Office Mate: Your Employee Handbook for Romance on the Job by Stephanie Losee and Helaine Olen makes the case for looking for love at work. It is a topic frequently derided in popular culture, with many TV shows and movies showing the hazards of office romances. The downsides make good screenplay, of course – not only is there the risk of a broken heart, but also the risks of a broken wallet if things go wrong and a career is lost along with the romance.
There is something compelling about the analogy of the office with the village of long ago. Common ground is a good starting point for any relationship and it is true that potential partners can size each other up over weeks rather than the minutes of a chance encounter in a speed dating match or a bar. The authors develop their case well that this favours serendipity and the chance to get to know someone in depth rather than trying to pattern-match one's ideal partner template in the space of a few minutes. The authors are also living proof of the theory – both of them met their husbands at work!
Why The Office May Be a Great Place to Find a Perfect Partner
The book is split into three parts. Part 1, titled Why Work Just Might be the Perfect Place to Find True Love is dedicated to pushing back on the popular notion of the workplace as a poor place to meet a future love interest. It also describes some of the issues and how to deal with them, both for indicating one's interest in a romantic partnership with a co-worker, and how to interact with other colleagues.
The second part builds on the assumption that the initial stages went well, and is called Office Mate Etiquette-Managing Your Workplace Romance. Here the authors take the reader through the minefield of hazards that await the partners. Unlike most other dating scenarios the office is after all a place where the main aim is to work and earn money, rather than dating, and this needs to be respected. Some of the issues are obvious, such as never using the company email for personal communications with one's paramour, even if the company has an enlightened view towards workplace romances. Some are more subtle, like making sure that it is not just work that the partners have in common.
For Dating, The Workplace Has Similarities to Well Informed Communities in the Past
Part 3 tidies up some loose ends and reiterates the central thesis of the book, that the modern workplace has similarities with the communities of years gone by, where "many people knew things about both partners and their families. It was a community that gave single people the luxury of time to know one another, to go well beyond looks and style when deciding to invest more time in a possible pairing".
Though Office Mate is a light-hearted tour through the pros and cons of romance at the office, its theme is interesting and bears some reflection. There is something sad about the fact that the closest that modern life often has to the close communities of the past is the workplace, and yet this is a dating scene that many people overlook, perhaps from the drubbing it receives in the media as well as the risk to one's livelihood.
Office Mate definitely approaches its subject from a straight female perspective, however many of the insights apply just as well to other perspectives. Even readers who are not looking for their own "Office Mate: may glean some nuggets from what is a refreshingly different way of looking at the 9 to 5.
Sources
Losee, Stephanie and Olen, Helaine, Office Mate, Cincinnati, OH: Adams Media, 2007, ISBN:9781598693300
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