when you work with cheaters: share your stories

by Alison Green on August 22, 2024

In response to the letter earlier this month about two engaged coworkers where one was cheating with another coworker, someone shared this hilarious story:

We had a situation where two managers (married to other people) were seeing each other. They thought they were being discreet but … they really weren’t. The guy’s wife worked elsewhere in the company. The woman was divorced. They’d travel to her house together on specific nights. A few coworkers took the same bus. The secret couple didn’t sit together. The female manager’s stop was the second stop, so several of the coworkers would make a point of talking to the male manager, who could not get off the bus when he wanted and would end up riding to the end of the route where he’d have to wait for the return bus. The coworkers took turns doing this (“Hey! Since when are you on this bus line?”) just to drive the managers crazy. A couple of times, someone would ride back in the other direction too. (“Oops! I forgot I’m meeting my wife two towns over! Why are you riding back this way?”) We’d also come up with ways to delay one or the other of them when they were trying to leave together. It was childish but really satisfying. They were terrible people.

We clearly need to discuss cheating at work — coworkers cheating on coworkers, coworkers cheating with coworkers, and related drama. Please share in the comment section.

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  1. A Poster Has No Name*

    As someone who tends to be totally oblivious to such things, I’m busting out the popcorn and looking forward to the stories!

    1. Yoyoyo*

      SAME. I am always shocked after the fact when I find out. I am also completely unaware of flirting (other people flirting with me, or me being perceived as flirting when I am not).

      1. Coffee*

        Haven’t there been studies showing that people are generally bad at recognising flirting? Same accuracy as a coin flip

    2. Lea*

      Same! I mean, I had a boss that was cheating with a coworker but his wife didn’t work or anything and the divorce that came after was just sad not entertaining. The coworker he was cheating with left when it blew up. He was pretty much an alcoholic and had small kids. Not funny stuff!

      1. Lea*

        I did have coworkers who were dating and I was super oblivious until they were actually together at an event and one coworker knew the others whole family and then I was like OOHHH

        1. Ess Ess*

          Same. I worked in a department for over a year before I discovered that two coworkers that sat about 10 cubes apart were married. They had different last names.

          1. Anne of Green Gables*

            We had two people in our department who were married to each other. Also with different last names. We made sure that new staff knew. Nothing awkward or anything ever happened, but it seemed like something colleagues should know.

            1. anne of mean gables*

              (user name kismet!)

              Yes. We have several married colleagues throughout our organization who have different last names, and who (IMO) go bizarrely out of their way to maintain professional distance, to the point where it almost seems obfuscating. I always find a way to let new colleagues know they’re married because otherwise you find out two years later and are left wondering if you ever inadvertently said anything to one about the other.

              1. YetAnotherAnalyst*

                FWIW, there can be a lot of weirdness with how married coworkers are perceived by their colleagues, so it may be a more rational concern than you think, especially if several couples are trying to keep that distance. I’m in a male-dominated industry, and it gets real old real fast being introduced as “Spouse’s Wife” rather than being acknowledged for my own contributions!

                1. Cat Lady*

                  echoing this!! it’s supremely disenchanting to be introduced to coworkers as “Xs spouse” when everyone else is introduced by their title.

                2. BikeWalkBarb*

                  YetAnotherAnalyst, are we friends IRL? Because that’s the exact case for a couple in my large public agency. Both professionals, both smart, both have PhDs, but if people know they’re married she gets introduced as his wife when that is 100% not relevant to the meeting purpose. Waiting for the day he gets introduced as her husband, but his job title is higher in our hierarchy so that seems unlikely.

                3. Freya*

                  My parents, for a lot of their working life, worked for different companies in the same field. The family joke was that they found out what was happening at their own workplace by talking to their spouse (because their own workplace was sometimes overly cautious lest confidential information be let slip)…

          2. Industry Behemoth*

            Yes. At a past large-company employer, a mailroom staffer was initially baffled when manager Tony DiNozzo had some stuff messengered to manager Ziva David at home, with the charges billed to Tony’s employee account.

            This staffer didn’t know that Tony and Ziva were married. Our mailroom was operated by contract workers, so they didn’t always know things like this about the firm.

          3. This Old House*

            My husband and I worked together for a number of years, and we DO have the same last name, which meant most people knew we were married (we also commuted together and were professional but did not do anything crazy to avoid the appearance that we knew each other), but every so often it wouldn’t click. I was on a Zoom call with a coworker while working from home during COVID when she heard my husband’s voice in the background, and was like, “Wait! Is that [name]? Wait! How do you . . . are you guys . . . Oh my God I had no idea!” We had all worked together for years and it never occurred to me that anyone still didn’t know we were married by then!

            1. MigraineMonth*

              I mentioned to my manager that there was someone else with his unusual last name working at our organization. He deadpanned, “Yes, that’s my wife.”

              1. Lea*

                Ha! I have accidentally sent emails to the wrong half of an unusual last name coworker married couple multiple times. Thankfully they are chill about it

              2. Zephy*

                The other side of that coin is my senior thesis advisor in college – she and her husband (1) had the same last name, (2) worked in the same department, and also (3) had genderswapped versions of the same legal *first* name (think Joseph and Josephine) AND went by nicknames that sounded the same in speech, with slightly different spellings (think Joe and Jo). So you’d have situations like “I need Dr. Smith.” “Which Dr. Smith?” “Joe Smith.” “Do you mean Joseph or Josephine?” Students and even staff/faculty got around the who’s-on-first of it all by specifying “Mr. Dr. Smith” or “Mrs. Dr. Smith.”

                1. Pink Hard Hat*

                  One of the vendors I worked with at a past job had a situation like this! It was a family run company, so these three people had the same last name. The people I talked to at this company were the husband and wife Don and Donna, and their daughter Dawn.

                  Doesn’t help that this is in the Boston area, so Don and Dawn are indistinguishable when spoken aloud, and Donna isn’t much better!

                  I resorted to spelling the name of the person I was looking for when I called the main office number.

                2. Frieda*

                  Students at the school where I teach referred to a similarly-situated couple as “He [Lastname]” and “She [Lastname]” which was used with such affection and respect that it was kind of sweet.

                3. Cats Ate My Croissant*

                  I knew someone who shared a student flat with an Alexander and Alexandra, both of who went by ‘Alex’. He referred to them as Malex and Falex.

                4. Barefootcowgirl*

                  I used to live in a small town and the physicians were married. I went to Mrs Dr Boyer mostly, but sometimes I went to Mr Dr Boyer. It just makes sense.

              3. No, the other [my last name]*

                My husband, father-in-law, bro-in-law and I worked same co. (Large co, not common but not the only family member employees).
                Only 2 weird stories were:
                -the one who knew I was married to another employee but only knew FIL, NOPE.
                -my husband got a transfer to a location 2 states away, but we agreed I’d trail a couple months later so kid could finish school year. When someone during those months said “ah you are (BIL)’s wife,” I corrected them. The response was “how does that work?” in a confused voice,

            2. allathian*

              I work for a government agency with more than 1,800 employees. Some of them are married to each other, usually with different last names.

              I’ve told the story before how one cheating couple was found out when the wife of the cheating husband processed the expenses from the cheaters’ business trip when they claimed expenses for the same hotel room (I only knew about it because the wife was a work friend). There was a fairly messy divorce, the husband still works for us but the wife left because she no longer wanted to work in the same organization as her ex, and so did the “other woman” and I have no idea if they’re still together.

              Ten years ago my agency absorbed a tiny agency with a very niche mission, and two of the employees had the same fairly uncommon last name. Most people assumed that they were married and had met in college, but they were actually siblings. The brother told me jokingly once that it was a relief when his sister retired last spring because now he would no longer get people endlessly asking if they were married, or worse, assuming that.

              Another employee who’d transferred from that niche agency, let’s call her Annie, really put her foot in it once. She was in her early 60s but looked a lot younger than that and had the sort of vitality that made people of all genders sit up a bit straighter and smile when she entered the room, and when she walked past, men half her age would turn their heads to look at her. On one coffee break Annie made a joke about having to leave early for a meeting to be sexually harassed by another employee, Brian. The woman next to her, let’s call her Lucy, looked really embarrassed. By that time it was too late to do anything about it because Annie’d gone, but I asked if Lucy wanted me to tell my work friend Annie that Lucy and Brian were married. She nodded, and when I saw Annie the next day I told her. Annie went to apologize to Lucy and after that, Annie and Lucy often went to lunch together. Brian and Lucy were very discreet about being a couple, so unless you knew you wouldn’t guess. Brian and Annie have since retired, Lucy’s still with us.

          4. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

            I was on a search committee once and we had 2 applicants with different surnames but they lived in the same city and had the same phone number (this was before cell phones were ubiquitous). They both met the requirements so got phone interviews. Neither of them mentioned what connection they had then. One got an in person interview and during the day-long interview mentioned that they were married and that their spouse had also applied as part of a conversation about what the university’s policy was for jobs for trailing spouses.

          5. Retail Dragon*

            My husband and I work at the same place, but on different shifts and in different areas. Most of our coworkers know we’re married, but some of them don’t catch on for a while. One time I was arriving as his shift was ending, and I asked another worker, “Is my husband still back there?” (He often leaves late because he gets in ‘the zone’.) I was assured that he was in the office doing his computer training.

            A third coworker, hearing all this, exclaimed, “Wait, you two are married?! He’s always going on about ‘Retail Dragon this’ and ‘Retail Dragon that,’ but I never knew he meant you!” Everyone had a good chuckle at this.

        2. Pottery Yarn*

          Our company has soooo many employees that are married or otherwise related to one another, including relatives of the owner and other executives, and many of the relationships aren’t inherently obvious (like having the same, distinct last name). You always have to be mindful of who you’re talking to because they may very well be connected to someone high up on the ladder. I always try to give people a crash course on the relationships I know when they start so they can be aware.

          1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

            Yeah, at my last job, the parent company was owned by a matriarch who apparently had employed every. single. relative. of. hers. ever. Children, grandchildren, in-laws, cousins, etc. Every once and awhile, I’d find out that someone I had been emailing, who didn’t have the same last name as the matriarch, was a relative of hers. It seemed wild to me, but apparently that’s how she grew the business- just hiring mostly family.

          2. No Direct Reports*

            My company also has lots of people that are related in some way – we have spouses, parent/child, siblings, grandparent/grandchild, pretty much everything. In some of the areas where we have locations, we are by far the largest employer in that area, so some of it can’t be avoided. I always tell new people to be very mindful of what they say and to who, because you can never tell who’s related.

          3. Cherry Sours*

            I worked at a business with perhaps 40 employees, and was one of perhaps three employees not related to at least one other employee. The situation was rather frustrating, becsuse there was rarely anyone you could talk to about difficulties without it almost immediately getting back to the person you were talking about, generally twisted to piss people off even more.

    3. Soon to retire*

      I work in a small organization and am also somewhat oblivious (I do keep to myself). Imagine my surprise when I got an email invite to a baby shower – for two of our employees – and I knew nothing about dating or marriage. I even had to check the email directory to make sure they were our employees. I did get them a cute baby gift, though.

    4. Ally McBeal*

      Same. I had a boss tell me one Friday afternoon that she was dating someone in a different department – I was about 4 weeks into the job and she just wanted me to know about it in case he ever stopped by her desk for no obvious reason. She emphasized that they were really strict about maintaining work-at-work, relationship-at-home boundaries.

      She came into work the following Monday wearing an engagement ring. So not only were they dating, they were living together and serious enough for a proposal! I hadn’t even seen him at her desk for more than a moment, and she supported a key c-level person that he interacted with frequently so I’d assumed that was the extent of it. And even after that they were really good about maintaining boundaries until she quit to be a SAHM.

      1. Jon*

        “And even after that they were really good about maintaining boundaries until she quit to be a SAHM.”

        My mind immediately goes, and what happened after she quit to be a SAHM mom? No boundaries?

        1. a clockwork lemon*

          Presumably at that point she no longer needed to maintain strict professional boundaries around the way she interacted with her husband in the workplace, for the same reason she didn’t need to maintain strict professional boundaries with her husband at home while they were in the process of acquiring children.

    5. Armchair Analyst*

      Same. For about five minutes I was mad and sad realizing I am always the last to know when 2 co-workers are dating in an office.

      Then I realized I’m pretty happy that way. I always also kind of feel wish I didn’t know!

    7. Anita Brayke*

      Me too! I never catch on to this kind of thing. I have homemade caramel popcorn and I’ll share!

  2. NotRealAnonForThis*

    Fun when a minor child of cheater 1 is working in the front office as an intern, finds out about it, and punches OUT cheater 2, who does not work there but flounced up for lunch, then takes the rest of the day off.

    Cheater 1 was the owner.

    ::Passes popcorn to whoever is next::

    1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      Wow.

      WOW.

      Thread’s over. Last one to leave, please turn out the lights and lock the door behind you.

      1. NotRealAnonForThis*

        I will just state that I was in AWE of the child because boxing form was amazing.

        I am not condoning solving life’s problems like this but am also giving grace based on the fact that child in this case was “not old enough to drive by themself” and “did not have the greatest roll models of how to deal with things at home, obviously.”

        1. What_the_What*

          Clearly the child had (wait for it…..) CHEAP ASS ROLL MODELS!

          Someone had to say it. I’m not sorry.

        2. Irish Teacher.*

          Honestly, while I don’t condone it either, if “not old enough to drive” means 15 or under, I think it’s…understandable? A literal child finding out one of their parents is cheating on the other while working for that parent and finding out cheater 2 also works with them…yeah, I can understand a kid not making the best decisions in that case.

          1. NotRealAnonForThis*

            Pretty much.

            A literal child found out about their parent cheating on the other, and the affair partner (who did not work there) flounced in for lunch when there was zero reason for AP to be there.

