Red Cross scandal proves peril of office nookie

The very thought of hooking up with someone I work with makes me a little vomitous. Come to think of it, the very thought of the baked beans in the cafeteria yesterday makes me a little vomitous. Maybe it's residual motion sickness from my 16-hour flight Sunday.

Anyway, that's just me. According to Stephanie Losee and Helaine Olen, co-authors of Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding—and Managing—Romance on the Job, the workplace is a terrif place to find a honey. My colleague Andrea Sachs interviewed them in this fascinating Q&A on Time.com.

Olen tells Sachs:

When we began to research the book, we were as shocked as anyone to discover that about half of all Americans at some point in their career will date on the job, and one in five of them will end up in a long-term relationship.

Sachs then alludes to the sex scandal at the Red Cross to question the authors about the wisdom of any office romance. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune,

the American Red Cross ousted its president, Mark Everson, on Tuesday for engaging in a "personal relationship" with one of his subordinates. He took the challenging job only six months ago.

Apparently, Everson, who's married and has two kids, was having an affair with a staffer.

The Red Cross said its board of governors asked for and received Everson's resignation, effective immediately, after being notified about 10 days ago by a senior executive at the national office about Everson's relationship with a woman on the staff. The woman's name was not released.

In response to Sachs' question, Losee responds:

What this proves is that a leader's personal conduct is more important than any success he has in leading the organization. And I think that is a problem in our society right now. What the board did when they fired him was signal that all of his wins as head of the Red Cross, the way in which he has turned around the organization, the six months of good notices that he had received, not to mention the 18-month investment that the board made in the hiring process trying to find just the right person for the job, was less important than his distasteful personal behavior. There was another way to signal their disapproval than firing him and starting over. They could have sanctioned him. They could have signaled their public disapproval...There are a lot of CEOs out there who lose hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder money, and they're not fired. But if they have an extramarital affair — goodbye, Charlie.

There's the crux of it. If you're single, the authors say, the cubicles are your dating grounds (if you proceed with caution). But if the hottie in your sights is wearing a wedding band, then prepare to find yourself a new job. Not to mention a shrink for when the whole mess explodes.

Anyone find their spouse at work? Do spill.