Large organizations and businesses often have “nonfraternization” policies because they don’t want their employees getting romantically involved with one another. (They use the long, ugly word “nonfraternization” because it sounds more important than a “Don’t Get Too Friendly” policy. It is an odd word, used oddly in this context, since it really means getting friendly with the enemy. Presumably, management doesn’t want employees thinking of each other as enemies. But let that pass. My subject today is romance.)
The conventional wisdom is that office romances interfere with efficiency and lead to sexual harassment lawsuits if the romance goes south, as romances sometimes do. On the other hand, sometimes office romances lead to marriages. Here is an example.
Gerald Ellis used to work for UPS. For twenty-one years. He was a good employee. He fell in love with a co-employee and married her. So, UPS fired him. He sued. He lost.
But the judges on the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals who ruled against him weren’t happy about it. Here is what they had to say at the end of their opinion:
In closing, we emphasize that our decision today should not be construed as an endorsement of the UPS nonfraternization policy. As we [have] observed [before]:
As the work force grows and people spend more of their time at work, the workplace inevitably becomes fertile ground for the dating and mating game. It is certainly not unusual, and it may ever be desirable, for love to bloom in the workplace. Contiguity can lead to sexual interest, which can lead to soft music, candlelight dinners, serious romance, and marriage, or any stops along the way.
By all accounts, Ellis was a good employee. He started with UPS as a driver right out of high school in 1979 and worked his way up to a managerial position. After 21 years with the company, he met a woman, apparently fell in love, and, after a 4-year relationship, got engaged. A year later he got married. That’s a fairly nice story, and so is the fact that Ellis and his wife were smooching at a summer concert several months after their wedding. Heck, some marriages don’t even last that long. Although UPS, for the reasons we have stated, comes out on top in this case, love and marriage are the losers. Something just doesn’t seem quite right about that.
As we noted in our three-part series on constitutional interpretation entitled Maiden-Tied-to-the-Tracks series: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, judges are not free simply to do what they want. Some are more willing to explore the edges of the envelope than others but none write on an empty slate.
Tags: sex, Love, Office Romance, Work
