired together in 2010 and will celebrate 27 years in July.

4. The annual conference

We had a couple from different states that had a “Same Time Next Year” relationship at the annual conference. They were both married with kids at home but hooked up all week at the conference. They were not discreet about it.

5. The sandwich maneuver

Over the first couple of months on a new job, I got to know one of the managers gradually because my work overlapped with his area of responsibility. I didn’t particularly care for him, he was kind of a jerk, honestly. I had heard workplace gossip about someone who had just gotten married a few months ago and was already getting divorced because his wife was cheating on him. It was this man, and it seemed to explain why he acted like a jerk at times.

As I got to know this man, another coworker pointed out he was spending more time “explaining work things” to me than I needed. She said she thought he liked me. I will admit, he had started to grow on me. But dating him seemed like too much of a trainwreck: 1) my own rule about not dating coworkers; 2) his recent separation and pending divorce; 3) he was a manager, though not my manager.

One day he asked for half of my Subway (footlong) sandwich, saying he hadn’t brought lunch and didn’t have time to go out and get lunch. I was planning to eat half for lunch, half for dinner because I was taking night classes at the time. And I think he knew that, but I explained it anyway. And he said, without missing a beat, “I’ll buy you dinner.”

We had dinner later that night after my class. That was a Wednesday night. It sounds crazy, but by Sunday evening, we both decided we really liked each other and wanted to keep seeing each other and no one else. We kept it secret at work for a couple of months. And we got married a little over two years later. We were married for just over 34 years and still would be — we are not only because this amazing man passed away two years ago.

I found out later that the same coworker who had told me she thought he liked me had also told him to “stop going in her office and drooling all over her, and just ask her out.” So glad this coworker helped nudge us together.

6. The printer gambit

I met my partner when I was an undergrad at a university where he was IT staff. (He’d dropped out and become full-time staff so we were the same age.) Some very romantic early gestures included: fixing the common printer queues so my print jobs would jump ahead of everyone else’s, and altering all the computer clusters to replace Clippy with the cat version of Clippy, because Clippy annoyed me so much.

Probably technically an abuse of his employee privileges but I was smitten. (And still am lo these 26 years later, where he’s now my in-house sysadmin and continues to keep my computing technology running smoothly and with love.)

7. The poison ivy

I worked at a boarding school where faculty and staff (and their families) all lived on campus. A staff member had an affair with another staff member’s husband. They had claimed that they were just friends due to a shared interest in cycling. The affair came to light when they both got horrible poison ivy, including in places that would not normally be exposed on a bike ride.

8. The food

I met my husband at work when we were both 20 years old working in a terrible restaurant that was really exploitative. I was waiting tables and he was a line cook. The restaurant made me waive my right to breaks, and one day I was so busy waiting tables that I didn’t eat for nine hours and was starting to feel sick. We weren’t allowed to eat any of the restaurant food without paying for it, and I was completely broke at the time. I had been at the job about a month, and my husband (who I had never spoken to), made me a really REALLY nice plate of food and snuck it out to me.

I think I fell in love in that exact moment. We’ve been together 10 years now.

9. The hotel room

Very early in my career, I worked for a small consultancy where two key staff were working on a project for the same client and every time they went for an on-site, we would book them a hotel for a couple of nights. Well, over the months, sparks flew and they fell in love, but kept it very very quiet … until the day where their quarterly trip to Big City fell in the week of a big conference and we were only able to book one hotel room at the last minute.

When I sheepishly confessed that one of them would have to skip the trip because I’d left it too late to book two rooms at the hotel, the man went pink and the woman laughed and said, “Sweetie, don’t worry about it – we only ever use one room anyway.” I’d say that was the most awkward conversation of my career except that it wasn’t, because a few months later I had to explain to the client’s accountant why we were now only billing them for one hotel room.

(The happy couple will be celebrating their 17th wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks.)

10. The invitation

I accidentally went on a date with a coworker. He asked me what I was doing after work and I told him without realizing that he was asking if I wanted to do something together. So he tagged along, I hated it, he was apologetic, and we’ve been married for 16 years now.

11. The alleged rumor

One late afternoon, at the very end of the workday, my entire department — which was made up of lots of sub-departments — was called up to the floor where the executive offices were. The conference room couldn’t hold all of us, so the VP gathered everyone in that floor’s lobby and told us …

… that we should stop spreading rumors about [male employee several rungs above me on the corporate ladder] and [female employee who reported to that male employee] and we especially needed to stop saying that they were having after-hours sex on the table of the conference room that we all couldn’t fit into.

I had only ever heard the male employee’s name, and only in reference to him being the head of Sub-Department X. And I had never even heard of the female employees name.

I for sure had never heard any of those rumors before, but I absolutely knew about them afterward!

12. The successful holiday party date

I’m the letter-writer for this letter.

We’ve been together 10 years today!

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