Office Romances

“The only thing more dull than waste management practices are your office anecdotes”, says my long-suffering sister. I couldn’t agree more; although I have had the privilege of not having to study a fine topic as the disposal of waste, I think I get the general idea behind her statement.

But Office anecdotes are all I have by means of a source of interaction with people.
By me, I mean the entire demography of people who are employed in software industry.
Looks like entire lives are shaped around the office. By lives, include personal/social lives in the list too.

Too busy to go out into the real world to find significant others and future spouses, most of them are content in scouring offices to look for potential mates. Anything from a common interest in JSP to having attended the same Personality Development Class can form a fertile ground for two to end up marrying.

Coffee breaks are ways to meet; pantries are the most romantic places in the campus. Any look at a person of the opposite sex for more than 29 seconds is taken as a “Haven’t I met you some place before…?”
If you are caught with a 30sec long look for more than 2 times, it means you are declaring lifelong love.

Needless to say that is why most people not looking for love incessantly end up staring only at the computer monitor enough to get their retinas detached.

I can find mine coming apart any time now.

In what seems like a very weird coincidence is that this past week, I have made eye contact with the same person in a frequency of about twice a day. In software terms its like I proposed. In the real world it would be something contrastingly innocent like that person walks in and out of the wing a lot and my cubicle is next to the wing’s only door, and I have this instinct of looking up when there is any sound.

When there is a group of people who can have inter-personal relations among themselves, there are bound to be some unwritten yet mandatory rules. Also a caste system. If you fall for someone who’s extremely far better qualified and in a high designation, your chances are very very abysmally low. There are cliques of the snobbish who in general don’t rub shoulders with your ordinary Joe or Jane Btech or BE. If Jane, looked like million bucks, then the rule is relaxed. But Joes are subject to rejections from the Clique women even if he bore a marked resemblance to Brad Pitt.

Romance within the upper caste cliques and the lower caste majority are of course welcome and in fact encouraged by the company management. One company gives a car as a gift when 2 employees sign a lifelong partner ship contract. Another gives one 3k when he/she gets married, thus getting 6K is a great inducer for office romances.
Coming back to my tale, X (the person I supposedly ‘stare’ at) is a Prince among the elite clique. He thinks he is doing his bit for the downtrodden women (like me) by smiling at us and trying to provoke us when he is in a slumming mood. X’s deeply touched by my feelings (unspoken) for him to the extent that he has taken to shaking his head sadly in slow motion whenever we see each other. Also he has taken into dealing with me via middle men or women. He’s trying in his way to gently discourage me in my doomed pursuit of him- Something entirely non-existent.

I am tired of this game playing. I would like to go up to him and say, “Buddy, I don’t find you irresistible in the very least. You are entirely safe with me.” But that would mean that I have to accept that I have given him cause to make him think that I am besotted with him. The very concept is calling upon my up-chuck reflex; I am down with fever and I do not want to part with the apple I consumed this morning.

If I ever do settledown (which everyone assures me will happen sooner to people who cry hoarse against marriage) I would definitely make sure that guy is so far away from software that he should think it had something to do with cuddy teddy bears. No wait, that would make him retarded/stuck in a time warp/clueless, or all three together.

So I’ll just settledown for someone who does something else for a living. But people like me are a minority. There is so much smoldering going on and intense chemistry that one would think they wrongly came between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
Some Karan Johar victim would probably say, love can happen anywhere, so why not the office?
Hmmm…think about this. You live with this guy, go to office with him, consume food and beverages with him, work with him, come back with him and the next day it’s the same thing all over again.

There is such a thing as too much time spent together or too much in common with one another. Needless to say (although I will say it) all this is my take on this thing.

There have been great successes and many failures.
No clear statistics to support either result as a norm.

So whoever finds love in the neighbouring cubicles, good for you.
And those that don’t, good for you too.

Hope this post wasn’t too Bridget Jonesy
Rain

PS: some bits of this post are exaggerations and put only to emphasize the appropriate point and any resemblance to anything actual in real life will only make it credible :p