办公室的恋情

Doctor Robi Ludwig is a psychotherapist. Steve Santagati is an author, Good to see both of you.

Thank you!

Now there're according to a vaulting¹ corporate² career...career information website, 58% of employees say they had an office romance, that's up from 46% in 2003 . So why are more people having office romances?

There are more women in the workplace. It is really the modern day dating service. You have a lot of opportunity to work. A lot of people work so much, they don't have time to socialize. So you are gonna look around at the good-looking people around you and say hey. You have a lot of possibilities.

So what are the drawbacks, though?

The drawbacks though, obviously if it begets³ complicated and everybody knows, and that's the big thing at the beginning of an office romance, you wanna really keep it quiet.

When it ends people can get vicious. And so then you have a different memory about how the relationship started. That's when sexual harassment⁴ charges can take place. That's why companies get so upset.

Yeah, but if you don't want to start / right away. . . the thing, the thing is, look,

Start right away what?

No, start right away and what(inaudible),

What're you starting yet?

She's getting you!

(Inaudible)

You wanna, you wannaYou wanna make su(re). . . Well, you don't start dating somebody at work if you think he or she is gonna set a sexual harassment case against you.

But how do you know?

But probably you don't know it's no because people can get vengeful and even violent in worst case scenarios⁶.

Yeah. But an office , an office roman(ce ). . yeah, they can get violent?

They can get violent.

Man, where are you working?

(inaudible)

I used to work in a psych(o)-hospital, so don't ask me.

You are working on a oil rig, ok?

The thing is that you want, the nice thing about an office romance is a lot of romances , a lot of relationships happen really quickly. But because of the mystery and you have to be really quiet about it, the relationship will actually take a little bit longer to begin and unfold.

There's some truth that you do get a sense of who you are dating because you get(because you've already seen them), you get to see them, you get to know them as a person, you get to see how they think and how they operate, and, and in a lot of cases, you are with people who have similar values, and similar mindsets which is why according to many surveys, a lot of these relationships end up turning into long term relationships and even marriage.

In fact you're speaking from experience.

That's right. I married my husband and we met at work and it worked out fine, so.

It makes sense you are spending 40, 50 hours a week at work, (Yeah. Right. ) and even though office romance, or any kind of thing, even if you are dating somebody in your building, for example, it's a bad idea, in general, but if you're gonna do it, you gotta be covert⁷ about it.

In my, in my view. . .

(Inaudible), keep it on the down low

You gonna, it's gonna happen. It's natural. There is an older woman that we had, comment, and she said it's chemistry, if you see with someone at work, and no matter where you meet them, you're gonna have to be with them.

It is part of life that you are gonna be attracted to people that you know and you are sharing confidences with. It's just normal.

Are there any, anything you shouldn't do like dating the boss?

No paper trail. . , well, date, don't date the boss.

Yeah. That's why it gets a little bit tricky⁸, because then it's very hard to say are you saying "yes" to the person, because they are more powerful than you. Is it hard to say no, because you're afraid of retaliation(Right. ). That's when it gets a little bit tricky, and you have to be smart about it, you have to think about worst case scenario⁵ , what's gonna happen if it doesn't work out, and you have to face this person every day. It's gonna be hard to be thought of as professionals . It's gonna be hard to stay at the workplace. What's more important, love or work?

So it sounds there's, there's really no hard and fast rule.

Right. No one size fits all.

Yet, they want. . . No paper trails, don't e-mail each other and don't touch each other in the office and make sure you hang out in areas where no one is gonna see you outside of work, and the office Christmas party is all coming up too. (That's already another story) That's a big, big, big deal, so anybody has been looking at you all year, all of the sudden if. . . .

. . . fluorescent⁹ light and set the moonlight, it might be more romantic.

. . . start like . . . but, that's a, don't do it. (yeah) Be accurate.

ok, and for a note that Today Show's Christmas party takes place next week, just in case you want it. Anyway. . . .

1 vaulting   

n.（天花板或屋顶的）拱形结构

参考例句：

• The vaulting horse is a difficult piece of apparatus to master. 鞍马是很难掌握的器械。
• Sallie won the pole vaulting. 莎莉撑杆跳获胜。

2 corporate   

adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的

参考例句：

• This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
• His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。

3 begets   

v.为…之生父( beget的第三人称单数 )；产生，引起

参考例句：

• It begets at least seven standard type offspring from such matings. 这类交配中生下至少七个标准型后代。 来自辞典例句
• Violence begets violence until the innocent perish with the guilty. 暴力招致暴力直到这因罪行而无缘无故的毁灭。 来自电影对白

4 harassment   

n.骚扰，扰乱，烦恼，烦乱

参考例句：

• She often got telephone harassment at night these days.这些天她经常在夜晚受到电话骚扰。
• The company prohibits any form of harassment.公司禁止任何形式的骚扰行为。

5 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。

6 scenarios   

n.[意]情节；剧本；事态；脚本

参考例句：

• Further, graphite cores may be safer than non-graphite cores under some accident scenarios. 再者，根据一些事故解说，石墨堆芯可比非石墨堆芯更安全一些。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• Again, scenarios should make it clear which modes are acceptable to users in various contexts. 同样，我们可以运用场景剧本来搞清楚在不同情境下哪些模式可被用户接受。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

7 covert   

adj.隐藏的；暗地里的

参考例句：

• We should learn to fight with enemy in an overt and covert way.我们应学会同敌人做公开和隐蔽的斗争。
• The army carried out covert surveillance of the building for several months.军队对这座建筑物进行了数月的秘密监视。

8 tricky   

adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的

参考例句：

• I'm in a rather tricky position.Can you help me out?我的处境很棘手，你能帮我吗？
• He avoided this tricky question and talked in generalities.他回避了这个非常微妙的问题，只做了个笼统的表述。

9 fluorescent   

adj.荧光的，发出荧光的

参考例句：

• They observed the deflections of the particles by allowing them to fall on a fluorescent screen.他们让粒子落在荧光屏上以观察他们的偏移。
• This fluorescent lighting certainly gives the food a peculiar color.这萤光灯当然增添了食物特别的色彩。