            Completely understandable.

            1. Baela Targaryen*

              Maybe I’m medieval, but I just don’t care about violence being done to people who have done truly awful things. I hope the kid punched that cheater HARD.

            2. The anon etal*

              In the old days of our company, multiple c-level execs had dalliances with their assistants. Some were married, some not.
              It is still part of the unofficial company training to share that a particular c-suite exec cheated on his 8-month pregnant (!) wife #1 with his assistant. They divorced, and the assistant left (was forced out?) the company, but she’s now his wife #2. She throws her weight around with receptionists, including once pulling one of them into her now husband’s office to ream her a new one for not interrupting him during an important client meeting when she called. He essentially said – whatever wife #2 wants goes, so yes please do interrupt the exec, no matter what, when she calls.
              And now as a result we have a rule in the handbook that close family members can’t work in the same department together.

              1. zuzu*

                I’ve got a couple of these, both took place in the ’90s.

                #1: After law school, while I was looking for a job as an associate attorney, I worked for a while as a clerk/legal secretary in a tiny law firm. There were two partners, M and S, a couple of legal secretaries, an associate, and a handful of other support staff. The attorneys were all men, the support staff were all women. When I got there, it was shortly after M’s secretary P had left after working at the firm for 15 years. S and P had been having an affair (he was married, she was not) for 12 years, and she was in love with him. She could accept being the mistress. They kept it relatively discreet, but everyone knew anyhow.

                And then the firm hired a new receptionist, G. G and S started openly flirting and carrying on in the office (and out of it) and right in front of P. P began to get her work for M done by lunch, then head down to the liquor store downstairs, buy a bottle of wine, sit in her darkened office with Solitaire on her screen, and drink wine in the dark all afternoon while she systematically and methodically rearranged all of the papers in every one of S’s files. No one realized that’s what she was doing until she’d left.

                #2: My mom worked in a furniture store where the owner and the manager, both married, were having an affair they thought was totally discreet. In reality, everyone in the store, from the sales people to the delivery guys, knew they were banging each other when they went out “separately” for “lunch.”

                Some of the employees had worked there long enough that they remembered that the owner’s dad used to keep a bed in a back office for his own affairs. He used floor models that hadn’t sold.

    2. Person from the Resume*

      It is unfortunate, but not unexpected that the person getting punched out was not the cheating father the actual person violating vows and trusts, but was the affair partner.

      The father was ruining the family and cheating not the affair partner.

      3. Wren*

        They both did. Most affair partners aren’t total innocents who don’t know their affair partners are cheating.

      4. Bee*

        Much harder to punch your own parent, though, both emotionally and in terms of having to continue living in the same house as them. (And we have no idea from this story how the kid felt about the cheating parent, who might actually have been the mother.)

        1. N C Kiddle*

          My mum left my dad for another man when I was under 10, and for the whole of my teenage years I behaved horrendously towards my stepdad. If I ever thought about it logically, I knew he didn’t force my mum to leave, but I couldn’t bring myself to blame her because I was a child and she was my mum. So the unrelated third party was a safe person to blame instead.

      5. jasmine*

        why do we always end up with comments excusing the affair partner? it goes without saying that the person who’s married is the bigger culprit, but that doesn’t mean having an affair with someone who’s married isn’t also extremely wrong. it also goes without saying that of course the child felt more empowered to punch the person who wasn’t their own parent

        1. MigraineMonth*

          I think it might have to do with whether you see marriage (or other monogamous sexual relationship) as an individual contract between two people or as part of a greater social contract.

          If it’s an individual contract between two people, and one of those people decides to break it with an affair partner, the affair partner hasn’t really done anything wrong by societal standards. Analogies are hard, but it’s like if someone promised their spouse not to eat donuts, and then went and bought donuts; the person providing the donuts isn’t doing anything wrong, even if they knew the person buying the donuts was breaking their agreement.

          If marriage is part of a social contract that should be respected by everyone, on the other hand, the cheating spouse is breaking their vows *and* the affair partner is transgressing the social contract by committing their own violation. It’s more like the pair are committing robbery or some other illegal act together.

          1. Contract negotiator*

            Thanks for this breakdown! I always felt it was weird how much ire the affair partner got, when they arent the one breaking a promise, but the social contract vs individual contract analogy makes it make sense.

            1. Charlotte Lucas*

              I feel like if the affair partner is a friend or relative of the spouse being cheated on, there’s plenty of blame to spread around.

            2. Susannah*

              Right – or how the wronged spouse hates or plans some sort of retribution for the affair partner. I mean, how about the person who actually betrayed your wedding vows?

          2. one of the annas*

            ooh, this was a really helpful breakdown for me, too – thanks for this! I’m not sure how I fall on individual vs. social contract, but it’s something for me to ponder

          3. Great Frogs of Literature*

            Oh! I thought I didn’t have one, but thinking through your explanation (thanks for that, it makes a lot of sense) made me realize I do.

            So, fresh out of college, I did a year volunteering for a global NGO in… let’s say it was Mozambique. It was a bit like the Peace Corps, but one year instead of three, and the sponsoring org was religious (and had some overly-restrictive lifestyle guidelines). There were four of us on the program in Mozambique: two guys, one of whom we’ll call Mark; and two women, Abby and I. I was stationed an hour or two from the guys, and Abby was in a city four or five hours from them. I only saw Abby for a few days every month or two, but it was an intense experience and we generally shared a room when the group was together, so we grew close really quickly.

            For context: Mark was maybe 25, 26, and the rest of us were all a few years younger. Mark had a girlfriend back in the States, who was enough younger to make me side-eye a little, but not enough that I was going to give the cut direct to one of the few people in my support network in the middle of a foreign country.

            About halfway through the year, the four of us went on vacation for a week, outside the country we were working in. While we were there, Abby confided to me that she and Mark had had sex (outside the bounds of the lifestyle guidelines, but none of us really cared about those) and when I was like, “Doesn’t he have a girlfriend?” it came out that he had not yet broken up with said girlfriend. I disliked the timing there, but at this point Abby was a very good friend, and it was pretty clear that the girlfriend was going to be broken up with imminently (and, in fairness, it was pretty difficult to make calls to the States), so I held my tongue.

            At the time, I did not approve of Abby’s actions (I would not want to be party to betraying someone else like that, even though she wasn’t doing the betraying, but also I’m ace and it’s not something I would be tempted to do, so…) but I judged Mark pretty hard, even though we stayed friends for the rest of the year. At the end of the program, I kept in touch with her but not him.

            Mark went through some health troubles over the next few years, which Abby nursed him through. When he was finally feeling better and they were getting their feet under them again… Abby called me in tears to say that Mark had cheated on her with someone else and they were breaking up. I bit my tongue again and made all the correct sympathetic noises, but let me tell you, it took a monumental effort of will not to say, “Well, what were you expecting? You have firsthand experience that he did this to his last girlfriend, too.”

            1. Oldsbone*

              More people would do well to remember as a general adage “If they’ll cheat with you they’ll cheat on you.”

          4. Lea*

            Valid but I really hate the tendency to blame the ap MORE which seems to be rampant. I always think you don’t
            Know what they’ve been told

            1. stratospherica*

              This comment helped me realise that AP stands for Affair Partner. I was reading your comment thinking “well why WOULDN’T they blame the a**hole parent??” hahaha

          5. Lab Boss*

            I get where you’re coming from but I’m skeptical. Consider your donut analogy. If we assume the donuts were bought from some random clerk at Dunkin’ then sure, the provider of illicity pastry is blameless. But that’s a certain flavor of transactional that an affair really isn’t. I think it might be more like, if I knew you and your spouse had agreed to stop eating donuts, but I kept bringing donuts in and offering one to you every day. Of course the agreement didn’t involve me, and of course the greater blame is with you for eating the forbidden donut, but I would still bear some moral responsibility for knowingly being part of you breaking a promise.

            1. goddessoftransitory*

              I think this is the more accurate take. If the person who promised not to eat doughnuts asked me to bring doughnuts in without telling me the deal, and I did, then I wouldn’t feel responsible for his/her cheating. But if I do know, I’m choosing to bring those doughnuts.

            2. MigraineMonth*

              See, this is why I said metaphors are hard.

              I’m not trying to talk about the behavior of the provider of the donuts, I’m trying to highlight the nature of the promise not to eat them. That promise was between two people only. The donut provider is not a part of that promise. Society is not a part of that promise. The person who decides to eat donuts is breaking their promise to their spouse only.

              In contrast, if there is a social contract where everybody promises both their partner and their community to never eat donuts, that’s a promise with society. In that case, the donut provider (who is part of society) is a party to that contract and therefore is also part of breaking it. Society has a stake in enforcing its social contracts (usually by shunning everyone breaking it), and both the donut-eater and the donut provider have broken the contract.

              If you think that marriage is simply an exchange of vows (or property) between two people, you probably lean towards the first interpretation. If you think that marriage is a building block of society, that seems nonsensical.

          6. jasmine*

            oh wow that’s really insightful! I grew up in america so by all rights I’m american but I find a lot of stuff about american culture (american white culture? WASP culture?) kind of weird and this explains why this is one of the things that fits into that bucket

            1. MigraineMonth*

              The only reason I would ever get married is to a friend for tax purposes, so the entire subject of marriage (why would anyone want to?) and cheating (seriously, why would anyone want to?) are pretty foreign to me. This is just a theory I came up with while reading responses.

              You might enjoy sociology books/articles about American culture! I found a book that broke down gift-giving in American society into 7 rules with corollaries (and a Santa clause) and it was definitely one of those, “Oh, so *that’s* why things are the way they are” moments.

          7. Jenesis*

            Interesting framing that I’ve not seen before! I’ve always fallen on the side of knowingly sleeping with someone who’s “taken” is inherently an immoral act (not least because of the potential spillover effects to the unfaithful person’s existing partner), but this helps make both sides of the argument clearer to me.

        2. Bear in the Sky*

          *Knowingly* having an affair with someone who’s married is extremely wrong. Not all affair partners know they’re affair partners.

          And if one person in the affair is married and the other is single and available, it’s on the married person to keep their wedding vows. So even if the single and available person tries hard to seduce them, and even if they do that knowing the married person is married, the married person has the responsibility to say no. (Assuming monogamous marriage here.) If the married person doesn’t say no, or worse, initiates the affair, that’s a violation of their commitment. That does carry some extra weight.

          1. Lea*

            Not all affair partners know they’re affair partners

            Yes exactly. The lies a married person will tell…

            I tend to think unless the AP is your best friend or sibling or something they should be mostly left out of the calculation for practical purposes

          2. allathian*

            I consider marriage to be a personal contract rather than a social one. So at least as long as I’m not the victim, I prefer to blame the partner who’s in the committed relationship rather than the third party for any cheating. But even so, I doubt I’d want to remain friends with a person I knew was involved in a relationship with someone who was in a supposedly monogamous relationship with someone else.

            It’s not all black and white, some cheaters do learn because the (consequences of the) cheating makes them feel so bad about their actions. Couples who are committed to staying together in a monogamous relationship after one of them cheated on the other sometimes manage to get there, but it takes a lot of effort from both the cheater and the victim, and a genuine change of heart on the part of the cheater. Often these efforts fail because the victim is unable to forgive and unwilling to trust again, or the cheater is unwilling to commit to changing, or both. But this is unlikely to happen when the cheating happens in the fairly early stages of a relationship.

        3. Alice in Hinterland*

          It’s amazing how blame gets distributed oddly in these sorts of problems, even when there is a clear-cut policy! During my Iraq deployment, intimate contact of any kind was forbidden, but there’s also a long-standing policy that the higher-ranked individual is largely responsible for an inappropriate relationship, most especially if the superior is in the subordinate’s chain of command.

          Of course, when two 19 yo privates first class became pregnant — both naming the same senior sergeant in their unit as the father — apparently that long-held tradition meant nothing. Both women got sent home in disgrace, busted down to buck private, and had extra duty for 45 days (awful for 4-6 month pregnant soldiers!). One managed to salvage her career, but the other was discharged without only a few benefits because she would be a single parent and didn’t have anyone to step in as alternate carer if she deployed.

          And the first sergeant? Their great-grandboss, who had a wife and four kids at home and was actually the only one cheating? He got recommended for promotion to sergeant major; the commander claimed he’d need the extra money if “those little w#$&$s asked for child support”. He was also awarded a bronze star after the deployment, which wasn’t really a surprise, since they were awarded to all platoon sergeants and higher, and that one squad leader whose team shot off all their ammo the first week (mostly at our team because they were idiots!).

      6. Myrin*

        Ah yes because no child, especially one who is still a minor, has any qualms whatsoever about just punching their own parent.

      7. Spero*

        But Cheater 1 may also have been paying for the child’s housing, expenses, college fund etc as well as able to physically overpower the child or harm their mother/other siblings. Cheater 1 had power over the child that Cheater 2 didn’t. That makes a difference for response. In most cases, I’d be there with you on Cheater 1 facing more consequences, but it’s not reasonable for us to expect a child to punch out the person who provides them housing over the AP.

    3. IngEmma*

      This story is wild!

      Also: I clearly have hourly pay approval on the mind because I fully couldn’t comprehend this at first. I thought the child had clocked the affair partner out (ie made it look like they had left work) which had? Possibly resulted in their pay being shorted ? But I couldn’t figure out how that worked if the affair partner didn’t work there OR what the point was. Reading the comments made me realize how badly I’d misinterpreted something pretty clear!!!

    4. Name of Requirement*

      I totally read “punched out” as clocked out and felt very lost wandering the comment section.

      1. NotRealAnonForThis*

        Confirming it was literally as if it were a sudden boxing match that the Affair Partner was unawares of.

