thread of inappropriate professional attachments

this is the thread where you talk about WORK LUST and how inappropriate it is

crushing on a colleague? detail it here!

The two people in the cubicle next to mine have been engaged in a months-long flirt fest that has probably been the most tedious thing about this job. Really really annoying stuff like stealing things from each other's desk and fairly regular "NoIdidn't"/"Yesyoudid"/"NoIdidn't"/"Yesyoudid" exchanges, ENDLESS giggling, etc. I don't know how I've managed to avoided going off about them on the other co-worker thread, to be honest.

Having been in a relationship with someone who worked in the same building as me for a couple of years and it's subsequent demise has pretty much put me off this. You can't control a crush, though.

Hello my name is WCC and I have a hugely inappropriate workplace crush on a colleague, it is true.

(This thread means that I have to become even quicker with alt-tab than I used to be.)

i have an inappropriate professional attachment that's never going to happen and would be the worst idea ever -- so it's kind of driving me nuts and makes me feel like i've lost all control of whatever social graces i may possess normally whenever we cross paths (not that these were abundant to begin with)

abundant referring to social graces, not to crossing paths, which happens all the damn time

I have a work crush but she's in NYC now so we don't get to flirt as much as we used to.

Yes, this is the problem.

I know that it is completely in "never going to happen" territory and completely inappropriate and is clearly the ~worst idea ever~ and yet the very inaccessibility of this person makes me feel 1) all the more attracted and 2) become the stuttering socially incompetent crepey weirdo whenever I interact with them.

And I know it's wrong and yet the wrongness makes it more delicious and it's that compulsive thing where you know you are acting ridiculously even thinking about it, let alone talking about it, and yet that makes it ALL THE MORE IRRESISTIBLE.

It's basically not a crush, it's OCD with a cute haircut.

I had like four work boyfriends at my old job. Now I am surrounded by women I've no interest in crushing on. RIP work crushes.

xp to wcc

yes! and workcrush is a super awkward person in general, and our interactions, such as they are, are so fucking awkward. if i were not attracted to him, i think i could navigate his awkwardness, but now it's just out of control awkwardness. i think he knows i feel super weird around him. but i can't make it stop! the presence of former workcrush mitigated this but he's no longer around so...super focused weirdness on just one person!

Oh god the compounding of the awkwardness sounds awful.

I am at least lucky that this workcrush is Alpha Male-ish (ick! another reason I am so disappointed in myself!) that he at least is not awkward. In fact he is quite smooth and friendly, which makes it worse in a different sort of way, because it is too easy to read too much into that friendliness.

The good thing about these is that they liven up the workday. I find them enjoyable. Alas, no candidates at my current place of employment.

i've never found a workplace crush particularly debilitating. i look forward to interactions w certain people, that's about it. if they want to chat, i chat. otherwise, i make myself scarce to forestall awkwardness.

There was one at my first job where there was most def a charge between us, but I was too young and inexp'd w/ men to do anything about it. (He was a freelancer -- in work, I mean.)

Then we met outside the office about 4 years later and, of course, went at it like dogs.

I've never had one of these though I think I've been the object of a couple judging by the vastly inappropriate comments left by a few people in my goodbye card at my old job.

Oh I did have one once but it was during a summer job in HS not a real adult job.

I have to really work against mine own natural tendencies to catastrophise everything and keep it light, because it does make it fun going to work, and it does get me out of bed in the morning and actually look forward to going into the office which is quite a rare experience for me.

my workplace crush-o-meter is continuously redlined as I work in a department where like 80% of the grad students are beautiful, intelligent, science-and-liberal-causes women who travel all over the world like it was nothing. also, I'm in a position within the department where being nice to me makes their lives a lot easier, so they're always flattering me and buying me drinks and cat postcards. it's rough. pity me.

my office is 97.5% male...

my personal office that I work in by myself isn't even that male.

Mine lives two states away and probably likes basketball and is a bro and for the love of little green apples, works in Finance. FINANCE. What is wrong with me. But he has a shockingly great voice, I would probably do & believe anything that voice told me to. Physically he's kind of Hathaway-esque: not obviously good looking but...arresting. I will never ever ever tell him because letting people know you like them leads to embarrassment. And I couldn't bear for him to know and take pity on me--or avoid me. Either way. Show nothing.

