Managing Sticky Situations at Work

Sticky Romantic Situations in the Office 1213. We spend most of our waking hours at work. Research shows thatmost of our friends are people with whom we work. Naturally wemight find our soul mate among those friends at work.4. The workplace is a safe environment for meeting people in contrastto bars or internet encounters.5. People are thrown together to work on projects. They depend onand trust one anther to carry out tasks. As the proverbial saying goes,one thing leads to another.6. At work you meet people with similar interests. An attorney whodefends the downtrodden lives by certain values as a person. Howdoes that attorney find a partner with similar values? Most likely heor she will run into that ideal person at work. Work puts us next topeople similar to us.STICKY SITUATIONS AND SEXUAL HARASSMENTThe new workplace, where men and women work together in allkinds of situations, begs the question, What does sexual harassmentmean? Unfortunately the laws do not always help us understand theanswer to this question.The Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission hasdefined sexual harassment as ‘‘unwelcome sexual advances, requestsfor sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexualnature when submission to or rejection of such conduct is used asthe basis for employment decisions ...or such conduct has the purposeor effect of creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive workingenvironment.’’ 6You may read what the law says and ask yourself, how do I knowwhat constitutes an intimidating or hostile environment? The firstpart of the law clearly states that if you request sexual favors forsomething in return for something else, or quid pro quo, you violatethe law. As the following example illustrates, the second part is lessstraightforward.Phyllis recently ended a relationship with her co-worker, Martin.They had lived together for over a year. When things soured, Phyllistold Martin she wanted to end the relationship, and she askedhim to move out. Because they work together, Martin and Phyllissee each other every day. As sales representatives for a large drugcompany, they travel separately to different territories, but whenin the office, they work side by side. Martin did not want to breakup the relationship. He vowed he loved Phyllis. Now that the