How to Conduct an Office Affair Right Under the Boss's Nose
So you've fallen in love with a work colleague. Everyone knows it's an emotional minefield, but worse still, it's against company policy and punishable by a disciplinary tribunal. How are you going to maintain your relationship with your office lover without the boss or anyone else beginning to suspect your feelings run a little hotter than mutual professional respect for each other.
In the spirit of true love overcoming all obstacles, here are a few untried and untested ways of carrying on an office affair right in front of everyone at work:
- Arrange for a friend to call you in a meeting where both your lover and your boss are both attending. Rush out apologising that your (imaginary ) partner has called with an emergency and you have to take the call.
- Get your lover to wear a disguise and have them wait for you outside where colleagues can see to collect you for lunch. If the disguise is really good, get them to go to reception and ask for you.
- Develop a code for making arrangements to meet in front of the boss. 'Strategy document' means dinner tonight, 'sub-paragraph' means the time, 'brief the client' means book a hotel room. So: "Did you see the strategy document for project Ivy I emailed you? Have a look at sub-paragraph 20.15 and tell me what you think, then we should brief the client" really means "How about dinner tonight at a quarter past eight in The Ivy? I could book a hotel room for afterwards."
- Make a point of arriving together at work a few times in the morning. No one who is having an office affair would be stupid enough to do that.
- If you can do this without raising questions about your sexual preferences, flirt with your boss in front of your lover. Nothing blinds a manager to what is really going on around them than an over-inflated impression of their own self-importance.
- Substitute flowers and chocolates for a new stapler or pad of narrow-feint notepaper. Just don't make a meal of giving them to your lover - it's only office stationary after all. Mind you, nothing says I love you in quite the same way as a three-pack of post-it notes.
- Relate the fantastic weekend you had together to each other at the Monday morning catch-up meeting, as if you spent the time with other people. The more enthusiastic you are about it, the more your boss will think you are deeply in a relationship with people outside work.
- Complain about having to work late together. Doesn't your boss know you have a life outside of work? If this goes on for much longer, your (imaginary) partner is going to start thinking you're having an affair.