The Reality Method 2.0

Surviving the Workplace Affair

I will be the first to admit that I have had relationships with several women I worked with — both coworkers and subordinates — and gotten away with it.

But I chalk this up to being very, very lucky, rather than being particularly skilled.

Don’t Sh!t Where You Eat
The prototypical “office romance” is pretty risky, and comes with the same caveat the “flatmate” seduction — it’s generally not a great idea to try it unless you are either extremely employable, or have a stash of “fuck you” money you can fall back if you should be fired.

Again, as in the living-together scenario, working with someone generates an enormous amount of comfort, as well as little bits of attraction (familiarity breeds…well, contempt) depending on how the office politics are structured.

The natural hierarchy of a large corporation or other organization lend themselves well to the exploitation of dominance and status that are so key to seduction. Throw this together with a strong social taboo against office romance, and you’ve got the perfect setup for hot hookups.

It’s interesting. Often, if you have a dominant female supervisor, she will try to fuck you as another way of exercising power over you, just like a man would…and that puts you in a pretty dangerous situation (see Michael Douglas and Demi Moore in Disclosure), because it’s easy for a woman to allege sexual harassment unless you do exactly what she wants (and sometimes even if you do).

On the other hand, if you’re in a supervisory position, it’s more likely that you’ll have female subordinates who will want to fuck you — at least in an office-fantasy way — but consummating that fantasy can be dangerous if you don’t handle them very carefully (just as easy for a subordinate to assert sexual harassment tied to promotion or whatever). In the U.S. this has lead to crazy-making political “necessities” such as never being alone in the same room as a female colleague , which are really just tacit acknowledgments that batshit-crazy women will sometimes try pretty much anything to get their way.

The one industry where this isn’t such a problem is restaurants and hospitality (including bars, clubs, hotels, casinos, etc). In this industry everybody pretty much fucks everybody else and it’s not a big deal to management (since they’re typically fucking everyone, too). The only time I’ve seen sex harassment allegations flying in that industry is when a white racist female employee wants to get a black male employee fired (bringing new meaning to the term “interlocking oppressions”).

Keeping it Under Wraps
The only “technique” I have discovered for keeping office affairs under wraps is — wait for it — giving bad sex. If the attraction vibe is hot to start with, but totally falls flat when it comes time to do the deed, and you end up having completely pedestrian or otherwise disappointing sex, if the woman has a particular psychology she will forget the whole thing and be too ashamed to admit it to anyone.

But be careful; if the woman’s psychology isn’t just right — if it’s imperious or self-important or a power-tripper — you stand a good chance of getting slapped with a sex harassment charge. Some women can be awfully vindictive if you ‘fail to deliver’ the goods in bed. Women are told often they deserve nothing but the “best” sex no matter what, and so getting bad sex can sometimes really trigger their anger, causing them to lash out unpredictably.

The drawback to this technique, of course, is the bad sex.

If you Must have a Workplace Affair
Here are some further simple suggestions to follow that may help you get away with it (without a lawsuit, sex harassment charge, or termination).

– Don’t have sex at the office. If this sounds mind-numbingly obvious to you, you’d probably be surprised how many people simply can’t resist the temptation to experience the “thrill” and “danger” of being discovered. Yeah, and some people get a thrill out of having unprotected sex, too, or choking themselves nearly to death in a plastic bag while having sex.

– Don’t involve company equipment. Perhaps even stupider than those who insist on having their trysts on company property are those who also insist on doing it on the company’s copy machine (in full view of the security cameras, no less) — necessitating a visit from the Xerox repairman: “So the glass just spontaneously broke, huh?” Not bloody likely.

– Don’t tell anyone. Anyone. Again, this seems to be a no-brainer, until you realize that human nature practically compels us to share juicy secrets like this, if not for bragging rights then usually for some other ego-inflating reason. The only reason I broke this cardinal rule here (at the very beginning of this post) is that not only is this blog pretty anonymous, but all my workplace indiscretions were years ago, and happened in jobs that I don’t put on my resume anymore.

Remember the saying: Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. I would paraphrase in this context to say “Two can keep a secret if their live(lihoods) depend on it.”

– Don’t be seen together outside of work. Although the first suggestion necessitates meeting outside of work, it’s probably best if you don’t do it in public. Try explaining to a co-worker or better, your boss, how you’re “Working on the Fisher account” over cocktails at a local happy hour.

– Make it a short-term affair. Get your goodies and go. Break it off while the action is still hot, while expressing a heartfelt desire to continue it, but an admission that you just can’t take the secrecy and stress of it anymore. Sometimes your partner will quit the company, and thereby legitimize the whole thing. Of course, sometimes that unintentionally kills the attraction and chemistry, but such is life.

That’s it. If you can’t figure it out beyond that, you’re on your own.