Love Is In The Air

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellows,

There is an office romance going on. I do not know who it is, but they leave each other messages and pictures on white boards around the place. These flowers appeared on a whiteboard-surface table today.

I think office romances are sort of cute, I have witnessed many over the years. You can usually spot when Cupid's arrow has struck, because you'll find people looking longingly across meeting tables at each other, and sloping off to lunch, hand in hand.

Of course, sometimes they blow up horribly. Like the time I arrived at my desk one morning and found Bloke sitting there.

"Hello!" I said to Bloke, chummily. "What ARE you doing sitting HERE?!? I thought you were sitting next to Amboubou!"

"Errr...." said Bloke, for some reason unaccountably uncomfortable.

"YOU WERE!" I said, warming to my theme, and gaining volume. "YOU WERE DEFINITELY SAT NEXT TO AMBOUBOU OVER THERE. YES RIGHT OVER THERE. OH I SAY, WHAT'S WRONG WITH HER?!?!?"

Amboubou rushed off to the toilet clutching at tissues. I was hurriedly shushed.

Funnily enough, Er Indoors and me are kind of the result of an office romance. She told me that when she started work at Slack, she was told to look around the room. "Nearly 90% of our staff find their future partners in the workplace," they told her.

I'm not sure how motivational that is. Given some of the people I met while working at Slack, I think I would have run for the hills.

But she and I never directly worked together, though she did use the system Auslaender, MadDog and I built between 1995 and 1999. She worked on the twilight shift, entering data, while I was there purely during the day.

It came as something as a surprise therefore, when I came into work one day to a message on Slack's internal email service. It read thus:

FROM: Er Indoors
DEPT: Commission Services (Twilight)

Hi!

Nice meeting you this weekend! I'm going to take a raincheck on Tinelli's next weekend, but I'd love to come to your birthday party!

What?

When?

WHO?!?

I didn't remember catching up with ANYONE last weekend. Who WAS this "Er Indoors" person?

What had happened was that I had been in the pub with Folk Chick. I'd got quite drunk very quickly and wobbled off home. It was all a bit of a blur, apart from talking with the 50something barmaid.

Oh.

Wait.

Had I chatted up the 50something BARMAID?

Anyway, because I am by nature a polite person, I wrote her a reply.

FROM: El Parsones
DEPT: R&C Batch & Interfaces Team

Hello!

I am SO sorry. I think I might have been a bit drunk this weekend. I don't really remember our chatting, but you are more than welcome to come to my birthday party next week. Are you a friend of Folk Chick? 

Er Indoors got my message when she went in to work that evening, and the next day I came to work to this:

FROM: Er Indoors
DEPT: Commission Services (Twilight)

Hello!

Looking forward to the party!

Who's Folk Chick? Is that your girlfriend? I'm so embarrassed.

The mystery was solved a few days later. Folk Chick came to see me, with Auslaender. I remember she walked in front of him, looking like she'd been caught at something.

"Tell him," he said.

Folk Chick admitted that Er Indoors had come into the pub AFTER I had left. They knew each other from mutual friends and the two of them had been chatting. They decided that it would be HILARIOUS if they managed to convince me that I'd chatted Er Indoors up while in a stupor.

"He has blackouts, he'll never remember," said Folk Chick.

Well, she was right about that.

I didn't mind. I thought it was really funny. And clearly things worked out quite well from that point on.

Too well, in fact. We started using the internal email for our own little office romance. Er Indoors got pulled into a meeting with her manager who apparently plopped a big pile of A4 paper in front of Er Indoors. Full of mildly-suggestive messages back-and-forth between us.

Annoyed and humiliated, Er Indoors turned on her heel, told the manager to eff off and resigned. Strangely, no-one ever said anything to me about it.

And that was the end of our office romance. We should have written our naughty messages on the white board.

S.

p.s. If I have put John Paul Young into your head, you are welcome.