Ha ha, sounds like a terrible life, f.hazel, but I suppose someone has to do it. Bastard. ;-)

I wish I knew how to talk to a crush without turning into a 9 year old. But basically the only way I know how to respond is to pull his pigtails and give him a really hard time, and tell him he's rubbish and he's making my job difficult. And then I worry that it's not fair to give him a hard time, even joking, but I guess he thinks I'm just a ballbuster who gives everyone a hard time. I should probably be less obvious about telling him he's crap at least twice a day.

I will never ever ever tell him because letting people know you like them leads to embarrassment.

^but the one time it hits and its a match and the other person is up for giving you a chance makes all the times you get shot down in flames worth it. at least in my experience, and i have had plenty of "shot down in flames" (rip bon scott) moments.

There's getting shot down in flames, and there's getting shot down in flames by someone who you have to work closely with and interact with every day for the rest of your career at that office.

Plus I am terrified of making someone else uncomfortable, or creating that old ~hostile working environment~ so I think Laurel really has the best idea. Don't make it embarrassing or awkward.

I kind of like it when women flirt by berating me. It feels appropriate.

flirting by giving each other shit is fun

But it can lead to pretty epic getting shot down in flames when it turns out they're just berating you with no ulterior motives.

sincere compliments make for terrible banter!

watching other people flirt by berating one another is so fucking weird

had a drunken argument last week with my secret crush about which of us scored higher on the autism spectrum

sincere compliments make for terrible banter!

It's true, there's really nowhere to go with a compliment.

It's kind of a conversational dead end.

wasn't really berating tho it was more professional discussion

there's a difference?

what level of berating are we talking here? beyond giving someone shit? berating seems kind of harsh

i'm envisioning "god, you really fucked up this report"

Or "when are you going to learn how to do your damn job correctly?"

He wouldn't dare give me shit. I'd bite his head off and he knows it. He cowers and smirks, I have him trained already.

He cowers behind the desk to hide the tenting you are causing with your flirty beratings.

That is extremely unlikely. He is half my age.

I have already said that when training young men to do the checking for me, the first time they make a stupid mistake, I shout at them so ferociously so that they will never do it again.

Basically his job is checking data, and my job is fixing data errors, so I complain that he is rubbish for picking up obscure errors that I will have to chase around and be unable to fix. And then I tell him that I hate him and he's ruining my job and ruining my beautiful database with his over-zealousness. And then his boss laughs at me and tells him that he is good for finding an error so obscure that I can't fix it. They are basically setting up the two new show-off know-it-all smart-asses in the office to catch one another out. Which would be quite funny if he wasn't so fucking attractive.

That kind of tension can give excellent productivity results if handled properly.

"handled"

thread of appropriate sexual innuendo

I am just awful at this kind of thing.

Last week, he kept setting up all these double entendres that I didn't even realise could be construed as such until it was too late to turn them back on him. Like, if I were slightly quicker, would have been an excellent "that's what she said" but I'm just slow and it didn't hit me until 5 minutes too late.

Or maybe I just have my nose put out of joint that he's new and clever and everyone is fawning over him because he can do a fucking pivot table ::rolls eyes:: and I just want to blow raspberries and tell him to come back when he's built a database or 6.

I would actually hate him if he wasn't v v v pretty.

Curse his cheekbones.

We are interviewing for a position within our department and I am being very adult and not just crushing on the cute girl with a degree in textiles and awesome tattoos.

I am not doing that.

Be very, very careful with crushing on people in the interview process. Especially if you have a hand in the selection process.

This is how it started for me.

Got to work one day and this 20 y.o. TY lookalike gets in the lift with me. Gets off at my floor. 30 minutes later, I hear my boss talking to some bloke in the conference room about complexity theory and Chinese linguistics and totally hott maths type stuff to the point where I asked afterwards "who was that?" because I had a ladyboner for his interview technique.