    5. Sociology Rocks!*

      It’s interesting to see how other commenters read this, regarding why the child punched cheater 2. I just assumed cheater 2 was the nearest target, and quite possibly that they learned about the cheating when their cheating parent was not present.

      1. NotRealAnonForThis*

        What we knew:

        Child knew. They were not discreet.

        Cheater 2 did not work there and had zero reason to be there other than to see Cheater 1. Our suspicion is that child felt being around was flaunting the affair.

        Child loathed Cheater 2 as a result for the above listed reasons and a few other reasons that make things worse but also not anonymous. So, mitigating factors that make Cheater 2 an absolute arse of a human being, and Cheater 1 (the parent) even worse.

    6. I strive to Excel*

      I do not generally condone physical violence. But as a kid from messily divorced parents, that punch must have felt *so* satisfying.

    7. anonamanda*

      Wait – I wonder if this is the same situation as is mentioned in question 51 here? https://www.askamanager.org/2022/09/ask-a-manager-speed-round-3.html

      “Can you tell me about a time you disagreed with a decision that was made by a supervisor? Why did you disagree with it, and what did you do about it?”
      “They slept with my dad. I didn’t agree with it because my dad is married to my mom. I knocked her front teeth out.”

      Is this a crossover episode?

      1. NotRealAnonForThis*

        Confirming that I did NOT write in question 51 in that particular speed round. Child did not punch their parent, they punched their parent’s affair partner.

          1. Jenesis*

            Apparently so! The details are different enough.

            That story: Child’s cheating parent sleeps with child’s boss, child punches out the AP boss.

            This story: Child’s cheating parent *is* their boss, child punches out the AP (who is otherwise unrelated to child’s place of work, and would probably have been spared if they had stayed away).

  3. teensyslews*

    No original stories, but a tidbit from a podcast I listened to recently: as part of the Enron scandal and subsequent prosecution, several hundred thousand emails from top Enron employees involved in the scandal were publicly released and made available to anyone who wanted them, regardless of content and uncensored. As this was in the days before most people had personal email or understood that their work email was not private, there were a number of extremely personal emails released. Affairs, divorces… an excellent reminder that what you write in your work email can and may be read by others!

    1. Baldrick*

      14 years ago private emails were pretty common, and yet I knew of a very senior guy who got in big trouble when he had an affair with someone who worked for him. His biggest mistake was that he asked IT to delete those emails. Lesson learned: never use work emails for private affairs!

      I once read a story of a military guy who was married but hadn’t told his girlfriend, and instead of breaking up with her when he was posted he instead mailed her an envelope that explained he was special forces and killed in action and she could never speak of him again. Needless to say, the fact that I read about it meant that it didn’t work!

    2. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I worked processing electronic evidence discovery for a while, and I don’t think there’s anything that would surprise me on someone’s work computer anymore. The things I found ranged from porn to literal snuff videos.

      1. Victoria*

        That sounds like a really rough job to have, I hope you were supported well whilst having to see those things.

      2. She of Many Hats*

        And that’s ^^^ why you make time to go through and clean out your mail boxes on a regular basis like you do with physical papers & documents. Ditto your web search histories & cookies. If it’s done regularly, it’s Proper Data Management. If it’s done after a legal action is begun, it’s destroying/hiding evidence.

      3. Venus*

        I occasionally email personal stuff on my work email when I catch up with coworkers that I used to work with and haven’t seen in a while. At first I felt unsure if it was appropriate until I figured out that it was good for work morale and everything we share would be boring to anyone else (“How’s your mom these days?”). Your comment reminds me that I really shouldn’t worry about these emails!

        1. Azure Jane Lunatic*

          When the company I worked at was having a contentious time with a vital piece of productivity software (online helpdesk) and there were pro- and anti- factions which included one of the pro-factions trying to gaslight a committee of “we just want this to ******* work” anti- engineers into thinking that we four were the only people upset about it (did I record that meeting? Well, I had my phone politely face-down the whole time and I took Copious notes) — one of the older engineers who ran one of the major internal services had a habit of responding to emails saying things like “we should talk about X topic” with an immediate phone call. Where we could speak (relatively) freely.

          This was the company where some of us took “milkshake walks” through green spaces so we could also talk freely about the issues of the day.

      4. Waiting on the bus*

        I’m a cheater whisperer, people feel the need to confess to me when they’re cheating, thinking about cheating or being cheated on all the time. I don’t know why either.

        The weirdest confession at work came from the head of HR (!!!!), at the Christmas party, in the bathroom.

        Jane, head of HR, hired Fergus, a sales manager. Who was engaged at the time, which everyone knew as it was part of his introduction to the company.

        About three months after Jane hired Fergus comes the Christmas party, traditionally with an open bar.

        I’m drunk and in the bathroom, washing my hands. Jane comes in, presumably even drunker than I am, bursts into tears and sort of falls into my arms and confesses her affair with Fergus to me. There are tears. There is sobbing. I have no idea what’s going on.

        I don’t remember the whole episode that clearly (again: drunk as hell) but I remember awkwardly patting Jane’s back with my wet hands since I hadn’t gotten around to drying them yet; a couple of renditions of me going “he’s never going to break off the engagement” and her going “I know but I think I love him”, a colleague walking into the bathroom, seeing Jane and me and just turning around and walking back out again, and the same colleague later coming back to rescue me. I don’t know how long Jane and I were in the bathroom, but it felt like forever. It was at least long enough for my colleague to grow a conscience and return to help.

        The whole thing was so surreal that the next morning I genuinely wasn’t sure if it was real or an alcohol induced hallucination, except the colleague who came to my rescue asked me the next day WTF that had been all about (I DON’T KNOW) and Jane didn’t look me in the eye for weeks (no great loss, she was shitty HR anyway).

    3. Damn it, Hardison!*

      Ooh, which podcast is this? I love hearing/reading about financial shenanigans, and Enron is one of my favorites.

      2. Insert Clever Name Here*

        99 Percent Invisible, episode 421 “You’ve Got Enron Mail.” It’s a fascinating episode about the afterlife those emails have had.

      3. teensyslews*

        I listened to it on 99% Invisible, but it was a re-broadcast from a Business Insider podcast called “Brought To You By”

    4. I strive to Excel*

      Not just the top employees either. I analyzed a bunch of them in a financial data analytics class we were doing. It was mostly keyword searching. I didn’t find anything in particular, but a classmate found a funny poem an employee wrote after the news of the fraud was starting to hit.

    5. the quiet quitter strikes again*

      It’s pretty incredible what people will use their work emails for, even when IT warns them they aren’t private! I work for a public/government org and we also have a retention policy that requires archiving emails for years in some cases for GRAMA, not to mention when a person leaves and we need to find a document or email thread that was never properly moved to a shared folder.

      So IT has stumbled onto affairs, purchase receipts of a HIGHLY personal nature if you catch my drift, and in one case someone’s extremely lengthy and even more extremely smutty fan fiction. All of which could formally become a publicly available record associated with their name at any time!

      I like to believe these folks are simply immune to shame because that sounds enviable, but I think they are just somehow oblivious to the possible consequences despite IT putting out reminders constantly.

    6. Art3mis*

      I don’t even use my work email for online shopping! (and I’m constantly amazed at people who do)

      1. BikeWalkBarb*

        Somehow my personal debit card and the Square app got linked to my work email. I say “somehow” because I’ve never once had reason to directly link the Square app to that email account myself and I use a credit card for work-related purchase I’ll be reimbursed for.

        I’ve gone into Square settings and made sure my personal email is in the account.

        And yet receipts that tell my admin assistant how often I go to coffee shops and bakeries continue to arrive in my in-box. We laugh about it, but darn certain I won’t ever use my debit card for something that would be awkward in my work email records. I’m in a public agency.

  4. Irish Teacher.*

    When I worked retail, we got security from an outside firm, after a robbery in another branch of our store. The security firm was in Limerick, maybe 50 miles or so from the town our store was in? So one of the security guards used to go dating women in town after work, presumably figuring it was far enough from Limerick that his girlfriend was unlikely to find out.

    Our deputy manager, understandably, disapproved of this and one evening when she knew he was going out with a woman locally, kept finding him extra work to do to make him late for his date.

    1. Potato Potato*

      There once was a man from Limerick
      Whose goal in his life was to stick
      To going out on the town
      Without his wife knowin
      But his boss was the bigger dick

      4. Sharp-dressed Boston Terrier*

        A Limerick security guard
        Planned to stray off the leash from his yard.
        But he quickly got wiser
        When his supervisor
        Made clocking out dreadfully hard.

  5. Ask Me How I Know*

    No story, just some unsolicited advice: if you are married and work with your spouse, and you have the opportunity to cheat with another coworker, just don’t. Just. Don’t. You’re welcome.

    4. Mutually supportive*

      this could be reduced to
      “if you are married… and have the opportunity to cheat…just don’t.”

    5. Kali*

      Any first responders, nurses, or military can tell you that unfortunately, no one takes this very sound advice.

      I have so many stories, but they’re all depressing and, in some cases, involve criminal investigations. *sigh*

      I go home to my husband and tell him how much I love and appreciate him, and he replies, “Oh no, what did your coworkers do now???”

      1. anon24*

        I can’t speak about the military, but as a first responder yes. I’ve never slept with a co-worker, a nurse, doctor, or other first responder, either when I was married or now that I am single. But ugh, I am so much in the minority. So many people are sleeping with each other and it is so, so gross. I was once called “naïve” because I said that I had never cheated on my then-spouse and never would. Now that I’m single I have no hope of ever really being in a relationship again because I would never trust another first responder and as is so typical in this field I have no time for a social life outside of being a first responder.

      2. Hroethvitnir*

        Yeah man, I cannot imagine being monogamous with one or both of you in the military. Just. The chance of cheating can be rounded to 100% (the opportunities and social acceptance/encouragement are just next level).

        I understand re: first responders, though at least you’re not also away from each other for months!

    2. Middle Aged Lady*

      Oops. The system ate my corrected version of this comment and I don’t have time now to rewrite the whole thing. It was a love triangle and my grad student shoved one of the offenders because she hated cheaters, and got fired.

  7. Enescudoh*

    Ok here we go.
    Former boss A (F 30s) was encouraged by Coworker B (F20s) to get together with Colleague C (M30s) (B, C and colleague D (F30s) were all part of a friendship clique). C has been divorced a few years. So, big party for an outgoing director, they leave together, and A says it seemed pretty promising, they agreed the next day to go on a date at some point. Then A gets ghosted.
    At a social catch up with B, A mentions it was strange that she was ghosted, given good vibes etc. B looks embarrassed, and then reveals that D had seen them leaving together and had got really upset. Turns out that C and D have been having an affair for years – it was part of the reason for C’s divorce – but D is still married to her husband. But doesn’t like it when C dates anyone else, so asked him not to go on any more dates with A. Which he agreed to. And despite having successfully kept it secret for years – this was the thing that made everyone in the company find out about the affair. We still have no idea if they know everyone knows…

    1. Hlao-roo*

      Did Coworker B know about C and D’s affair when she encouraged A to go out with C? Or did she only find out after A’s date with C?

      Aside from the “who knew what when?” questions, amazing that C thought ghosting was a better move than taking a minute for a platitude along the lines of “I didn’t feel any chemistry.”

      1. amoeba*

        Or, you know, “this was a heat of the moment thing but I don’t really want to date within the company”. Such a good excuse right there…

        People do strange things.

      2. ChattyDelle*

        ghosting would work so much better with a co worker who’s going to see you regularly? no way that’s going to backfire!

      1. Hlao-roo*

        I also have some trouble following narratives where people have initials instead of full names, so hopefully this will make it more readable for you (and others):

        Former boss Ashley (F 30s) was encouraged by Coworker Beth (F20s) to get together with Colleague Charlie (M30s) (Beth, Charlie and colleague Diane (F30s) were all part of a friendship clique). Charlie has been divorced a few years. So, big party for an outgoing director, they leave together, and Ashley says it seemed pretty promising, they agreed the next day to go on a date at some point. Then Ashley gets ghosted.

        At a social catch up with Beth, Ashley mentions it was strange that she was ghosted, given good vibes etc. Beth looks embarrassed, and then reveals that Diane had seen them leaving together and had got really upset. Turns out that Charlie and Diane have been having an affair for years – it was part of the reason for Charlie’s divorce – but Diane is still married to her husband. But doesn’t like it when Charlie dates anyone else, so asked him not to go on any more dates with Ashley. Which he agreed to. And despite having successfully kept it secret for years – this was the thing that made everyone in the company find out about the affair. We still have no idea if they know everyone knows…

        1. Anita Brayke*

          Oh, thank you! I was wondering if I was supposed to multiply (M30s) (B, C and colleague D (F30s) somehow, and I suck at algebra!

  8. NMitford*

    I have vivid memories that I can’t unsee of the day I realized I’d forgotten my lunch in my car and went downstairs to the garage to get it, only to find two coworkers going at it hot and have in the backseat of the car that was parked next to mine. Fogged up windows and bouncing shock absorbers and everything.

    At first I stood there contemplating going back upstairs and eating peanut butter crackers out of the vending machine, but that didn’t seem fair to me, so I just walked up to my car, unlocked it, grabbed my lunch bag, and ran.

    1. Ali + Nino*

      omg yikes! Good for you for getting yourself a real lunch, you surely deserved it after witnessing…that.

    2. TXNJIA*

      Yes! The Director of HR where I worked had an affair with an employee and they were caught in the parking lot next to the dumpster when someone was taking out the trash!

        1. MigraineMonth*

          If there’s any justice in the universe, the Director of HR didn’t and was fired for it.

      2. NotJane*

        I worked in a car dealership and my boss and the Service Manager were caught in the backseat of her car in the parking lot next to the dumpster.

