It’s a tale as old as time: Girl starts new job, cute boy happens to already be working there, girl and boy meet and become friends, girl and boy fall in intense, relentless “like” with each other. The rest is short-lived, strong-winded, and will more often than not end in awkwardly explaining to your boss that you would like to be moved to another department. I bet human resources reads cases like these and laughs at us mere civilians, so pathetically privy to our whims. I don’t blame them; workplace play is complicated at best.

But then again..

What’s so wrong with some flirty banter over the copy machine every now and again? It certainly makes data entry a little more bearable. Worse things have been done in an office than one employee asking another out for after-work beverages. Besides that: what if, what if, what if?
Call me a hopeless romantic, but what if the cute guy in accounting is actually the one for you? What if he likes the same bands, reads the same blogs, and is totally boyfriend-material?

I have been privy to the best-case scenario of workplace play. My boss and his wife met this way; dated for a couple years, and now are happily married and making the rest of the general public positively green with jealousy.

In defence of workplace play: It’s not all gangly frivolity. I mean, maybe when we were 17 and working as co-ed camp counsellors, yes, cute lifeguard will most likely dump you for the blonder camp counsellor, and yes, you will likely cry and regret is for the rest of the week. But hey, we’re (near) adults now! We ooze maturity and maybe we’ve been around long enough to be able to differentiate between the common fling and the long-haul kind.

At the end of the day, knowing is almost always better than wondering. And if you can already cut the office tension with a knife, maybe the harm’s already been done. We are living in a time governed by dating and romance, (and you are either the exception or a liar if you deny it), and the world is our match.com. For some, (most), walking into work every day is like walking into a conveniently available pool of employed singlets, keenly acute to their own undeniable instincts to be one of a pair. Like I said, worse things have happened in the workplace.

“Don’t shit where you eat.” Or, you know, stop calling it “shit” and accept the fact that we’re all thinking about the same thing anyways. The heart wants, right?