We all get together to discuss who we're going to hire. After making a crack about "hire whichever one is cuter" (I was all "ha ha, kidding, I'd be sacked if I were a man and said that" but boss grinned and said "well, which one would that be, WCC?") I tell them to hire whichever one it was talking about hott lingustics and maths geek stuff because that would make for fun office banter.

3 months later, it's "here's the new boy and we're seating him RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR DESK, WCC and making him work on your stuff" just so I have to stare at him all day.

^^^^^ do not do this. This way madness lies.

Luckily the rest of the staff knows I am generally useless and directed wholly by passions, obsessions, etc. so they will weigh my input accordingly. As a professional however, I must try and remain detached.

<3 grady shows us how to leave

nice

did i briefly meet the subject of this attachment? my visual memory has faded but i can recall that there was definitely cause for distraction

I don't think that would have been possible tbh (tho it is possible you briefly met an appropriate and perfectly sanctified attachment, who I also knew in a professional capacity - not quite such a catchy thread title).

Need to practice grady's nod and smile. way things have gone generally I'd look like a yokel with a twitch.

but there can be no backsliding

correction: there can be some backsliding.

― Say Bo to a (Fizzles), Tuesday, 5 February 2013 21:37 (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.joethorn.net/wp-content/themes/editorial/functions/thumb.php?src=wp-content/uploads/ezra-prays-600x315.png&w=606&h=0&zc=1&q=90

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Bruegel%2C_Pieter_de_Oude_-_De_val_van_icarus_-_hi_res.jpg

The sun is hot stuff, fizzles. Next time epoxy yr feathers.

she is nothing like the sun. more like a quasar.

need wings of elemental adamant from the core of Pluto.

and to flap very hard.

Damn bro that's a hell of a pedestal you're building

yeah, tell me about it. rest assured she's just a v nice person who I like a lot. not, idk, Cleopatra or anything, nor am I on some self-destructive jag like Bob in Hamilton's The Midnight Bell. but we're close professionally and like elliptical orbits seem to have times of great closeness and at other times for us to be distant from each other.

distance is safest and easiest to either envisage escaping from, or having escaped from, or in the process of escaping from the attachment, but is a lot less fun than the closeness.

basically I'm happier in her company than out of it, and I've resigned myself to being hooked until I'm unhooked. and well, you never know - we do have a ball from time to time.

in fact both Ezra and Icarus were chosen as much for their portrayals of indifference or embarrassment of the rest of the world (idk the story behind the durer - but that's what it looks like). obv such things are v important to the person going thru them - the most important thing - but to the outside world there is at best a bafflement. think Kipling's a rag a bone and a hank of hair.

I shd probably shut up rly, as it's been veering twds 77 territory for a while, but there is a large part of me that finds it not unamusing or without interest.

we do have a ball from time to time

if ever further clarification were needed

(please answer in pictorial form)

Just starting to experience this for the first time. Not sure I'd find my crush remotely attractive outside of the workplace environment, but I'm curiously unmoved by this realisation. If anything it adds a slight air of mystique to the attraction.

Fortunately I'm spared all the awkwardness that's supposed to be attendant on this sort of situation by the fact that she's married and a decade older than me, and I'm kinda viewed as the baby in the office. I'm not sure anyone takes me very seriously yet. To that extent I suppose this is more like crushing on a teacher than a colleague, even though she is the person in the office who's nearest me in age. Still, it's quite nice though. Again, as with teachers at school, I suspect it'd be near impossible to work in a office with more than a couple of members of the opposite sex and not fancy any of them even a little bit.

In fact, upon reflection, this is EXACTLY like fancying the teacher at school - the fact that she's married and unattainable is the whole point I think. Never really thought about it in those terms though

Miss Fenwick. I must have been about five or six. Distraught when she married a German. Genuinely felt the barriers were not insuperable. Feel WD describes appropriate inappropriate professional attachment and I shd listen and learn.

imago - ill have a think about a pictorial representation of our hi-jinks, but in the meantime you did remind me that I have a... inappropriate er... something attachment to the grouping of women at the far left front of Poussin's Triumph of David, that is at least partially informed by my IPA tho largely in spirit and deportment than featural resemblance:

http://iamled.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/triumph-of-david.jpg

I always figured lj would return, i forgot about the rules of the sequel- add spawn

Aliens in Dulwich Picture Gallery. Examining catalogue nos etc. Ah balls, anyway. it's the thread for it after all.

xpost and, ah, easy there fella. I may leave trails but I prefer them of breadcrumbs than actual ID parades.

