When I found out I was pregnant aged 22, the first person I told was my colleague Emma. It made sense, given that Nick, the person who got me pregnant, was also a colleague. Indeed, a great deal of that relationship – the flirting, the snogging, the analysing of every detail – had taken place in or around the office.
Emma and I had been close ever since I got the job in a top management consultancy firm. We’d go to the gym together after work, and often have drinks in the pub round the corner, too.
‘Come on, we need wine,’ she said after I showed her a photo of the pregnancy test I’d taken in the ladies after the end of my shift.
Emma grabbed my hand and led me to the bar around the corner where we swiftly sank two bottles and took turns calling abortion providers to try and get an appointment. I wouldn’t tell any of my other friends for another week.
Our workplace was a social environment – probably because most of the people we worked with were, like us, in their early 20s. It was 2016, the year before #MeToo, and we hung out together regularly, invited one another to each other’s birthdays, and often got drunk together.
And at those drunken gatherings, the subject on everyone’s lips was almost always sex. How many people we’d been with. The electrifyingly good shags. The mortifyingly bad ones. We’d even rank our other colleagues in terms of who we’d most (and least) like to have sex with.
In hindsight, it was not the most professional of environments, but the majority of us were single, fresh from university, and frankly too naive to know any better.
I’m now in my 30s and working in a very different sort of office, but I was reminded of that time when I heard about Charlotte Tilley, the recruitment consultant whose frequent conversations about her ‘gold star’ sex life at work led to a disciplinary investigation, which in turn resulted in her resignation and claim for constructive dismissal.
Tilley, who is 29, boasted to colleagues about her ‘Johnny Depp’ lookalike lover – also a colleague – and even showed them a sex tape, according to reports of her employment tribunal this month. She displayed photos of naked male torsos on her laptop at work and kissed another woman at the office Christmas party. Tilley denied the sex tape and Christmas party allegations.
After Tilley resigned, she sued the company for sex discrimination and victimisation on the grounds that colleagues asked her a ‘barrage’ of intrusive questions about her sex life. Yet the judge dismissed her claims, saying ‘she had a high tolerance of matters of a sexual nature’, and the conversations about sex matters were not unwanted.
It was 2016, the year before #MeToo, and in hindsight, the office was not the most professional of environments, but the majority of the staff were single, fresh from university, and frankly too naive to know any better
My first reaction to hearing all this was sympathy. Frankly, I wondered why a young woman was being singled out for behaviour that seems relatively normalised among young men.
My male colleagues in the mid-2010s often behaved in similar ways, and nobody batted an eyelid – yet women were censured for it. I remember hearing some of the men criticising a new female hire, calling it inappropriate for her to be talking about her dating life. The hypocrisy was staggering.
It was also normal for colleagues in my office to date one another. There were, at one time, around five official couples. And while there was a rumour that dating colleagues was frowned upon by senior staff, nobody ever imposed any rules on us. This is in spite of the fact those relationships sometimes crossed serious boundaries: people sleeping together despite being on the same team. Junior women dating their more senior male bosses. And so on.
Some men in the office would acquire mythic status. One, James, was particularly sought after. All the women fancied him and he had a reputation for dating multiple people at once.
For those of us not involved it made for entertaining watercooler chat, but I can’t imagine it was much fun for the two women who discovered he’d been dating them both for four months, even as they sat side-by-side in meetings.
Thankfully, my relationship with Nick didn’t cross any of these lines. He worked in a separate department to me and was also my age. We dated for around six months and it was fun for a while. Sneaking around together in the stairwells. Dragging him into the bathroom at the office Christmas party for some secret snogs.
That changed when I got pregnant. When I told Nick, he reacted terribly, blaming me for failing to buy ‘proper’ condoms and not being on the Pill. I woke up to the fact that he wasn’t a very nice person and our relationship wasn’t going to progress.
So I ended things. In fact, I did it at the pub that night with Emma, who helped me draft the text.
I would never have got through that break-up and abortion had it not been for Emma. Not only did she patiently listen and hold my hand as I cried (and drank) my sorrow away that night, she took two days off work to come with me to the clinic, where I had to take two pills a day apart for a medical termination.
Charlotte Tilley, the recruitment consultant whose frequent conversations about her ‘gold star’ sex life at work led to a disciplinary investigation, which in turn resulted in her resignation and claim for constructive dismissal
Tread carefully with workplace romances, because in my experience, they are rarely worth it
Emma drove me there and back, cooked for me, comforted me, and helped me through the following few months, which were just as painful.
Thankfully, Nick quit not long after and I didn’t have to endure any further office awkwardness. To this day, Emma’s behaviour back then was the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.
I understand why talking about sex at work is frowned upon – of course I do. It undermines your professionalism and blurs the boundaries of work and play.
But while people have suggested the response to #MeToo should be a total ban on workplace relationships and all conversations related to personal lives in the office, it’s just not realistic.
To prohibit all talk of dating and sex suggests men and women aren’t capable of having these conversations in a non-exploitative manner, which (I hope) is not the case in most places.
Discussing your personal life forms strong bonds. It certainly did for me. Emma and I are still best friends, even though we now live in different parts of the country.
After all, what better way is there to cement a friendship than to gossip about each other’s love lives? About the person you just went on a date with who isn’t texting you back, or the chap you fancy in the gym, whether someone’s a keeper or not, and so on. It’s normal, isn’t it?
I’m not saying people should start showing their colleagues nude photos, although for Millennials like me and Gen Z, it’s very normal to send them to the people you date (often I show them to my friends first to check they think I look good).
You need to be judicious about who you’re vulnerable with (ideally not anyone who’s significantly above or below you in rank). It’s important to maintain boundaries, something therapy-speak-fluent Millennials and Gen Z are accustomed to doing.
And as for workplace romances, I’d tread very carefully with these. In my experience, they are rarely worth it.
But merely talking about sex? A bit of a gossip about everyone’s love life brings people together, forges friendships and adds to the joy of the world. Don’t ban that.
All names have been changed.