Office affairs

The Patrick Sharp thread made me think of this: How often have office affairs interrupted your workplace?

I can think of at least three times a spouse has come to my office to confront the co-worker sleeping with their husband or wife, although never a co-worker sleeping with another's significant other. I did have a co-worker hit on my wife, but he didn't know who she was and he hit on every pretty woman he saw.

We had an office manager who was married to the football coach at a rival school from the one I covered. She was rumored to have had relationships with a number of guys in the office. She and I would compare notes about games and when I called her husband to do an advance of Hometown High vs. his school, I said "Your wife told me xyz (pertaining to his team)." He replied, "She's an f-ing a-hole."

The divorce followed soon and FWIW, they met when he was a coach and she was still a cheerleader at the school.

 

I dated a newsroom colleague, twice. It adds up to a lot of time spent together, which isn't always healthy, if ever.

 

I married someone who was a co-worker when we started dating, covertly.

It was fun listening to other co-workers talk right in front of me about wanting to bang her, yet having no idea we had been together for more than a year before going public. It was also fun listening to several awkward apologies after they found out.

 

I've seen both sides of this. One office I worked in, a department manager was married to a reporter. While she was out on maternity leave, he started screwing one of the other women in the office. Even took her with him on a work trip. Found out later he also hit on an intern in his department. I'm leaving out a good bit of detail and these aren't even the only awful stories I can tell about the guy. The really sad part is he isn't even the worst human being I met in the business.

Another married co-worker had an affair with one of the women in the office. His wife never showed up at the office, but there were some ugly moments when he and the girlfriend broke up.

On the positive side, one of my buddies secretly dated one of the women in the office for at least a year before they started telling just a few friends. They are now married with a kid.

 

We had a two deskers who used to go on break to blow the pressroom manager. Not at the same time. One was pretty cute. The other ... not so much. The pressroom guy was fat slob, with a few DUIs under his belt.

One of our phone book sales managers was banging an underling, both were married. He got canned. She got a warning. One of her male co-workers was subsequently let go after he pitched about the unfair treatment of the whole thing.

One of our editors was canned after he (in front of the night desk and night newsroom) informed her he'd really "like to fuck her." Yeah ... She had previously threatened to sue the paper for sexual harassment. This was a few years after her husband, who was indicted on sex charges, shot himself in the paper's parking lot, where he was employed.

One reporter and his wife (now divorced) were swingers. They went to same sex club as our copy desk editor (a HUGE, Orca-fat guy).

We didn't have a too many newsroom hookups.

 

Paging freq...

 

I had two instances. One of the news editors at my first stop had been my TA in J-school and we had a friends with benefits thing going for awhile. Purely convenience. Almost nobody in the office knew.

Later on, I dated a newsside copy editor for about a year. Her boss was the aforementioned former TA. That was a bit awkward.

 

It supposedly happened shortly before I arrived, and I knew the people reportedly involved but never asked them about it and then one of them left VERY quickly ... according to legend, there was a married couple in the newsroom, and one of them started stepping out with another co-worker. That co-worker used the newsroom's messaging system to tell her lover what a wonderful night she had.

The message system, of course, used each peron's first initial and last name. The co-worker mistakenly typed in the wrong first initial.

 

I met both of my wives at work, but there was nothing salacious. The first worked in a different department and the second in another bureau.

I was single the first time and divorced but in a long-distance relationship the second. My co-workers were betting on whether I'd pick East Coast or West Coast.

Home-court advantage prevailed for West Coast, but you'd have to ask her if she thinks she won.

 

We had married couples in the newsroom at every one of my stops. At my first stop there were three instances that I knew of where someone had a spouse at the competing paper, which I thought was funny.

 

I was 19 and working sports at my hometown daily and banged the smoking hot 30-year old from circulation for about four months. What an amazing summer.

 

At one point at one paper I worked, half the sports staff was either dating or married to a co-worker. One marriage is still intact, the other only lasted a brief time.