After receiving an overly familiar, slightly flirtatious email from an instructor of some fairly obnoxious and mandatory work training earlier this week, I have been pondering the usually horrible decision to become interested in someone from the office. Not that I was contemplating going out with said instructor (not bad looking but with a somewhat repellent personality), but just the idea itself. When it works out, it seems to be fairly fabulous. What could make more sense then meeting a potential spouse/partner than the place where you spend the majority of your waking hours? Also you know that you have at least one thing in common to talk about, so that’s gotta be good, right? I know of I think five or six couples that all met at work and things seemed to have worked out well there. But that’s not always the case.
I have never had wonderful experiences in this area. First let’s get the unrequited ones out of the way. There have been three total that I can think off the top of my head and while all were pretty painful, the last was perhaps the most crushing of crushes. The whole time I knew that there was really no chance, but an emotional cutter, I couldn’t resist upping the stakes by actually declaring my feelings. By declaring my feelings I mean that after several feeble attempts to speak to said coworker and friend, I chickened out and typed out a painfully honest email.
I had this particular crush for I guess almost a year although I picked what was probably the best and worst time to come clean. Instead of making a move when he was between girlfriends, by the time I decided it was better to say something and know for sure than to always think “what if”, well by that time, he was solidly involved with his current girlfriend. It was the best time as we were both leaving that particular workplace so that even when things were painfully awkward, it only lasted for a brief time. It seemed like FOREVER at the time but was in all reality pretty short. It was made all the worse when he asked me for vacation recommendations for where he should travel with his girlfriend, but I managed not to staple his head to the floor and moved on.
Then there were the beyond awkward times when I was approached, early on in my career, by married coworkers. This was both horrifying and disheartening. Particularly with the one, as I had actually looked up to him as something of a mentor and had met his wife and kids…ugh, I’m shuddering just remembering it. I beat myself up for a while about that one – not that I did anything but I kept wondering why he thought I would. It was difficult to be around him then, but there wasn’t much I could do other than just trying to avoid him in non-work situations.
With all this in mind, I’ve always advised younger coworkers to think twice about office place romances. Unfortunately I didn’t always take my own advice, or to be more precise, with three situations did I ignore the voice that was telling me that this would not end well. So the first one, much like J. Frisco Blingtime (see They Don’t Make Phone Booths Anymore) made me wish that I had not made that rule up about not revealing guys’ real names on this blog as his name was HILARIOUS. Seriously. I’m cracking up just remembering it. We’ll call him Bernard Trevor Turkeypants, III.* Although you probably don’t believe me, this is actually pretty close to his real name.
Trevor* was too suave. Southern accent, too cute, a little preppy, very witty – that type. We only had a brief, mini-liaison and I only knew that his name was Trevor because he didn’t reveal his full reveal name. A few days later when discussing said mini-liaison with a female coworker who threw the party where I met Trevor*, she told me his full real name and I almost peed my pants. We kept gasping for air, hysterically laughing and just shouting “Mrs. Turkeypants, III” over and over. I’d say that I felt mean about that, but this was after seeing him at work after the incident when he did that old standby of pretending that I didn’t exist and that we had never met.
The “hit it then quit it” mentality is perhaps my least favorite trait of men. I’m not saying all men behave that way, but I’ve seen enough of it where it really just makes me want to kick them in the head. With Trevor*, I wasn’t expecting a declaration of love and eternal devotion, but him acting as if he had no idea who I was really stung. Thankfully it wasn’t too horrible as we didn’t work in the same office and rarely ran into each other. Because he was a duke of douchebaggery, I got over it pretty quickly but it was still embarrassing to run into him at all. Ugh.
About a year later I got into another ill-advised situation with a guy who worked in the same building and was the coworker of a friend. Smith* was cute and funny but did not do wonders for my self-esteem as after our first meet, he kept getting my name wrong. This was also when I learned that it is not easy to go from hooking up with someone to actually dating them. He started traveling a lot for work and it just kind of naturally ended. Unfortunately when I switched buildings on a temporary rotation, he did the same so I got to see him in the halls from time to time but as time wore on, it was less awkward and eventually he changed jobs and I haven’t seen him since.
After that incident I renewed my resolve not to seek love amongst the cubicles (wouldn’t that make an awesome grocery store, romance novel?), which disintegrated when I met Brad.* Now Brad* was even better/worse in that he worked and lived way the hell away from me, but we saw each other from time to time at conferences. We started emailing occasionally in between conferences, had an almost liaison one year that was blocked effectively by a friend, kept emailing and then you guessed it, after we actually hooked up, he acted as if he had never met me before.
I don’t know what I was expecting – I mean I didn’t think he would change jobs and move and I don’t even know that I would really want to have any sort of real relationship with him. But what I didn’t expect was that he would completely ignore me afterwards, and I mean completely. He stopped emailing, didn’t respond to the one or two that I sent, and then I got to see his lovely face every week on a weekly video-teleconference that our offices held. Ugh.
Shortly after Brad*, I decided to end things with the Professor* (see The Notorious Tale of Professor Hickey) and just a few months later I started this very blog to review my previous attempts at dating to find out where I went wrong and improve my dating strategy.
Of course the awkwardness of attempting a relationship in the workplace where you could be confronted with the potential assclown’s face day after day if things go sour, pales by comparison to the horror of being a smitten kitten for a guy who lives in line of sight of one’s casa, but we’ll have to address that another day as I’m still trying not to jinx things with DW. Sigh. So for now, I’ll take my long-suffering dog out for a jaunt before meeting up with some pals for dinner and much needed libations.
*Name has been changed
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