Is workplace romance really off limits?

I got involved with a colleague — nothing detrimental. She stopped talking about us. She just talks to me when it’s work, but I am not yet ready to go back to us being just colleagues. I am married and her boss.

Your question is one of those most disliked by experts who deal with matters such as we deal with in this column for several reasons.

The first and perhaps most obvious is the reality that you ask a question for which you already know the answer. In the unlikely event that you do not know the answer to your question is that you must get up and get out of that relationship fast.

This seemingly simple answer raises the second and perhaps more fundamental question of why you must stop dreaming around, get to your senses and concentrate on your job, wife, and social responsibilities.

Do we give this answer because it is morally right that you get out of the relationship, or is it perhaps because it could interfere with the profits of the company.

If it is for moral reasons, what right or responsibility do we have to hold custody of your morality? Does this question stand a better chance of address by your priest or Imam!

It is also possible that you raise this question to us as elders in the community and that what you are looking for is a response from an African elder who has “seen many things”.

As you can see, what on the face of it is a simple question could end up with all sorts of possibilities.

Allow me to complicate things just for a moment, to enable me illustrate the point.

Let us assume that you are married to three wives already and being of the Islamic faith, are entitled to a fourth one.

The decision as to where you get a fourth wife is not a moral question but a simple and practical matter. It is possible, for example, that you have noticed that your colleague is a perfect potential life partner and what you are now doing is to “test the waters” to see if things could work out for the two of you.

You might even have decided that in the event that things work out, she could be easily absorbed in a relative’s company, when you could no longer be her boss but her husband. That is a way dealing with that complication.

So, if this is “work in progress” then no real moral issue arises, at least on the face of things.

At the other extreme, if you are in a monogamous Christian marriage, and hence without capacity to contract another marriage, a whole new set of factors come into play.

Again, for simplicity, let us assume that you are in your mid-fifties, perhaps pot-bellied from too much nyama choma and beer, recently diagnosed with diabetes and hypertension, I now ask, what might you be thinking of doing with this 27-year-old financial analyst who you now have eyes on?

When you asked her out for lunch the first time, she accepted the lunch in all innocence as one would accept lunch from a father and potential mentor.

It is indeed the card you played at her by suggesting that you would like to discuss with her some changes you were thinking about in her department.

When she accepted to go for drinks at the club the first time, it was because you promised she would meet a colleague who has worked with you on this project for many years.

At the club, you showed her off as you latest find, and when she had left, you told your friends how well educated, intelligent and beautiful she was.

As alcohol took its toll on you, and as the blood sugar played its tricks on your body, you told stories of a future with her in bed. This is the substance of your midlife crisis. Many stories based on hope rather than experience.

She stopped talking about you and her because her uncle told her mother to warn your colleague about you. At the club you had spoken in his presence, without realising he was there, you were simply too drunk!

As you can see, a seemingly simple question can lead to many possible scenarios and lead to many different answers.

For the older man in midlife crisis, the answer might well be that he first addresses his health status and spend more time exercising than dreaming of sexual encounters he will never have. For the man with three wives a fourth is in order.

There is, however, another dimension that your question raises, which is about the reality of relationships at the workplace.

In the real world (where we all live), relationships at the workplace are as real as a profit and loss statement. They cannot be wished away.

They exist between single people, much as they are seen between married men and women. They also exist between juniors and their seniors in all the above categories.

Some organisations have very clear written policies on relationships while others live in great comfort with their heads deeply in the sand.

Depending on many factors including the size of the company its geographical spread etc, a clear policy position is perhaps one way to help the company and its staff.