10 Reasons why you shouldn’t date a colleague

You cant control who you get attracted to. What you can control is what you do about it. The office is a bad idea to find love. Yes you don’t choose to fall in-love but acting on these emotions could be detrimental to your job and your love life. Here are more reasons why its just a bad idea:
1. Avoid office tension – Dating your colleague could get trick. Either you have to work twice as hard trying to keep it a secret, or if it comes out, every time you are seen together you will have to awkward tension moments

2. You could lose your job – Some companies have policies that prohibit colleagues from dating each other. So before you go spotting out your next potential partner, make sure you’ve read the office policies thoroughly and this list.

3. Kills priorities – One needs to focus when at work, but with your partner around it’s very easy to get distracted. It’s also very tempting not to pop into your partners’ office knowing that they are just down the hall. The next thing you know, you’re slacking, and you won’t even see it coming.

4. Affects the way you make decisions – In instances where you are dating your junior, making decisions such as who to promote or who to send on that business trip abroad could be tricky. Either way you lose. Your judgement as a senior at the office will be questioned and your relationship will be affected if you choose the other route.

5. The break-up affects work – No one wants to imagine the end of their relationship but it’s always a possibility. Now imagine how awkward things will get when you’ve broken up and you need to see each other every day?! You don’t want to consider changing jobs or avoiding them every day.

6. Jealousy – When dating a colleague the number of people you laugh with is limited because you don’t want to seem too friendly especially with colleagues of the opposite sex. With your partner lurking around every second corner, this may stir up some jealousy in the relationship even if the attention was unintentional.

7. Contributes to office gossip – Attention is good, but in moderate amounts. Being “the couple” at the office could attract the wrong kind of attention. Don’t become the topic of discussion at the coffee machine. When conversation runs dry, you will always be the topic of discussion.

8. Assumptions – The fact that you are dating at the office means that anything you do is scrutinised by everyone. Even if you’re good at your job, any promotion or complement you get will be associated with the fact that you’re dating the boss.

9. Boredom – This point is highly dependent on a person. Not everyone wants their partner in their face 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. Constantly having them in your space could get boring and affect the relationship. What will your conversations be like when you can’t even talk about “what happened at the office today” when they already know?!

10. Fights are obvious – Sometimes couples fight and things get tense. With the two of you sharing the same space, it might be hard to hide that tension and with that the entire office will know that there is trouble in paradise.

Mbali Radebe