    3. Red_Coat*

      Honestly, I’m the sort of petty that would have locked/unlocked my car so that it honked or set off the car alarm for a second.

      1. NMitford*

        Sadly, this took place before the advent of key fobs that let you honk the horn. Otherwise, I would cheerfully have let my car honk. I’m that sort of petty too.

    5. RIP Pillowfort*

      Okay that reminds me of a story from my mom’s workplace years ago.

      They were all social workers for the state and had cleaning crew provided by the county. They were performing the cleaning as part of community service requirement. Which this is a southern state so should not surprising. For the most part this was fine. The workers treated the cleaning crew well and respected them. The work was mainly vacuuming halls, dumping trash, and groundskeeping.

      One social worker who was married and had children struck up a “friendship” with one of the crew that was her age. My mom and her coworkers did think it was odd she was pouring so much attention on this guy. And she turned around saying she was helping him through her church. I mean the guy met her husband and had been to her house during a party that other coworkers were at. Turns out they were having liaisons in the storage shed out the back during working hours. They got caught in the act one day by a worker going to get some equipment.

      And the worker that caught them was legendary. They didn’t notice her. She walked back into the building, got on the phone intercom and called the office head to come out back to the “Love Shack.” The office head starts asking her what she means and she tells them as she walks them back to the shed where they both catch them. That worker got fired on the spot and to our knowledge, never told her husband why. My mother and her coworkers consistently called the storage shed the Love Shack after that point.

      1. Mr. Mousebender*

        The Loooove Shaaaack
        Is a little old place where
        Weeee can get togeeeetherrr….

        I do love me some B-52s, so your comment gave me an awesome ear worm to enjoy with my morning coffee. Cheers!

  9. buddleia*

    Great story! I love the role of public transit here – it’d be a very different scenario if everyone got into their own private automobile to go home.

    2. Paint N Drip*

      The example story CRACKED me up!! I love group pettiness :)
      I also like to imagine the various bus drivers (because it’s so sitcom-y I do imagine just the one same wizened driver) seeing all of this play out and getting a kick out of it

  10. Alexander Graham Yell*

    Okay, so it wasn’t me, but one of my teachers when I was in high school.

    For context, I went to an international school, so it was really common for a) couples to teach at the same school and b) for teachers to suddenly decide to move “back home” and leave on what seemed like short notice.

    So one year we have this SUPER cool English teacher. He is super passionate about books, he’s funny, he’s the teacher every halfway nerdy student had some kind of crush on. So people start to notice when he’s being weird – keeping his classroom doors locked, having the room be dark but then to suddenly see the lights turn on and he comes to the door, generally being a bit weird. But hey, he’s super cool, and his wife just had a baby so he’s probably not sleeping great – who is going to blame him for needing a mid-day nap? Certainly not us!

    Then one day somebody thinks they see somebody else leaving his classroom through a different door (each room had 2 doors, he would lock both and then only open one for students to come in through). People start talking and realize that the door is always locked, but when they go to leave at the end of the period, it’s unlocked. Hmm.

    So the end of the year gets closer and closer and it’s announced that since having the baby, he and his wife want to move home to be closer to their families. Totally normal! Good, even! So we all say goodbye and everybody is sad but happy for them and then goes about our self-involved teenage lives.

    Enter: me. This is ye olden days of going to buy CDs at a CD store, and I’m grabbing a System of a Down CD and there’s only one left and another hand reaches for it but I beat them there and I grab it. I am successful! I am glorious! I am right next to the teacher who moved “home”!

    Turns out he’d been having an affair with an elementary school teacher and they got caught. Not sure if he lost his job or just quit to save face, but he’d taken a gig at another international school in the city and moved in with (and later married, and later impregnated) his affair partner. No, he didn’t tell me this. My mom happened to be the sub for his 2nd wife during her maternity leave. Mom said the teacher she subbed for seemed nice, but man – even at 16 I knew I’d never be able to trust him if I were in her shoes.

    1. Caffeine Monkey*

      I’ve always firmly believed that if they’ll cheat with you, they’ll cheat on you.

      Just ask my stepmothers. All five of them.

            1. Caffeine Monkey*

              Second time seems to have stuck. At least, they’ve been married for eleven years this time, and I think he’s probably too old and poor to persuade anybody else now.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          Really. The thing about the “half of marriages end in divorce” statistic is that there are some outliers who think that when it comes to marriage, if at first you don’t succeed, all you have to do is try, try, try, try, try, try again.

          I’m not sure whether by the fifth/sixth/seventh marriage they’ve decided that marriage is supposed to be short-term, or if they really believe that it will work out differently with *this* person (even though they haven’t worked on what caused the previous marriages to end), but it’s definitely a trend.

          1. LBD*

            I think that some of them just run out of energy to do the whole cycle again, especially as they get older. If you really want them, you just have to catch them at that point.

      2. That Crazy Cat Lady*

        Oof, yeah. So many women think, “Well, he cheated on his wife because he doesn’t really love her, but he loves me so we’ll be fine.” And then…what do you know, he cheats on her too.

        (Also – this is not to imply that only men cheat. Just basing this on my own observations with people I’ve known personally.)

        1. CommanderBanana*

          Everyone wants to believe it’ll be different because it’s them, and they’re special, right?

      3. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

        When I was a kid in the ’70s, my next door neighbor’s dad was found dead by his 10 year old son, at his workplace (he was a veterinarian). In my memory he was killed by a shotgun that had no fingerprints, but it was declared a suicide (hunh?). Rumor had it he was in an affair with his assistant.
        I felt sorry for his pregnant wife and six kids under the age of 12. Wife had been his assistant before becoming a SAHM.
        His obituary included two teenage kids from previous marriage.

      4. Radish Husband*

        Exactly this.

        My father’s fourth wife was his mistress with his third wife. And yeah, he divorced the fourth wife as well. Didn’t both remarrying after that.

        For the record, after 23+ years of marriage, I have no desire to follow in his footsteps in that way.

    2. Ally McBeal*

      Reminds me of the high school I attended – we were new to town and it was a tiny private Christian school-church combo, so the headmaster met with us a couple weeks before the semester was due to start. I arrived on Day 1 to discover the headmaster had abruptly departed after having an inappropriate relationship with the Spanish teacher. And faculty were required to attend the church so the spouses knew each other and everything. And the headmaster had two kids in the high school, so were probably taking classes from the Spanish teacher. Both families ended up leaving that church+school and finding church & educational homes elsewhere. Everyone talked about it for weeks (reason #1 million to be a small fish in a big pond rather than a big fish in a small pond).

      1. CommanderBanana*

        Oooooh, a really similar thing happened in my neighborhood when I was in middle school. I went to a public school, but my older sibling went to a church school attached to one of those megachurches found throughout the American South.

        The pastor, who was also the principal of the school, and his family lived in the same cul-de-sac as my best friend, so I became acquainted with his daughter (we were the same age) even though she didn’t go to my school…until she showed up at my school one day mid-semester.

        Turns out, her dad and the gym teacher had run away together to a neighboring town and spent a few days shacking up in a hotel room before slinking back. I don’t know if he and the gym teacher ended up together, but he either left or was invited to leave the church and his wife pulled her daughter out of the church school and sent her to public school.

        1. Ally McBeal*

          “Fun” fact: Schools attached to megachurches in the South have a significant likelihood of having started out as segregation academies after Brown v Board of Education. Mine was. A common way to spot is is the team name and/or mascot: Knights, Crusaders, that sort of thing.

          No wonder those places tend to be moral deserts.

      2. Alexander Graham Yell*

        Oh yeah, we had a year (before my time) when the head of the PTA and the principal ran off together.

        1. Ms. Hagrid Frizzle*

          After I left my high school, I learned that the school secretary found the principal *ahem* attending to the PTA president on his desk. . . during school hours.

          They were both married to other people.

          The school got a new principal and a new PTA president with a quickness. Not sure what happened to either of the cheaters after the school cut them loose.

      3. AnonFelicia*

        I also went to a tiny private school (a hippy dippy artsy one connected to a small niche type of Christian spiritualism) and two memorable occurrences were a) the time the super charismatic and respected main pastor of the church that was loosely connected to the school, who had young adult/high school aged kids who were either at the school or had graduated, had an affair with, left his wife for, and had a baby with (I don’t remember the exact order of those last two) our brand new 20-something high school English teacher. She was maybe 4 years older than his oldest kid and looked EXACTLY like a younger version of his wife, and b) the time a dad of two preschoolers started an affair with his kids’ teacher while his wife was pregnant with their 3rd kid, and immediately got the teacher pregnant with twins. That’s just, like, SO many kids lol! They all sat together at church though so I guess they worked things out amongst them

    3. Butterfly Counter*

      I was worried that he was having an affair with a student. Glad to see that isn’t what was going on.

      I had a crush on a college professor once. Then, someone told me that he actually has dated students in the past. I immediately lost my crush on him and my respect for him.

      1. Venus*

        I had a college prof who ended up marrying one of his students, but it was helpfully clarified at the same time that she was an older student who had returned after some years of working and was in fact close in age to him, and they only started dating after she finished taking his class. It was actually a sweet story, rather than very creepy!

        1. Chirpy*

          I had a high school teacher who had married one of his students. My mom had been in his class and said he and the student used to make out on field trips. At least he was a brand new teacher and only a few years older than the girl? It seemed to work out for them because they were still married and had a daughter my age, but I was always a bit wary of that teacher.

          1. allathian*

            My sister’s *elementary school homeroom teacher* married one of his former students. Both of them were members of the same church/cult and at least according to the gossip when they married, he was friendly with her parents and started “dating” her with their consent pretty much as soon as she stopped being his student. Their wedding day was set for the day following her high school graduation, and he must’ve been at least 30 years older than she was, if not more. I’m in Finland, and the oldest elementary school kids are 13, and we are usually legal adults, 18 or 19, when we graduate high school.

      3. jo*

        One of my high school classmates ended up marrying her AP teacher. He is significantly older than him. This is also at least the second time it happened (substantiable rumor has it the Spanish teacher also married a former student). We were a Catholic high school in a small town but the community was not THAT small. And most people left for college anyhow.

        I had a great relationship with one of my teachers who noticed I was struggling personally when my father suddenly left my mom for another woman and was making the divorce difficult – it ended up dragging out 5 years – but I never ever would have started any romantic relationship with him. I was extremely grateful to him for stepping up, but nope never ever ever.

        2. kalli*

          Both my uncles were Christian Brothers and taught in CBC schools, and both left the brotherhood to marry women much younger than them whom they met through teaching.

          One of those women magically acquired three adult children at one point.

          Yep. That happened.

    4. Janne*

      My high school was a mess like that too:

      The principal was married to a history teacher 20 years younger than him. They married when she was an intern teacher, he divorced his wife for her. She just kept working at the school after her internship and graduation. No wonder that they hired her specifically.

      When my brother was around 14 years old, his class mentor teacher (each class had their “own” teacher that they’d meet 1-2 additional hours each week for study skills, social skills etc) married. She invited her whole class to the wedding and it was very cute. The thing that baffled us older students was that she’d been carpooling with another teacher (both history teachers) and would always have lunch with him in his classroom and they would be very touchy-feely and know everything about each other, but she married someone else. Well, 2 years later she had a divorce and moved in with the history teacher. We tried to get it printed in the school newspaper, but were not allowed, so then we threw a fit about censorism and tried to get a whole lot of other not very polite things printed (which also was not allowed and nearly got our newspaper club dismantled).

      We also had 2 music teachers fighting out their divorce during class hours, with their primary-school-age kids there with them because primary school finished at 3pm and our school would be until 4:30pm. But as far as I could hear from them screaming in the hall near the music classrooms, it didn’t have to do with cheating.

  11. TracyXP*

    I listen to a radio station that lets the listeners send in anonymous confessions to get it off their chest. This mornings included one where the listener (25 years old) was having an affair with their boss (47 year old male) for 6 months and they didn’t think anyone knew. All I could imagine is that this isn’t the 1st time he’s had an affair with his employee and everyone knows.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      Yeah, we had one of these guys as a professor at my college. He was no longer married–probably because of this–so it wasn’t a cheating story but he had a new freshman girlfriend every year. They all thought they were the Special One. What a creep.

      1. ooof*

        I had a grad school prof who was not allowed to have an office door for the reason you can imagine. Wives #3 and 4 had both been students. Wife 4 continued to drop in on classes, wonder why.

        2. Caffeine Monkey*

          No cheating, just ickiness. One of my high school teachers married one of his pupils six weeks after she finished high school.

          And this was UK high school, so she was only seventeen. He was late twenties.

          1. NotJane*

            One of my married high school teachers starting sleeping with a student then divorced his wife and married the student after she turned 18 (he was in his 30s). I found out when I started working with his ex-wife.

          2. UKDancer*

            Had the same at my school. He was the drama teacher and I thought he loved himself way too much and was a sleazeball. He had an affair with one of the 6th form girls.

            She was sweet but seemed always slightly damaged. I thought his behaviour was reprehensible.

            I was so glad when the UK introduced laws about teachers taking advantage of their position.

          3. The Original K.*

            One of my teachers is currently married to his former student. She’s the same age as his kids from his first marriage. They were together when I had him so I don’t know the details of how they got together – might not have been a cheating situation, but it still gives me the ick.

          4. Insufficient Sausage Explainer*

            One of my teachers at secondary school (by then in his early 30s I think) was married to a woman with whom he’d eloped to the Caribbean for a while when he’d been her teacher at 6th form. They subsequently divorced, after which he went out with a friend of mine, who was at uni by that stage, but had also been at the same school (don’t think he ever actually taught her, but it was a small school, so they definitely knew each other prior to that).

