News

In some respects, it's amazing I found out. I suspect that we've reached the size now where there's just enough formal structure to warrant keeping stuff from the boss - and as such, I'm usually the last person to hear anything. But I was out in town on Saturday night, and happened to see them through a restaurant window. Judging by the amount of footsie going on, they weren't discussing our new direct mailer.

So on Monday I dragged my HR manager into a meeting room - she's a scurrilous gossip, so she knows absolutely everything - and after a slightly unprofessional degree of coercion on my part, she spilled the beans and confirmed they were an item.

I have to say I was surprised. Not because I failed to notice an office romance going on under my nose; my radar in these matters has never been very finely-tuned. And given the size of the company, and the fact that lots of our staff are around the same age, it was always going to happen eventually. But they just seem an odd couple: Mammon, as I mentioned last week, is like Goldfinger (he loves only gold) while this new girl seems quite a sweet, unassuming little thing. I'd never have put them together in a million years, which either shows what a bad judge of character I am, or what a bad judge of character she is (and I know where my money is).

However, this was brilliant news given that (as I explained last week) the battle lines have just been drawn in our dispute over his pay rise. There's nothing better than going into a negotiation in possession of a critical fact that the other party doesn't know that you know - and I figure that if he's just started a new relationship with someone nice in the office, he's even less likely to leave. So my hand just got a little bit stronger.

This is largely why I think office romances are a bit of a minefield. Personally, being an entrepreneur has been pretty disastrous for my love life. Everyone knows that these days, most people meet their future partners in or through work. But I can't go out with any of my staff, because that would just be weird. I can't start going out with our clients, because that would be awkward. When you spend most of your business life trying to be taken seriously by men, the worst thing you can do is start going out with one of them.

So to avoid giving people (like me) any extra ammunition, I'm strongly opposed to mixing business with pleasure. Though it's great that Mammon doesn't feel the same way...