A VALENTINE'S DAY WARNING TO THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN DATING A CURRENT COWORKER

Romantic relationships that originate at the workplace have a very high failure rate. And it also seems to me that even if two employees dating each other eventually get married, the divorce rate for married couples who met for the first time while employed at the same workplace may also be higher than average.

The reasons for this "Office Romance Disaster" Scenario include the following:

---Two coworkers who are dating each other during their leisuretime see so much of each other through their combined career and personal lives together that they are likely to become irritable with each other and quarrel with each other, including at the workplace.

--Two coworkers who are dating each other while off-duty often develop an emotional obsession and fascination with each other, accompanied by romantic daydreaming fantasies about each other while on the job, that is very distracting to them during their working hours. This, in turn, undermines their ability to pursue their job duties in a prompt and fully focused and successful manner.

--Two coworkers who are dating during their leisuretime may deliberately or unknowingly practice favoritism toward each other during working hours for each of them at the workplace. 

This can cause those two employees to neglect the job-related needs of, and irk or annoy or significantly offend, coworkers or work supervisors----and that conflict with others, in turn, can significantly undermine the personal and professional relationship between the two dating coworkers.

---Two coworkers who are dating each other during their off-duty hours may incur significant harm to their own on-the-job conversational rapport with other employees. This is partly because the percentage of the two office lovebirds' on-duty conversation time at the workplace that they each devote to chatting with only one total coworker (their dating partner) is likely to be much higher than before they began dating each other.

--The "delight" toward each other that the two dating coworkers may express at the workplace is enthusiasm and delight that should, in many cases, be getting directed instead toward paying guests, including guests who are young children and their parents, inside that business establishment. 

The focus of most business workplaces is on warmly greeting and smiling at and serving the GUESTS, with warm hospitality toward coworkers being entirely secondary to that top priority at the workplace.

--One or both of the coworkers who are dating each other during their leisuretime may experience intense jealousy if they observe their romantic partner appearing to have a very warm or very friendly or intimate rapport with another coworker, or a customer or work supervisor, during working hours at their workplace.

I once heard a story in Austin, Texas, about a male waiter or chef for a nationwide restaurant chain who while on duty obtained evidence that a male customer was flirting with his girlfriend, and immediately chose to himself temporarily abandon his own job duties in order to directly confront that male guest at his dining table. That confrontation conflicted sharply with the employer's hospitality emphasis and "customer is always right" emphasis toward any and all paying guests.

--The workplace environment is not conducive to any employee while on duty expressing romantic affection toward anyone. 

Rules at the workplace for employee conduct promote a platonicly polite style in which physical contact with coworkers or work supervisors is only minimal, and any and all physical contact with guests is, of course, never initiated by the employee and very minimal in nature, if at all.

---Customers may complain if they observe two persons kissing each other while on duty at the same workplace. 

The paying guests, understandably, may regard it as very unprofessional for employees at any given workplace to conduct themselves as if their workplace were a "dating service" for employees that is somehow sponsoring their "on-the-job hot date opportunity". Paying guests, and this is especially true for parents with young children and senior citizens, understandably point out that the employees on duty should instead be calling attention at all times to their own strictly-platonic role in providing a strictly-platonic service to those customers.