            His name came up again earlier this year, when the electrician I’d called in to do some work turned out not only to be from my hometown, half a world away (literally), but to have attended the same school a few years after me. His mother had been a classmate of said teacher’s first wife, so my sparky was already fully apprised of all the gory details!

        3. Missa Brevis*

          There was a professor at my college who also wasn’t allowed to have a door, but the rumor mill could never decide if it was because of inappropriate behavior with students or because he’d been caught using some illicit substance in his office.

          1. Frieda*

            I can’t make this make sense. No door? How … how could that be the solution, regardless of the problem? I mean I understand the physical logistics (although hello, there are presumably other spaces on the campus somewhere that *do* have doors) but how do you let someone who can’t be trusted with a door keep teaching students?

        4. Plate of Wings*

          This just jogged a memory for me of a professor telling me he wasn’t allowed to shut the door to his office anymore the first time I met him in his office after summer break and I tried to close the door behind me like normal. I was 25 or 26F at the time, and I was just like “okay” and we had our meeting with the door open. Hah! I didn’t think anything of it at the time but now I’ll always wonder what happened.

        2. Elsewise*

          High school freshmen are 14-15, but at the college (university in some countries) level, they’re 18-19.

        5. Bibliothecarial*

          No no no no – freshmen in college are 18-20. Still absolutely gross but not illegal afaik. Freshmen in high school are 14-15 but high schools in the US have teachers, not professors :)

        6. Antilles*

          Dust Bunny said “professor” and “college”, which would place the typical age of freshmen at 18 to 19 years old. Google failed you here by giving you the age of high school freshmen.
          (That’s still firmly in “what a creep” territory, of course)

        8. samwise*

          college freshmen are 17-20, usually 18, but covid threw off the upper end (more students waiting a year to start college)

        9. Dawbs*

          Freshman is first year- so assuming college, 18 yo in the US.
          Legal adults but vulnerable to exploitation.

          (high school freshman are 14 though)

      3. Elizabeth West*

        I worked with a guy like that. His wife worked at the same place, on the same shift. He never crossed the line (that I was aware of), but every time a younger woman would start working there, she would get a LOT of attention from him. I wondered later if Wife took that job to keep an eye on him.

        Ah, small town factories. You could write a soap opera set in one of them.

        1. PropJoe*

          Have you watched the movie Extract? Drama/hijinks in a small factory and its a pretty funny comedy.

      4. Ally McBeal*

        There was a psych prof at my university who was required to have a co-teacher because of a longstanding rumor that he and his wife would solicit students for threesomes. I mean, presumably it was more than rumor and that’s why the university could put that sort of restriction on a tenured professor, but we had lots of rumors and urban legends at that school so who really knows.

        1. Missa Brevis*

          Lots of institutions don’t actually have rules against it. Or they only have rules against being in a relationship with a student in a class you’re teaching. Still gross and inappropriate, but not a durable offense, especially with tenure.

        2. Dust Bunny*

          This was almost 30 years ago and I don’t think I knew even then what the school’s policy was on that, much less remember it down, but the girls I knew who had been involved with him all thought nobody knew and tried to keep it tightly under wraps.

      6. Paint N Drip*

        UGH I had a professor less gross than this but still creeped me out. He was the head of ‘special program’ at the university I was entering – the special program had a sister program, the leader of which was a cool very young woman that all of us in the special program interacted with in a friendly way. I learned after the first semester that she had just graduated from special program (just the resume-padding program NOT graduated from university with a degree, I’d like to add) at the end of last year and then married professor over the summer – she had dropped out of school to marry this old bald dude who thought he was sooooo cool, then he immediately put her in charge of his program which he just assumed it would be fine I guess. The way the energy shifted was WILD to witness – this was a hot program with very tight-knit student/faculty group, but the female program participants particularly just EVACUATED from his office hours, intern list, etc. and the talk within the program shifted dramatically from venerating to denigrating him. This drama ended up impacting my studies which really sucked (I graduated but without the resume padding) but after a few years the program did recover without the 2 of them involved.

  12. yams*

    So, I worked at this place that was known as “hookup capital”, cheating is rampant–people would come married into this workplace and leave married to someone else–it’s nuts. There was this one guy who sat next to his girlfriend, and they worked on the same department. They were classic high school sweethearts who had been dating for years, until they got married while working there. Turns out, the girl was cheating on the guy for years with someone else who sat next to them in the same department. They divorced, while sitting next to each other, and the girl married the new guy. Later on, the girl left to a different place for a couple years, and then divorced the new guy. Then she came back TO THE SAME DEPARTMENT and sat next to her ex-husband and proceeded to date someone else while cheating on them with the original guy. I think they even got remarried or they were dating by the time I left–it was unclear.

    That workplace is a mess. I miss the drama, it kept me entertained.

    1. amoeba*

      Hah. I have some similar stories back from my postdoc (lab) – at some point my labmate actually drew a diagram of people’s complex relationship stories on my fumehood. It involved both people from our lab, our neighbours down the hall, and his girlfriend’s lab in another city. It was quite a complex drawing and stayed up there for months, I think.

      Academia was such a breeding ground for that kind of thing, because basically we never really left the lab, and if we did, it was still to hang out with our colleagues…

    3. popcorn.gif*

      omg that sounds hilarious and amazing. i could write a whole book if i worked somewhere like that!!

      1. Yams*

        I could write a book about one manager who slept with pretty much every female staffer even tho he was married.
        he also had a couple of girlfriends? Unclear.

    4. The Man from Chicago*

      Sounds like a call center I worked at for a few years. Turns out when your recruitment program is “word of mouth from current employees who all live in one of the four trailer parks around town”, your job site soon resembles the parks.

      (Note: No shade, I lived in a trailer park too at the time…)

  13. The Original K.*

    There was a rumor that a VP was having an affair with one of his directors (both were married to others) where I used to work – a colleague was like “did you hear …” I hadn’t. Shortly after that, I saw them in a lunch place near work. I was in there first, they came in & spoke to me. They looked like friends, closer than I’ve been to any of my bosses, but they weren’t doing anything that said “couple.” No hand-holding, kissing, etc.

    I left there. Some time later the director posted something on LinkedIn and I noticed her last name. I thought “was that her last name when I worked there?” It was not; she married her boss/affair partner. She’s now a VP, and if LinkedIn is to be believed, they both still work at the same place.

  14. Hydrangea*

    2 cheating stories:

    My first job out of college was at a large F100 company. There was a known sexual harasser there who allegedly had enough dirt on someone high up in the company that he ever faced consequences. (His wife worked in the company too until she went on leave with an anxiety disorder.) We also worked with a very religious, married woman who preached gospel to other women. She was normally a very modest dresser. Then she started wearing tight dresses and lots of makeup to work – and soon it became clear she was having an affair with him. It got so brazen they eventually had His & Her plastic surgery and we’d all see them eating in the cafeteria with their bandaged faces. They’d go to “conferences” together on the company dime but hole up in their hotel room. Just really not making any attempt to hide it.

    But he was more cunning than she was because it turned out all of the conference expenses were going on her expense account while he paid out of pocket. When he got tired of her, he had his team report her for fraud and embezzling and she was fired. He suffered no repercussions, of course.

    My other story happened a few years later at a very small startup. The CEO and founder was cheating on her husband with clients. He suspected enough to show up at our office and interrogate me about where she was. Our CTO was always gushing over a director who reported to her. He was the funniest man, the most handsome man, the most clever man, she’d never met anyone like him, didn’t we think so? and so on. Absolutely infatuated with him. Soon they began making up elaborate BS explanations of how they needed to spend weekend nights in the office to do updates…. a lot. The rest of us knew enough about the software to know that wasn’t the case but we played dumb. The startup was a hot mess in other ways so I left but later became friends with the CTO and asked her point blank if she’d been having an affair. She was shocked: “How could you tell?”

    1. Hlao-roo*

      they eventually had His & Her plastic surgery

      My eyebrows hit the ceiling here…

      When he got tired of her, he had his team report her for fraud and embezzling and she was fired.

      …and then my jay dropped to the floor. Wow!

      1. Hydrangea*

        They both went on to work for other F100 companies – her career didn’t suffer in the least from getting fired and he’s apparently doing quite well at his new company.

      2. Fieldpoppy*

        I have been watching an obscure New Zealand tv show from around 2012 called Nothing Trivial on Prime (I highly recommend it — great comedy drama about a group of people on a pub trivia team), and there is a storyline where one character is having an affair with a married person and the married person’s spouse finds out and totally torpedoes the affair partner’s business, and then the married cheater breaks up with their spouse and is all “I’m yours now” to the affair partner and that person doesn’t WANT them full time… it’s very diverting. Anyway, that’s how I always imagine these messy things turning out.

        1. 1LFTW*

          Yup. Friend of a friend was cheating on his wife with a married woman. They agreed to break up with their spouses so they could be together. So, he ditched his wife and three kids… and then the affair partner decided she didn’t want to split with her husband after all.

      3. UKDancer*

        Is “his and hers” plastic surgery a particular operation? My mi d is boggling at the thought.

        1. Hlao-roo*

          I don’t know and I’m too afraid to google. My assumption is they got (matching? simultaneous but not matching?) nose jobs or something.

          1. Ali + Nino*

            Does matching plastic surgery have a better or worse rate for predicting the failure of relationships than name tattoos?

    2. Possum's mom*

      So when I was a teen at my first retail job in a strip mall, the tellers at the bank next to us told me to watch for the local pastor’s wife on Monday mornings. She would come to the bank each week to deposit the church offering , wearing quite ” un- church lady” dresses , and after exiting the bank, would stand at the curb flouncing the hem until a big red Pontiac pulled up and whisked her away . To the back of the strip mall. Where the dumpsters were. Where we took turns taking out the trash to see the big red Pontiac getting its shock absorbers tested…P.S. the pastor drove a grey chevy.

      1. Smurfette*

        Yeah but the other side of this is that (at my first job) everyone KNEW I was having an affair with my boss. Except I wasn’t.

        We got on really well, but that was the extent of it (he came to my wedding and we stayed in touch when I changed jobs). He was attractive and mildly flirtatious – but he behaved that way with literally every woman in the office so I never took it seriously.

        And I was young and naive. I was shocked and upset when I found out that we were the subject of office gossip. In retrospect maybe he should have been more aware (or more concerned) about the optics since he was older and probably knew what everyone was thinking.

  15. High Score!*

    I once had a manager who had to stay extra late. When he finished, he went to the break room for a snack before going home. But the break room was already occupied, with 2 other managers, using the break table for other things. He didn’t have any authority over them bc they were at his level, but he did tell us, his team, so we’d know to bleach the break room surfaces before using them.

    2. Smurfette*

      We had something similar happen, except they were on the boardroom table. And were not cheating, since they were both single. But still it was the subject of much interest for a while, in our relatively conservative company.

      1. allathian*

        Some people have to my mind odd kinks, but this is one of the weirder ones for me. I can’t imagine a less sexy place than the office!

        1. Smurfette*

          Right? But I *suspect* it was very spur of the moment – they were either not dating yet, or had just started dating. (OR, they had an office sex kink. I do not know.)

      2. JustaTech*

        Some people did that one time at my company. What they didn’t know was that the brand new (~2007) video conferencing equipment had just been installed, so when some other people started a conference call the new system automatically accepted the call and turned on the camera.
        The people who were trying to have a Very Serious meeting got a real eye full before the two on the table realized what was happening.
        I don’t know what happened to them, but for about the next year all the conference room tables smelled strongly of cleaner.

  16. Scooter34*

    I’ve waited so long….

    Male manager (Bobby), divorced, has girlfriend (Cindy) who everyone knows because she runs a hotel/conference center and gives company great cost breaks. Bobby begins acting suspiciously with Jan, his supervisee, who is married. Bobby and Jan deny anything is going on. Jan gets divorced. Bobby claims he has broken up with Cindy so please don’t ask her for discounts. Bobby gets involved with Marcia, but it’s not romantic – she just needs his help so he goes over and makes her coffee every morning, but he definitely doesn’t sleep there!

    Jan begins to smell a rat. She contacts Marcia, who says what do you mean? Bobby and I are engaged! Jan reveals she and Bobby and engaged! Jan calls Cindy and – you guessed it – she and Bobby are engaged!
    The stage is set. Marcia and Bobby go out for dinner. They are seated at a table for 4. After drinks are ordered, Jan and Cindy appear (IN THEIR WEDDING DRESSES!) and sit down.

    Bobby married Carol six months later.

        1. Ally McBeal*

          Or that the stones were real. Dropping $25-50 on a gold-plated ring with a cubic zirconia is a real cheap way to keep the good times rolling.

      1. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

        It reminds me of three friends who formed what they called the “Jay’s exes club.” One of the exes and Jay’s then-wife became very close friends, and still are, a couple of decades later, the kind you can lean on in a crisis. The women involved were amused at how this was shaking out once they compared notes.

        1. Azure Jane Lunatic*

          It’s always fun when the ex-friend you haven’t spoken to in like sixteen years contacts you out of the blue to ask if your ex, who is also her ex-husband, did crimes to you while you were dating, and you wind up writing a letter of support for her side of the case against the guy (to counter the guy’s family saying “oh you can go easy on him, he’s learned his lesson” when throughout his career the guy has proved impervious to lesson-learning, except lessons in how to not get caught).

          We’re still in touch on Facebook, and she is apparently close to his other ex-wife.

        2. allathian*

          My FIL’s brother is currently in his third marriage. The first wife, and the mother of my husband’s cousin, is still invited to family parties, partly because of her status as grandmother to the cousin’s kids, and partly because she’s very close friends with the current, third wife. Neither of them can stand the second wife for some reason I’m not privy to. My MIL is also very close friends with her twice ex-SIL.

