Blood Brain Barrier said:
Loonyyy said:
Blood Brain Barrier said:
chadachada123 said:
Jeez, this thread is nearly completely filled with buzzkills.
Totally. Where is the romance in this generation? When you're lying in your deathbed at the age of 104, do you really want to be telling your grandchildren how well-behaved you were in your 20s and always did a professional job and never did anything unexpected, or how you were coy with the new girl at the checkout and got fired for flirting but won yourself a date which led to a memorable relationship (however short-lived).
Seriously. Haven't you all read/seen The Hobbit?
No, a date's very little. Go on a few, you'll see that it's fairly meaningless. What's far more likely is you lose your job, get rejected, which is far more of a problem, however romantic, and hurt the person you ostensibly like.
There's a reason people tell you not to do it. The Hobbit is about following the call to adventure, not about clumsily flirting in a workplace. If you want to follow the Hobbit, do something better with your life than living out "Peep Show". That's not any sort of adventure.
And being a shitty coworker is nothing to be proud of. Do your job well, be good to the people you work with, and make your life special. If you need to do that where you're working, you're in the wrong line of work, and need to fix your work life balance.
Where on earth do you live that you get fired for flirting? I think some of us are misunderstanding what flirting is. Like someone above said - it's something that's done together. It's not harassment, annoying someone, or making lewd comments or pinching someone's ass.
My advice is to observe who you're working with, read the cues. You can definitely tell if someone's into you or if they're not. Put your toes in the water, maybe make eye contact or a harmless compliment and if he/she doesn't respond then drop it. You won't get fired unless you live in Orwell's 1984 or Pol Pot's Cambodia.
Depending on your field, it can be considered an ethics violation. In a medical setting, for example, being attracted to someone is irrelevant and you are to ignore or deflect advances regardless of whether or not you may have reciprocated the advances in a casual setting. Basically by hitting on your attending Physician, you are pretty much condemning any chances of an actual ethical relationship with that person due to the shortsighted thoughtless way you approached it. If you had instead, waited until a more appropriate time to flirt, it would not be considered unethical as long as you cease to be their patient. This applies to many fields, not just in medicine.
The primary difference between a casual setting and a work setting, is the person is obligated to be there rather than choosing to be there for recreational purposes. In a recreational setting, they can respond on their own accord without thought to how it affects their career, business relationships, and professional standing. They are nice to you and talking to you because that is their job to do so, vs they do not " have" to be nice to you outside of work if they choose not to. Flirting with someone at work means you have so little respect for them as to not allow them the opportunity to respond on their own accord, but instead are forced to respond in a manner representative of their position or as a representative of their business. When you are at work, you represent the business, you are not just representing yourself. Approaching someone at work, you are not approaching " them" as an individual, you are approaching their business they represent instead. In the best interests of your business, you keep personal and business relationships separate as to not have a conflict of interests.
Waiting for an appropriate time to flirt shows you respect that person enough that you would not put them on the spot like that in the first place, and that you understand that they would not be able to give you a genuine response when they are a representative of a business at the time and not just " an individual". For example, If you do not want the response to come from " the Doctor" then you approach " the Woman" not " the Doctor", and while the woman is at work.. she is just "the Doctor", not just " the woman". You catch "the Woman" while she is not working if you want to know how she really feels.
If you want to date the person, not their job title, you approach them when they are not at work. Work= Representative of that business. Not at work= just the person.
And No, this is not just 1984.. this is the reality of the difference between work and pleasure. It is terribly rude to expect someone to give you a genuine response when they are at work, they are forced to talk to you due to that being part of their job as a representative of their business. If you had any respect for them at all, you would wait until they are not forced to talk to you to find out if you may get a response. That way it is not putting them in the position to have it reflect poorly on their business if they do not wish to speak with you. Having the upper hand on someone like that when you approach them is a really scuzzy thing to do.