Miss Fenwick. I must have been about five or six. Distraught when she married a German. Genuinely felt the barriers were not insuperable. Feel WD describes appropriate inappropriate professional attachment and I shd listen and learn.

We should probably hang fire on this sort of judgement at least until I've got through a Christmas party or a leaving do or something. I may turn out to have feet of clay yet, definitely have previous with hugely inappropriate declarations of, if not love, then certainly affection/lust on these sorts of occasions.

Oh and how's N.5. getting on? Has he gone full Ralf Hutter yet? Never seen a man so preternaturally suited to his work - I think witnessing his neophyte mastery was what discouraged me from really trying

actually, sorry to be self-important, esp after the self-important garrulousness itt, but do you mind if I get mods to redact the post? it's not so much g00gling as the fact that there are other people I know who go on the site from time to time.

And so.

Ah it's not quite a triple handjob but for nununuilx its enough to be going on with

oh my god the women at my new workplace

Otm

no joke one of the "br4nd's thr33 c0r3 v4lu3s" is "flir7y"

lol

I dream of staying at a flirty hotel.

developing IPA from grad student who keeps coming into my office to hang out/get away from studies (many of them do this, so not necessarily a sign of interest)

Your posts are invalid unless you write them in IPA http://ipa.typeit.org/full/

does your glottal stop when walks in the room?

appropriate bar crush is go

this shit sucks ;_;

will 2015 be the year I stop having IPAs? no, it will not.

oh God. Don't even want to write exactly how I am connected to this person, but I'm a grad student. Not my supervisor, at least.

^my sympathy

as student had liaison with one prof but rationalized it bc i only audited his class & he was not in my department (though in related/overlapping field, advisor to some of my friends)

eventually i broke it off but it remained awkward situation

yeah, if anything were to come of it it would require... some re-jigging of my current formal dissertation arrangements. Best/worst is that I have an inkling it may be reciprocated. Could be extremely wrong about that though.

that does sound complicated

every case/ decision is unique & individual; but for me felt prudent to maintain strict boundary bw personal entanglement & direct academic relationship (in which one party has direct power/ influence re other's work), though in academia that can be v fine line

it's romantic until it isn't

e.g. consider possibility of stalkery prof :( or having to work on high-stress longterm project with (or relying on) someone you don't want to see or who evokes bad feelings

That's why it would require some re-jigging of my current formal dissertation arrangements! But yeah, even if that were to happen, there are risks...

I am more and more certain that this person is not interested in me and also not interested in my gender in general. So far this hasn't diminished my inappropriate attachment.

had two of these in my training class. usually just repeat gibberish in my head and distract myself with images of dead elephants and move on with training....

but it does make the situation safer, if not less painful?

new hire in my dept is non-native speaker and emailed me about having coffee, called it "sharing zips" = instant IPA

you're right.

Eeeeesh. I'll say that one of the values of a committed relationship is increasing the risk of even thinking about this stuff. Lord knows.

Two reasons to shut the fuck up and never post to this thread again, to self:

1. You work with many attractive people of the gender that you're into, jackass, and you have HAD THOUGHTS

2. You are a dad and you have other things to think about and that does not give you any privilege or perspective to advise or even RELATE to people posting on this thread who are LFLIATWP

3. You said TWO, are you ready to STFU? OK good let's go to bed

Man I am glad I am around to talk to myself

I don't know how I ended up back here but here we are.

We both have like 3 weeks off over Christmas so hopefully it will just die down and go away.

It's not even lust it's just "you are the best person ever".

is it the same person?

Oh god no. This is like 2 workplaces later.

(Thank goodness, because the place where I had the original IPA was such a messed up an unhealthy environment for me that I do now think that the IPA was a symptom of how badly that place messed my head up.)