          Interestingly enough, my MIL has remained friends with most of her ex husband’s family. There are several reasons for this, for one thing, my MIL has definitely bought into the old idea that women are responsible for maintaining all family relationships the couple has, and for another, my MIL cared a lot about ensuring that her kids had close relationships to both sides of the family even after the divorce. The third reason is that the divorce was so obviously a consequence of my FIL’s bad behavior that more or less the whole family seemingly turned against him.

          My FIL traveled a lot on business and maintained a separate household with another woman in another town for 8 years, until they were caught. After the divorce, which happened when my husband was 16 and his sister was 10, my MIL did what she could to ensure that the kids had ample opportunities to see their father (she got full custody that he never contested, he got visitation rights), but more often than not, he never showed up. The second wife is somewhat difficult, and for years was jealous of the fact that he had a family before her, in spite of the fact that she also has several kids from a previous marriage. I met my husband 19 years ago. In all that time, I’ve met her a handful of times and I don’t care if I never see her again, and TBH I probably won’t unless my FIL happens to die before her (funerals are awkward at the best of times, but…). They got married about 16 years ago, my husband and I were living together at the time but not yet married. I was specifically not invited to the wedding because we weren’t married. My husband and I invited her to ours, but were quite happy when he RSVP’d no on her behalf. He didn’t attend the wedding at the courthouse, but he did come to the reception. (We had a small family wedding with only immediate family members and new spouses invited, my MIL’s then-fiancé and now husband got along perfectly fine with my FIL, even if the conversation was somewhat awkward at times, but I doubt my FIL’s wife would’ve been able to remain civil so just as well she declined the invitation…)

          When my FIL got a place in a care home for people with dementia a few years ago, his wife categorically refused to tell my husband the address. She finally relented after we sent a Christmas card to her that year. She didn’t send a card to us, but she did text my husband the address with her Christmas greetings. Apparently she felt guilty enough to share the address…

      1. SunriseRuby*

        I was thinking it was like a mash-up of The Brady Bunch and Love American Style, which, coincidentally (or not?!) were broadcast the exact same years, from 1969-1974.

        Carol probably sought comfort in Bobby’s arms because it turned out that Mike was gay.

      2. Scooter34*

        Yes. Carol actually worked in the same office where Bobby, Jan and I all worked, although Bobby and Jan had both moved along by then (Bobby conned someone into a promotion).

    11. Another Kristin*

      Amazing. I want to watch a movie where this happens in the first ten minutes and the rest is Marcia, Jan, and Cindy having the time of their lives at fancy resort

      1. IT Squirrel*

        It’s not quite the same, but there are a couple of films i like with similar themes – ‘The Other Woman’ where three women get back at the guy they are all dating/married to, and ‘The First Wives Club’ where the first wives of several men (who have left them for other women) also aim to get even with the exes (this one does reference suicide, just as a heads up for anyone who prefers to avoid that).

        I enjoy watching both for the misunderstandings and shenanigans that ensue.

    12. L. Ron's Cupboard*

      Man, imagine if he had put that amount of energy into something productive. Could have powered a small city spinning and sustaining that many lies.

  17. CheatersAnonymous*

    This was a whole big thing here so I’m gonna change my usual display name.

    I work for a manufacturing company in the plumbing and drinking water space. Last year, we were making a big push in a western state and had a guy we’ll call “Don” in charge of working with reps out there. We also had a woman named “May” in marketing who was working on the advertising/marketing/social media/PR side of things on this campaign. So it made sense they would coordinate, but I saw them together a lot. Still, I knew May had a husband and two small kids and I was pretty sure Don was married too, so I tried not to assume anything.

    And on a Friday afternoon during a marketing gathering, we all suddenly learned that Don was no longer with the company. May rushed out and left. We were told it was a company policy violation issue and not a layoff. A week or so later, May resigned abruptly…

    And then it all came out. They were tagging along on each other’s trips and surreptitiously staying together while submitting falsified expense reports for unapproved trips. We suspect May was asked to leave. They both blew up their marriages, lost their jobs and last I heard she actually dumped him.

      1. CheatersAnonymous*

        To be clear, they were not in the same reporting line – different departments, just working on the same initiative. But he was higher up the food chain.

  18. A perfectly normal-size space bird*

    At OldJob where I was an intern, there was a couple (Bob and Barbara) who were having an affair. The were in the same department but on different development teams and they didn’t think anyone knew, but in the gossip-heavy workplace, it took all of two seconds for the affair to be discovered. The couple’s preferred way of being discreet was to pretend they didn’t know each other. Whenever someone would mention Bob to Barbara, she’d say something like “Oh does he work on (wrong floor)? I don’t think we’re acquainted.” And then Bob would say “Barbara? Is she the (wrong title) in (wrong department)?”

    Naturally, this led to everyone finding ways to mention Bob and Barbara as much as possible just to see what new way they’d pretend not to know the other. Then someone created a scavenger hunt list. Every week, a group of employees would compete with each other to get Bob or Barbara to pretend not to know the other in as many different parts of the building as possible. Elevators and bathrooms garnered the most points.

    The game came to an end during the state association conference when the two of them wound up on the same certification panel and were forced to “introduce” themselves to a huge room full of their colleagues. Scuttlebutt was the department head got sick of the scavenger hunt shenanigans and assigned them both to the panel as a way to shut it down.

    3. Mad Harry Crewe*

      Scavenger hunt colleagues should go hang out with the bus riding colleagues. That would be a fun crowd.

  19. Anonymous For This*

    Two coworkers (one married, one not) were having an affair and were “caught” by several people at our work but no one said anything because the incidents could also have been innocently explained away and everyone was all “that’s weird but whatever” and minded their own business. So when they were caught in an obviously UN-innocent act, we all found out that all of us knew all along and we were all amazed that all of us could keep a secret! LOL

  20. Constance Lloyd*

    Years ago, a coworker of mine started cheating on her husband with a very recent new hire, who was about 14 years her junior. They thought they were being subtle, though I’m not sure how- they carpooled together every morning despite living on opposite sides of town and openly flirted. Graphically. At one point, she marched him into his boss’s office to demand he be given a raise, despite having worked there only a handful of months.

    Up until this point, she and I had been decent friends. She eventually confided in me, not out of guilt, but because she wanted me to start joining them at after work happy hours so they could go on dates with plausible deniability if she happened to be caught. I refused. She began making false complaints against me to HR. These were not petty accusations- they were major compliance issues and, in some cases, illegal activity. While this was very stressful for me at the time, it did make it much easier for HR to clearly identify her accusations as false. They told her to knock it off, and she quit without notice at 10am on a Tuesday.

    She promptly divorced her husband, married the affair partner, and had a baby with him. They are now getting a divorce.

  21. DCBreadBox*

    There were SO MANY instances of this at my old company. Here’s one: two married folks who had offices near mine were having a very-poorly-kept secret affair, and of course they were in a reporting line (she was a Manager, he was her Director). They never did anything blatant in the office but somehow everyone knew. I distinctly remember a holiday party that they attended with their respective spouses, who kept giving dirty looks at the other person (e.g. manager’s husband glaring at the director). No idea what was going on at their homes but it must have been unpleasant.

    Anyway, at the company it seems that powers-that-be would look the other way unless they were given no choice. Sure enough, this couple decides to fool around in a garage stairwell where there were cameras, and security reported it to HR. So then they had no choice but to fire the Director – of course they couldn’t fire the manager and she actually stayed for a surprisingly long time afterwards (they wouldn’t fire but there are of course unofficial ways to punish people). I think my company eventually removed the cameras because that was far from the only time that happened.

    2. allathian*

      The only good thing there was that it was the director who got the boot rather than the manager.

  22. Unigal*

    Some colleagues just got back from an extensive University recruiting trip in Southeast Asia with a group of other recruiters from other American Universities. They had so many stories about married colleagues spending more time hooking up or trying to hook up with other people on the recruiting tour. It even started before the trip even happened, by (mostly) men scouting out the women on the trip on LinkedIn and trying to connect with them if they were aesthetically pleasing to “meet up for a drink” or “to talk business” to try to hook up with them. It was frankly disgusting to hear about and how nonchalant my colleagues were talking about this!

    1. HRneedsAdrink*

      I worked for an International company years ago and I guess people ‘take vacations’ from their personal lives as well while out of town. It was crazy the stories I heard.

      1. Paint N Drip*

        +500
        Networking already makes me want to pluck out my eyes. If someone looks down my shirt or otherwise sexualizes me while I’m networking, I’m aiming for theirs instead.

      2. Unigal*

        100%! I’m a bigger gal and not eye candy. I have issues with men taking me seriously in a professional context. If my younger and/or “skinnier” colleagues are with, they will direct all questions and questions to them, even if my colleagues are, “Unigal, can answer your question!” I’ve gotten to the point where I point blank call them out.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Of course, the attractive colleagues may find that they’re taken seriously as professionals right up until the man gets them alone, at which point it turns out their professional interest isn’t so professional.

  23. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

    Not detailed enough to be juicy, but a company I used to work for bought a condo off the CEO when he wanted to move. The company kept that condo in its real estate portfolio from then on. Ostensibly it was for visiting customers, but what it was really used for was for the various members of the executive leadership team to carry on trysts with each other and/or others.

      1. samwise*

        One of our faves. We do a New Years Eve double feature every year: It’s a Wonderful Life and then The Apartment.

        Jack Lemmon’s best movie.

        There’s a story, maybe apocryphal, that a woman slapped Fred MacMurray — who mostly played good guys in the movies — for being such a heel.

      2. So they all cheap ass rolled over and one fell out*

        I’d never heard of that movie, I’ll have to check it out!

  24. Volunteer Enforcer*

    I was a borderline case. A job I had been at for five years, I quickly developed a crush on my mentor when I started, who soon became my department head. We were both single for 4 years then both coupled in the 5th year. He was 8 years older than me. I did work-appropriate jokey things to get his attention. After trying to get the crush to stop in the usual ways I job searched as I took it personally to a really unhealthy extent (internally) when he gave me constructive criticism.

  25. Homer Jay Simpson*

    On USS Last Ship we had a married Senior Chief get caught cheating on his wife with a newly arrived Seaman Recruit.
    That’s an E-8, sleeping with an E-1. Big time no-no.
    Dude got busted and spent the better part of a deployment walking around with the little badge of shame that indicated he was a Senior Chief on restriction.
    Imagine making the phone call home to your wife and saying that your paycheck for the month has been cut in half because you couldn’t keep it in your pants.

  26. HonorBox*

    I’ve shared this here before on a Friday, but it is popcorn-worthy, I think.

    I was attending a work conference. A good friend found me and asked if I had two beds in my room. I said I did and asked why. He said that the (married) friend he was sharing a room with for the conference was having a female friend who lived close by come over for some extracurricular activity. He asked if he could crash in my room that night in order to make himself scarce. I of course agreed.

    I got a hard time from some friends who were also at the conference when they heard about it because I “was supporting an affair.” I told them that I was actually supporting a friend who was put in a really uncomfortable spot and my help wasn’t going to stop the affair. It was just going to make life easier for someone stuck in that spot.

    The cheating friend, incidentally, was in a bad marriage and the affair actually led to him deciding to get out of his marriage. He’s happily married now.

    1. Indolent Libertine*

      I’m really trying to wrap my head around the thought process of those who gave you a hard time for “supporting an affair.” What, exactly, did they think you and your friend were supposed to do? Give Married Cheater Dude a stern talking-to and then spend the whole night sitting up awake on Friend’s bed in their shared room, staring balefully at him lest he bring his gal pal to the room for some Benefits?

  27. Anon for This*

    I will occasionally get lunch with a male coworker from a different division. Said coworker’s ex (who worked in his division but on a different sub-team) saw us meeting up one day and started a rumor that he was having an illicit affair with someone in the office, and that it was all dramatic and against HR rules etc.
    The coworker I was meeting for lunch? My brother. The fact that she apparently couldn’t pick her ex’s sister out of a line up, despite them dating for a DECADE? Much more embarrassing for her than for us.

    (They had broken up about a year prior, and she had been very avoidant of our family before they broke up. But still…)

    1. Anon for This*

      Just to add a bit more detail:
      -I got hired there after they had broken up (us being siblings was fully above board with HR when I was hired)
      -Our last name is super distinctive and everyone who meets both of us immediately assumes we’re related
      -I know she did get in trouble with HR for spreading malicious rumors about a colleague. I don’t know if she got fired for it or quit, but she did leave shortly after
      -The rumors about the supposed affair barely got off the ground before they were swiftly overtaken by the gossip of her embarrassing herself.
      -The attitude towards it all was split between “wow she must have been a terrible girlfriend to not know what his sister looks like after a decade” and “she must have been doing this maliciously and intentionally lying because SURELY she would recognize his sister after they dated for so long”

  28. Scott*

    Pre cell phone days (early 90s). A sailor on a boat, we’ll call him Seaman Jones, meets a young lady in a port call in Florida and they have a fun time for a couple days. A couple weeks later the boat is arriving at its home port in Connecticut and, as happens a lot, there are many wives and children on the pier awaiting their husband’s/father’s return. The wives all know each other so when a new face joins the group they ask her who she is. On this day, a particular young lady introduced herself as Seaman Jones’ girlfriend who drove up from Florida to surprise him. This information makes it through the crowd on the pier until it gets to Seaman Jones’ wife who is there with her (and his) child.

    The throwdown was pretty epic as I and some of my shipmates got to witness it from the adjacent pier. It resulted in visits from some very senior leaders and a Chaplain. Seaman Jones heard about it and was hiding in a part of the boat the wives were not allowed while his own leaders worked to convince him to face the music.

