Roses are red, violets are blue. Office flings are fun — but they can be a nightmare too.
In a 2014 vault.com study, 56 percent of business professionals reported having engaged in workplace relationships. But for every happy couple who meet and fall in love in the break room, a slew of others eventually turn into exes who share a workspace.
“Statistically, we can assume that most workplace romances will fail,” says Sean Horan, Ph.D., a Texas State University professor who studies relationships in the office. “The odds are, you’ll break up with this person.”
Cue the awkward run-ins, midday spats and unavoidable tension — all hallmarks of an office romance gone awry, say three New Yorkers who’ve been there. Here, they share their cautionary tales of on-the-job affairs.
Romance and regret
At the Financial District recruiting firm where Jenna works in sales, the intraoffice hookup scene is alive and well.
“It’s a high-stress, high-drinking environment, so there’s a lot of incest,” says the 23-year-old, who prefers not to use her last name for professional reasons.
So when a cute colleague sitting at an adjacent table started flirting with her, Jenna had no qualms getting involved. Back-and-forth emailing turned into after-work drinks, and soon the two were dating steadily.
But at a tequila-soaked company happy hour just two months into the fledgling relationship, Jenna says, she got so drunk that she ended up going home with her firm’s amorous CEO — right in front of the co-worker she’d been seeing.
Mortified and guilt-racked, she showed up at work the next day and fired off an apologetic email in hopes of avoiding an office confrontation.
“But he didn’t respond. He wouldn’t speak to me. He wouldn’t even look at me — and here he is sitting just to my right,” recalls Jenna, a Lower East Side resident. “I thought, ‘I can’t possibly work here anymore.’ I just wanted to quit.”
After about a week of torturous silent treatment, the guy finally confronted Jenna and told her off. Months of awkward hallway run-ins and how-could-you-do-that emails ensued.
“You’re at work, but you’re still fighting,” she says. “You can’t get away from it.”
These days, Jenna admits that the two have recently hooked up again — but the pair continue to squabble.
“It would just be a done deal if we didn’t work together,” she says, “but because we see each other every day, it’s never-ending.”
The office trap
Most workplace flings start with butterflies in the stomach and flirty encounters in the elevator. Not Kate’s. The Midtown consultant, who prefers not to use her last name for professional reasons, says she spent months fending off her smitten co-worker’s dinner invitations and after-hours emails.
“He was kind of a loser, and it felt sketchy to date someone at work,” says the 29-year-old of the colleague who sat directly next to her.
But overworked, lonely and with little time for a social life, Kate says she “ended up giving in” to the pressure to go out with him.
What should have been a one-and-done date — Kate said the two had little in common beyond their shared long hours at the office — dragged into a “miserable” six-month-long relationship, because Kate was terrified of the guaranteed at-work fallout if she broke things off.
“I was literally trapped, because he sat next to me,” she says. “I was only pretending I was happy.”
Thankfully, the corporate gods intervened — in the form of a plum job offer her co-worker-turned-boyfriend couldn’t resist taking.
“The second he physically left the firm, I dumped him,” says Kate, a Chelsea resident. “It was like I was finally free.”
She’s kept her work and love life separate ever since.
“The lesson,” she says, “is to set a clear rule for yourself that you won’t even contemplate dating at the office — and communicate that openly to any perpetual perpetrators.”
. . . And one happy ending
When Jesse Gaddis began work on his e-cigarette line, Bedford Slims, back in 2011, he had the ideal partner in mind: his girlfriend, Lisa Yen.
“People would tell me I shouldn’t go into business with someone I’m dating, and she got the same advice,” says Gaddis, 32, of Flatbush. “But I was like, ‘No, we’re cool. We work really well together.’ ”
And for the first year, they did. The couple, who met online in 2009, worked out of each other’s Williamsburg apartments, with Gaddis serving as CEO and Yen, 31, as creative director.
Then they hit a rough patch, due to “the usual communication issues.” Gaddis, thinking the relationship was kaput, went on a date with another woman. When Yen found out, she not only wanted out of the relationship for good, she wanted out of the business.
“Honestly, I didn’t want anything to do with him — I wanted to take a break from him, but I couldn’t because of our business,” recalls Yen.
She begrudgingly kept up with her responsibilities — communicating with Gaddis only through cold, short emails. “It was kind of like pulling teeth, trying to get work from me,” she admits. “Even if it was a reasonable request, I would still get upset with him.”
Gaddis ended up teaching himself graphic design to pick up Yen’s share of the work. But, heartbroken and distracted, it was difficult for him to get through each workday.
“Sadly, our company really suffered during this time, as if the business were mirroring our relationship,” he says.
Luckily, Gaddis and Yen’s story has a happy ending: The pair got back together, still work alongside each other— and are stronger for the experience. “But yeah, those sure were a rough six months,” Gaddis admits.