This is your wake-up call for salvaging your chances for a promotion and a  pay raise in 2020, if you’re having an office romance!

To do that, we’re on this sex and the workplace deck, covering all the angles of the 7 BossProblems that make you un-promotable, and un-pay-raise-able, while having an office romance with your coworker or colleague, and more often than not: even after such a romance has ended – the downsides will linger for a long while.

Knowing all this will help you in 3 ways:

1. be very realistic, about what’s at stake for you personally, and for your schmoopie in terms of either of your chances for a promotion and a pay raise
2. better understand your other co-workers and Superiors, who do not see kindly your lovey-dovey office romance, and for good reasons as we’ve seen in the first 3 of the 7 BossProblems, which are:
3. You Are Not Focused On The Job
4. You Become a Distraction for others
5. You become an imbalance,
   an counter-equalizer on the team

[watch / read parts 1 & 2 here if you’ve missed them]

So how do you even dare expect them to be cool with your office romance?
Of course they start resenting you more and more, and of course this will be detrimental to your chances of landing that promotion and pay raise you so want!

3. know how to fix it, or at least manage it in a way that will minimize the prices both of you will pay (and you will pay).

But why kill the mood? Let’s instead have fun understanding how pillow talk and how famous sex scandals can you give us a glimpse to how real and dangerous it can be…

So, the no. 4 of the 7 BossProblem that make you un-promotable, and un-pay-raise-able, while having an office romance with your coworker or colleague, and even after it ends is:

4. The trust in your confidentiality is compromised

This is true from both your colleagues’ and superiors’ point of view.

The moment two individual coworkers become one clique, one unit – and not just any clique, but a romantic one, which is especially cohesive and separatist in nature, i.e. distancing themselves from the rest of the team – it is sheer common sense to suppose, any personal and professional information shared with one love-bird, is going to be conveyed (not to say betrayed) to the other.

Indeed, pillow talk is not just the silly-yet-wonderful guilty pleasure of a Rock Hudson – Doris Day movie (I’m an old Hollywood buff), but a real thing: Intelligence agencies use it, no less. Spies are sent to lure targets into it, into “pillow talk”.

This is exactly what the Profumo affair, was all about: One of the most infamous sex scandals in modern political science, to this day, which is quite an achievement, considering the fact that it happened all the way back to the 60s! It brought down the UK minister involved, the prime minister not involved, and their whole party, in the following elections. It really played like a James Bond movie…

In a nutshell, the then-British minister of defense, John Profumo, hence the eponymous Profumo affair (with the ‘affair’ aptly punned), had a liaison with a stripper (and some say call-girl), who had a concurrent liaison with a Soviet spy, in the midst of the Cold War!

You can actually imagine Sean Connery, being sent by M to extract any information he can from her, and ending up with a liaison of his own with her, of course…

Anyway, the fear was, that highly confidential pillow talk (which is why I’m bringing this whole thing up) was going on, from said British minister of defense (no less), through his stripper/call-girl lover, to her other lover, the Soviet spy!

Closer to home, if you are in America, yet still in the 60s, the spiciest (spy-ciest… I’m one for puns myself), most infamous, sex scandals of them all, is the liaisons (plural) between The Kennedys – both the president, JFK, and his brother bobby, who was the Attorney General, no less, with the one and only Marilyn Monroe. But wait, that’s not the issue! The pillow talk fear, stemmed from the fact she had a concurrent liaison with, non-other than, mob boss Sam Giancana himself – so this is Godfather territory we’re going into now…

Obviously, these two iconic pillow talk scandals, are way over-the-top for our discussion, but sometimes you do need to go to the extreme example, to make a point, and no matter how different your situation from those two is, the point nevertheless stays the same: It is hard for both your colleagues and superiors to trust you with confidential information, either personal or professional, when they know pillow talk is almost guaranteed to relay it further, to your schmoopie.

Thus, the trust  in your confidentiality is compromised,  which is always detrimental to your social and professional status in the team, which, in time, is detrimental to your chances of getting that promotion and pay raise, you so want and hopefully deserve. So not a good thing for either of you, trusting you are both ambitious, and trying to get ahead.

Also, it may not be as over-the-top, as it may first seem to be: You may indeed be working on a highly secretive, confidential project, developing the next big thing, one in which compartmentalization is required and expected, even within a team or a department.

And not even because your schmoopie won’t come to know it him or herself, but because it is a testament to your discretion, your ability to keep things for yourself, and your professionalism in not mixing business with pleasure – all of which are completely gone with the wind, with even the suspicion of, or just discomfort with, the potential ‘pillow talk’ may occur, regardless of what the reality is.

But even if you’re not working on a highly secretive, confidential project, you are, for sure, working in a highly competitive industry, because all Industries nowadays are, and business intelligence is a real thing, therefore, all the above still holds!

(Which reminds me of the Julia Roberts – Clive Owen’s Duplicity: About the combination of pillow talk and business intelligence – an underrated, great fun movie – I’m a practical Remington Steele here).  

And if you guys are in competing teams or departments – all the more so!  Your colleagues and superiors are thinking:
What’s your pillow talk regarding our sales strategy and techniques, with which we intend to beat your schmoopie‘s team or department, to the end of year bonus?
Whose side are you really on?

That’s it for now, join me next time for the final part of sex and the workplace deck, with the last 3 BossProblems that make you un-promotable, and un-pay-raise-able, while having an office romance with your coworker or colleague, and how to fix it/them!