      1. Jonathan MacKay*

        Choosing between diving into the sea, where there might be sharks….. and getting into arms reach of women scorned shouldn’t be THAT hard of a choice, right?

        ((Obviously, I’m joking. He should face the consequences of thinking with his second brain!))

  29. DeskApple*

    When my dad finally got caught after cheating (which turned out to be 20 out of 30 years of the marriage), he blamed ALL of it on his company. “I was just a naive guy! They MADE me go to the strip clubs and massage parlors. I didn’t want my family to end up on the streets because I lost my job!”, and “I would have offended them if I turned down their offers!”, “Well, it was never anyone I knew, so it wasn’t like I was having an affair like my colleagues in accounting!”
    He wanted it to sound exactly like one of those 80’s scenes of being blackmailed. Except he forgot that he was at four different companies in that period. When that was pointed out it became, “That was my my first company’s goal, to control me, to get me hooked you know”, as if there was a master plot. “I did everything for my kids”, which I guess means I need to thank hundreds of trafficked workers for giving my dad the opportunity.

    1. Wolf*

      For a very young and insecure employee, there *could* be an argument that they were peer pressured into going to strip clubs. But 20 years of cheating? Just, no.

    2. Smurfette*

      Oh wow. This reminds me of something that happened long ago to a friend.

      Their dad disappeared for 3 days. Eventually the police found him at a strip club / illegal brothel. He had fallen in love with one of the sex workers (and he later divorced his wife and married her).

      The reason the police were imvolved was that he had disappeared with his company car and it had been reported stolen.

      It was awfully traumatic for my friend and their family, but at the same time I hung on their every word because it was more like a soap opera plot than real life.

  30. Aepyornis*

    Maybe it’s because I am European, but it can’t help but note how American culture seems much more judgy about affairs that do not directly affect them, while Europeans seem, overall, much more laissez-faire (not talking about situations that do affect people’s professional and personal lives directly, of course!). Maybe it’s because I work in the cultural sector, but I’ve never worked anywhere where anyone batted an eye at people attending public events as a couple with very-much-not-their-spouse.
    But my petty 25-yo self did make a point of always putting a name card with Ms Obnoxious-VIP-Name on the tables of the private donors dinners I was organising, for the plus-one of one particularly obnoxious VIP who always showed up with an unannounced companion, who amazingly always turned out to be a different, much younger and very pretty brunette (I wonder why, really).

    1. Ali + Nino*

      I can’t speak for other Americans, but personally: While I would never seek out this information for it’s own sake, once I know it, it definitely influences how I perceived someone – their values and judgment – and I don’t think that’s invalid. You say it doesn’t affect us, but I think it makes me wonder whether or not I could trust someone; after all, if they are willing to cheat on their spouse, it doesn’t bode well for other areas of their life. (I know someone is going to play devil’s advocate and bring up open marriages. FTR, I think any estimates of such are grossly inflated and most of those are 1) suggested by a partner who is already cheating and 2) just a stop on the road to divorce. If everyone is entitled to an opinion, well – this is mine!)

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        To be fair, that isn’t really a matter of opinion. Either the majority of the partners who suggest open marriages are already cheating or they are not and either the majority of those marriages do end in divorce or they do not. It’s something one can have a guess on, but not really an opinion.

        1. Ali + Nino*

          Fair enough, let me rephrase: I think it is highly, highly unlikely that opening up a marriage will improve it. But I suppose thats a different matter.

          1. Sebastian*

            This seems to assume that open marriages were closed at some point. If that were the case it’s at least reasonably likely that one partner would prefer to be monogamous, and that doesn’t tend to end well, but it seems like an odd assumption to make.

            Obviously the plural of anecdote is not data, but my husband & I have been poly since we started dating 15 years ago, and remain nauseatingly happy together.

              1. basically functional*

                It depends. “Ethical nonmonogamy” is the overarching term for consensually non-monogamous relationships. Polyamory is a subset of ethical nonmonogamy in which people have multiple romantic relationships. There are also forms of ethical nonmonogamy that involve sex, but explicitly not romance, with multiple people, such as swinging. An open relationship can be ethically non-monogamous in a variety of ways, and polyamory is one of the possibilities.

                In any case, I think it’s rude to go around posting made up facts (in the guise of opinion) about other people’s relationships on the internet when you are clearly ignorant on the topic and just being judgmental. But that’s just my opinion.

      2. Aepyornis*

        There are situations where I would definitely question someone’s judgement, ethics and trustworthiness, but it’s more linked to a power element in the affair (or relationship that is not an affair): sleeping with a report, having transactional relations with a power imbalance, etc. When it’s “only” a messy love/sex life, I’ve never found it to be a good indicator of someone’s professional judgement and skills. People with messy love lives who would make a terrible partner can the most thorough web developer or best organised PA you’ll ever meet, and people who never flirt with anyone who isn’t their spouse can be serial embezzlers. I think the framing that someone cheating is an indicator of their professional persona is what sounds very American to me – but I’m aware that I may very well be overgeneralising this cultural trait!
        Agree that open marriages as possible excuses are often inflated, though.

        1. Packaged Frozen Lemon Zest*

          Wholeheartedly agree with this. People can mess up their relationships and/or home lives and as long it doesn’t involve other co-workers it has no bearing on their professionalism. Signed, a dual Canadian-American citizen.

        2. AnonForGoss*

          The only work-related cheating situation I know of was a director sleeping with a program assistant (the lowest full-time level at my org), promising he’d leave the wife he had no intention of leaving, etc. This was reportedly not the first time he’d some something like that. Definitely changed my opinion of him.

          The personal one is that my SIL has cheated on my brother. I had other reasons not to care for her, but this cemented it. I wish he’d leave her, but he worries about not getting custody of the kids, which she would fight him for. Still quite a few years until the youngest is an adult. If he makes it to that point, I hope he does finally kick her out.

      3. pinkponygirl*

        As someone in an open relationship, I’m not so sure about the “grossly inflated” bit – maybe it’s generational but I feel like it’s not as rare as people think, especially in the LGBTQ community. It’s not something I’d talk about often at work because it’s personal and I don’t know how people will react, so maybe my colleagues all assume they’ve never met someone in an open marriage! I do get the impression from advice columns etc. that many people go into ethically non-monogamous relationships with the wrong intentions but I’d be reluctant to generalise based on that kind of anecdata – you probably don’t see as many dull stories from people writing in to say their open relationship is working well with no issues, as you do the dramatic stories of people who’ve tried to use it to solve a cheating problem!

        2. Ali + Nino*

          Sure, there’s a biased representation of these relationships in media. But I’m willing to bet that part of the reason is because most of these don’t work out (if the US divorce rate is hovering around 50%, I find it hard to believe that arrangements with three or more people are doing much better).

          1. the quiet quitter strikes again*

            There’s no reason to assume they are doing worse either though. I mean a 50% fail rate is not exactly a high bar to clear.

            1. allathian*

              Indeed. While it’s true that about 50% of marriages end in divorce, it’s not true that the risk of a particular marriage ending in divorce is 50% because people who divorce once are much more likely to divorce the second time. And the greater the number of marriages behind them, the more likely it is that any subsequent marriage will end in divorce. So anyone considering marrying someone who’s been divorced more than twice is, in my book, naive at best, a romantic fool at worst, and they deserve everything that’s coming to them when the marriage breaks down for being so stupid as to marry the person in the first place because the person has a proven track record of being an unsatisfactory spouse.

              Anyone can make a mistake once, especially if they’re young, and most especially if they’re desperate to get away from their family of origin. A second divorce is, oh well, bad luck. At the third divorce, I’m thinking that they’re really unlucky, bad mojo, stay away. At the fourth or subsequent divorces I’ll say, look at the common denominator, the person’s a lost cause.

      4. Smurfette*

        I once had a senior colleague tell me in a flirtatious way that he was in an open relationship. I told him that I was not.

        Years later I worked with his wife, who left him when she found out that he was cheating on her. So I guess it wasn’t as open as he made out.

        He was a creep, regardless.

    2. amoeba*

      Huh. Different part of Europe, I guess? It’s very much not accepted in my parts (Germany/Switzerland). Although I have noticed that people on Spanish Netflix shows do tend to be much more cavalier about it, haha!

      1. Aepyornis*

        Same part actually :) but possibly different industry and/or I’m guilty of over-generalising, which is a strong possibility.

    3. dulcinea47*

      When it’s going on in the workplace it usually *does* affect people in one way or another. It certainly makes me question their honesty and judgement.

    4. Dust Bunny*

      I would let it lie and just be privately disappointed in them except I’ve worked with people who dragged their personal drama into the workplace where it does end up affecting everyone. If I have to be the one to tell your angry boyfriend to get off the premises I’m gonna have Big Opinions about your relationship choices.

    5. Excel Gardener*

      Hm, are you sure these people aren’t in open relationships? I feel like the “cultural” sector has a lot more nonmonogamy in general.

      The other possibility is they are separated and essentially broken up with their spouse, but technically still married.

      I’d be surprised if people were just cool with someone in a monogamous marriage showing up to a work event with a girlfriend/boyfriend, but maybe that is the case in some places.

      1. TheBunny*

        I honestly wouldn’t care. It’s none of my business how they conduct their personal lives.

        I guess that’s why I don’t have a cheating coworkers story…I’m sure it’s happened but the people who would have told me the gossip didn’t bother because they knew I wouldn’t care

    6. jane's nemesis*

      I’m of an age where I’ve had too many women friends get callously cheated on and then tossed aside by their male spouses/co-parents for a younger affair partner, and it fucking sucks and I’m never gonna think it’s okay or something to just look the other way at. (this is obviously a different situation from consensual polyamory.)

    7. MigraineMonth*

      American culture has been influenced by Puritanism. As a result, in general, Americans are more uncomfortable with (and judgmental about) sex and nudity than Europeans.

    8. Myrin*

      I mean, I’m German and most everything recounted by Americans in this comment section seems perfectly normal to me (in the sense that people would react the same way everywhere I’ve ever worked or been part of a social circle).

      Also, your “attending as a couple” is seems like a defining factor here – I don’t think it would be seen as strange for coworkers to attend public events together (in fact, I was meant to do just that with my best friend from work a few months ago but I ended up not being able to make it so he had to take his wife who later said she wished I would’ve gone instead because she absolutely hated it) but people would definitely give them side-eye if they behaved like a couple, even if nobody actually said anything.

    10. the quiet quitter strikes again*

      I’m a US American and I truly do not care at all about the love lives of my colleagues. It’s simply none of my business, and I do hate when it becomes office gossip because that can become far more disruptive to a workplace than an affair.

      And also; I’m gay and poly. So people getting all weird and judgemental over the *perception* of an affair actually makes me wary of those people making similar erroneous judgements of my character. You can’t always know all the facts. A person might be in an open marriage/relationship or a polycule. A person might be cheating as an escape from an abusive relationship. One person I knew from work who was having an affair was essentially a “mail-order bride” who’s husband treated her like absolute garbage because he could deport her easily. Who was I to judge her life? While these stories can be funny from the outside when they become a big office drama, and I’m certainly reveling in it as well… it does give me pause to think that we talk about cheating – real or imagined – like it’s criminal or a sign of irredeemably poor character. And while it could be that, it could just as easily just be that people in general can be messy and go through rough periods in their lives that implode a bit. And it just seems weird (and a little defensive?) to be super invested in judging other people for it.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I agree; if you don’t know the situation well, it’s probably better to reserve judgement. You don’t want to be like that employee who accused her manager of having an affair just because she had business meetings with a colleague. Especially since it turns out that the colleague was her husband.

        I’ve never cheated, but I once started to back off a friendship because my friend’s wife was getting jealous of the time we spent together, and I didn’t want to do anything that would cause issues in their marriage.

        Turns out the wife was so worried about us getting close because she was emotionally, financially and physically abusing my friend, and my friend was getting ready to ask for help to leave her. In the end I encouraged my friend in leaving her and loaned my friend money for a divorce lawyer; I guess you could say I deliberately wrecked that home, even though there were young children involved.

        The exact nature of what’s going on is not always clear to an observer.

    11. Roland*

      Lol, I’m used to high and mighty comments from Europeans about their workers’ rights but this is the first time someone’s been judgy about Americans (checks notes) thinking that cheating is bad

    12. TheBunny*

      I tend to agree with you. It’s not my business, I am not them and I don’t really have any business judging them or their choices… just as I don’t want them judging my choices.

      I won’t lie for the people…but I wouldn’t lie for someone who needed me to lie about something that wasn’t an affair.

      If the affair makes my work life difficult, that’s a different story. Aside from that? You do you.

  31. What is this, Throuple City?*

    In theme but slightly different, but my work has had TWO sets of throuples emerge from inter-office relationships.

    The first set was while working together and they just so happened to leave together/show up together/etc. It was pretty obvious to anybody who was friends with them but I doubt the wider office noticed. Fast forward several years, they are still in a successful throuple including moving in together prior to the pandemic.

    The other one…did not go as well. The drama was all through the grapevine since it was after they moved on from the company, but it did not sound like a positive experience for any of them.

  32. CommanderBanana*

    My previous (horrible) org had a terrible track record with how they handled sexual harassment/assault both within the organization and from members attending our events.

    Because promotions were entirely based on whether you were in the CEOs little cadre of pets (which was only open to tall, white, sycophantic men and tall, white, thin, and brunette sycophantic women), people that the CEO liked could rise meteorically within the organization, regardless of their qualifications or performance.

    Since that doesn’t tend to end very well, it sometimes resulted in spectacular implosions when some individuals’ behavior ended up becoming a liability for the org or finally became too egregious to ignore.

    One tall, white, sycophantic male with no management experience came in at a very junior position and within less than two years had been promoted to C-level. Unfortunately, he spent his tenure sleeping with his direct reports, then making them so miserable they would quit after he’d gotten tired of them or wanted to move on to the next hire.

    He ended up sleeping with someone who was hired in the HR department, who then threatened a lawsuit. Was he fired? No, he was just moved to a slightly less senior position in another department – then was finally asked to resign after the lawsuit started looking more and more likely.

  33. ScottW*

    There was a couple at my work my years ago and it was pretty clear the husband was cheating with a third party. What made this memorable to me is that his wife told me “Real men cheat. They can’t help it.” She must have known. The third-party relationship ended and the two women have since both told me that they don’t like each other, but the married couple is still together.

    1. anotherfan*

      My thought is real men keep their promises, but perhaps that’s simplistic. OTOH, I got some insight into a mindset like this when I was talking with my sister after our nephew announced he was getting divorced from his wife of four years to marry his new girlfriend who may or may not have been pregnant at the time. My sister says, “well, in something like this, both sides are at fault. I’m sure she did something that caused him to cheat.” And I began to wonder if this is something she’d heard from her husband at some point in her rocky marriage.

  34. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

    In this story, the fact that the married sales executive (Alan) was having an affair with an unmarried woman in HR (Mary) turned out to be beneficial to many of us.

    At this company, when employees gave two weeks notice, they were told to get out NOW. TPTB were always absolutely furious that anyone ever had the nerve to want to quit. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that anyone in the future calling for a reference on an employee who had quit (and was forced out immediately) was told that that employee had been fired. You might wonder why anyone bothered to attempt to give two weeks notice after seeing other employees forced to leave immediately. I think that it was because those employees said to themselves, “I’m a really good worker, and everyone likes me. I don’t think that they would treat ME that way.” But they were ALWAYS told to get out NOW.

    Until Alan’s secretary gave two weeks notice, and Alan didn’t want to be without a secretary IMMEDIATELY. He wanted her to stick around for the two weeks, and he hoped that a replacement could be hired within that timeframe. So Mary consented to allowing the secretary to work there during her notice period. In order to hide (so they thought) the fact that Mary and Alan were having an affair, it was announced that from then on, everyone who gave two weeks notice would be allowed to work there during their notice period. No more get out of here NOW! This was a big relief to those of us (including me) who wound up leaving the company eventually. We didn’t have to worry about being pushed out immediately (and not getting paid for those two weeks), and we didn’t have to worry about future potential employers being told that we had been fired.

  35. Bird Lady*

    When I was the manager of a retail store, I had another manager start dating one of our associates. While this was usually a big no-no, because he worked in one department and she worked in the other, it was allowed. But he had a wife. Like we all knew her because she picked him up from work. No one said anything to her, because no one wanted to be the one to tell her that her husband was dating a young woman who worked in the store.

    A few years later, he and his family was featured on Wife Swap. Apparently his wife encouraged him to date other women, and now the three of them are in some sort of three-way marriage.

  36. RCS*

    I am oblivious to this type of thing and am always the last to know about any interoffice romances, cheating or not.

    I once walked into my boss’s office to ask a question and a co-worker was in there too. Asked my question, got the answer and went back to my desk to continue working. I DID NOT SEE ANYTHING or SUSPECT ANYTHING untoward going on. Must have had my head down looking at paperwork or was just not paying attention.

    Next day, both parties came to me separately so embarrassed asking me not to say anything/gossip about what I saw the prior day. I truly had no clue what they were talking about. I can only assume I did see something but my brain would not compute and just lost the memory completely.

  37. Caffeine Monkey*

    The manager of one of my old branch offices was caught having an affair with his office’s advertising manager.

    It was quite sad – they were both married with kids, and he ended up having a breakdown from the stress of the divorce. She moved on to a different job, he was found a new (much lower) position in a different office, and the romance quickly fizzled out. So much damage from what was evidently just a situational fling.

  38. Yes And*

    I don’t have any particular stories, except to quote an actress friend: “You will sleep with people in summer stock that you wouldn’t have coffee with in New York.”

    1. It's Marie - Not Maria*

      Sounds like when I was working in Antarctica. People would have relationships with “Ice Husbands/Wives” they would have never associated with when they were off the ice. There were a lot of really oddball pairings. Being in HR, I stayed above and out of that mess, unless it turned into a Workplace Relations problem.

      1. Ali + Nino*

        How often do you respond to questions with “Sounds like when I was working in Antarctica…” because I would be whipping that out all the time everywhere. Very cool!

        1. TheBunny*

          We’re this me it would be all day every day.

          What time is it? “Well when I was in Antarctica…”

          And so on.

      2. Anonymouse*

        Yeah, Antarctica is why we have to have an updated harassment policy at our org required by Big Research grant funder. Not all of that panky was consensual, and a lot of it was allegedly basically s3xual hazing of RAs. What a mess.

  39. No Pie for Me*

    I though she meant cheating on time cards something, LOL. Now that I’m on the same page as everybody else, I used to work in a restaurant that served whole strawberry pies. When customers ordered one, we’d dip a spatula into a big vat of whipped cream and spread it on top. I walked into the cooler for something, and the manager and another waitress (both married) were standing there lip-locked. They separated ever so slightly when the door opened. To pass the time while they waited for me to leave, the manager dipped whipped cream out with his bare fingers and licked his fingers clean. Then he put his slobbery fingers back into the vat and did it again!

    2. Ally McBeal*

      I waited tables all through college and could never understand why hooking up in the cooler had any appeal whatsoever. It’s too cold! The cooler is for food storage and crying only!

      1. Bast*

        People really love the idea of people hooking up in the walk in fridges/freezers. This rumor has circulated I’m sure just about every restaurant. Ages ago I was the main opening server at a restaurant, and for the morning shift, you’d only have the server, the opening prep cook, and the owner. There were rumors that persisted about myself and the prep cook hooking up in the walk in freezer simply because we spent the majority of the whole shift alone together — except– the owner was an absolute hawk who would have noticed in less than a minute if we both just up and disappeared into the freezer. I also notoriously complained about being cold a lot, so the freezer was the LAST place I wanted to be, let alone hook up in. Apparently, this isn’t a deterrent for some people.

        1. Ally McBeal*

          Also the freezers are often/usually monitored! I used to work in the corporate office of a bar franchise and I remember seeing CCTV footage that included the cooler’s interior when I would visit the locations and work out of the GM’s office.

      1. allathian*

        And the most gross. I pity the poor customers who unknowingly ate the cream. I certainly hope nobody got sick.

  40. Matchmaker^2*

    So I found out about this after the fact when I ran into a former boss. We were catching up and he was giving me an innocuous, friendly rundown of how everyone was doing (small company, maybe 20 employees, the majority working remotely).

    A few employees lived near each other and were friendly before working together, I think they might have known each other through college. One couple from that group got married – yay!

    But there was another couple that ALSO got married. Former boss explained that these individuals had met for the first time at a company event hosted in our country…and fallen madly in love.

    ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t [male employee] already married, with a young child who was in the process of undergoing several surgeries for his health?’

    ‘Uhhhh…’ said my former boss.

    So, yep. They fell ‘madly in love,’ she ditched her longtime live-in boyfriend, he divorced his wife, and…now they’re married.

    At the time of this telling, each still lived in their home country, however. And those are on different continents, separated by an ocean. Not sure if they’ve figured that out yet.

  41. Anon Today*

    One summer in college, I worked at a local photo-scanning business. It was an open secret in the office that my manager was cheating on her husband. I think they were both listed as the business owners, but she ran the business and he would only stop by occasionally (to be a dick to us, usually). A couple years ago, I spotted her at a local grocery store cozying up to a man who was clearly not her husband. Good to know she’s still up to the same shenanigans – still cheating, and still not being discreet in the slightest.

    Honestly, the infidelity was the least problematic part of that manager and job. Suspected illegal software copies, bounced paychecks, you name it. Instead of letting employees go or discussing an end date for the summer crew, she just stopped scheduling people and never took them off the payroll. She outsourced video digitization without telling customers that their hard copies would be mailed elsewhere. Oh, and she was a compulsive liar, even about things that did not matter in the slightest. She made up a personal connection to Kevin Bacon’s kids just so she could say her Bacon Number was higher than ours. Who does that?!

  42. ugh academia*

    When my friend was in grad school, she knew people in a lab who told her the PI (head of the lab) started sleeping with his postdoc’s (employee’s) wife! Eventually the wife left the postdoc for the PI and the postdoc got a faculty position many states away. We get a lot of stories about PIs sleeping with their postdocs (unfortunately as it is a clear power imbalance situation) but this is the first time I’ve heard of a postdoc’s wife being involved!

  43. Anon for this*

    I work in a high profile public organisation – the kind where the big boss is a relatively major public figure.

    Years back we got a new big boss and the tabloid newspapers went nuts about how attractive he was – publishing photos of what he was wearing on vacations, the works.

    Then rumours started that he was having an affair with one of his direct reports. There was nothing concrete, but he’d moved her office to be close to his (which had never been the case for any of her predecessors in that role) and some of the security guards swore up and down that they had “seen things”.

    One day I was having lunch in the cafeteria with a friend. The tables are long and it’s not unusual for people to sit down with people they don’t know. What is more unusual is when one of those people is the big boss. And even more unusual when his dining companion is his alleged affair partner.

    TBH, it would have been pretty intimidating anyway to have the big boss sit down next to you. We finished our lunch quickly, keeping our conversation to non-work topics. Once we’d stood up and put our trays away, I found out that my friend was unaware of the rumours. So she’d just been ordinarily intimidated, not mortified the way I was.

    Not long after, the big boss’s term of office came to an end. There are no rumours (that I’ve heard) about his successor.

  44. Devin*

    One time, in an industry where it was very common to meet and marry, a nice young Mormon coworker of mine met a nice woman in a different department. They dated extremely briefly and got married very fast – like, within months. He was devout and I assume did not believe in sex before marriage, and was a healthy young person, so while I thought it was a terrible idea, I wasn’t surprised.

    It also didn’t surprise me especially when about 18 months later, the woman hooked up with a different colleague. Marry in haste, repent in leisure, although not very much leisure because they immediately divorced.

  45. RJ*

    Christmas party plus open bar plus overworked engineers plus going to the bathroom at exactly the wrong moment. Some things are unseen and just cannot be unseen.

  46. Nannerdoodle*

    Oh, I have a good one because of the absolute audacity! This background is necessary for how this happened and caused no one to get in trouble. The first place I worked after college was very “high school” in terms of gossip and everyone making horrible relationship choices since 95% of the people hired in that department were hired straight out of college and most higher ups had come up through the ranks with almost no outside hires. The job involved a lot of lab work where people were scheduled to work with the same people throughout the whole day. The tasks were pretty mindless, so gossip was the easiest way to pass the time.

    There was a girl (Sherri) on one of the teams. She was secretly dating Casey, Zane, and Jess. She’d told each of them that she wanted to keep it a secret because she didn’t want their relationship to become workplace gossip. She also told each of them that she HATED the other two guys due to them treating her poorly. Thus, all 3 guys would only talk to her 1 on 1 at work and tried their best to avoid each other.

    This worked really well until she went on vacation with her family. One of the schedulers who had an idea of what was going on chose violence that week and scheduled all 3 guys in the same task every single day that week. The first day all 3 worked in silence. The second day Casey started talking about how he was sad because his girlfriend was on vacation that week. Zane and Jess thought that was a coincidence because their girlfriends were also on vacation. One of the three of them said something about it being hard to have a secret gf at work. Then the floodgates opened and they all realized they were all dating Sherri and she was cheating on all 3 of them. Picture the Spiderman meme where they’re all pointing at each other if you want an accurate picture. At the end of the week, Casey and Jess were assigned to lead a project together for the next 3 rooms, even though they hated each other so much that they couldn’t speak to each other and none of the three were allowed to be scheduled with each other because it would devolve to screaming.

    Sherri came back to a nightmare. Casey, who had been dating Sherri the longest, ended things with her because he also blamed her for the issues. Jess would talk crap about Sherri to anyone who would listen. Zane thought Sherri was out of his league and that he couldn’t do any better, so he continued to date her and they made the relationship public. However, Sherri continued to cheat on Zane with Jess.

    Jess would talk about it with other coworkers while riding the bus home, so everyone, including Zane, knew about it. It was the talk of the department for months.

    1. Ali + Nino*

      Here I was thinking Sherri would get her comeuppance but instead 2/3 of the guys stick around?? wild

      1. Nannerdoodle*

        Unfortunately she didn’t get the comeuppance she deserved. But now she’s stuck in a mostly loveless marriage to a man who doesn’t trust her with 4 kids, the oldest of whom has heard about her exploits (from Jess because he is still a trash person, all these years later). So she didn’t get a comeuppance, but she’s not happy with her life.

    3. Paint N Drip*

      I would LOVE to know if this is biomedical research located in the northeast USA, or if all lab-based jobs are the same lol

    4. Nannerdoodle*

      Another story from this disaster of a workplace: A couple worked in the same department. Gabe was a trainer and Brittany was a supervisor. They’d had 2 kids together while both working in this department. Everyone knew them and that they were married. Over the course of 3 months, Brittany lost a bunch of weight. Think slightly overweight to borderline underweight. With this change came newfound confidence.

      Josh, one of the guys on Brittany’s team, who was also married with a kid, started eating lunch with Brittany in her office every day. He also talked to coworkers about how hot she’d become. Everyone knew they were having an affair. It all came to a head one day when it was announced that Josh was no longer on Brittany’s team and would instead be a trainer (in a different area than Gabe).

      What had happened is Brittany’s boss had pulled Brittany and Josh aside earlier that week and said that either one of them had to take that trainer job or Brittany would be fired for sleeping with a subordinate. Josh took the position so they’d both keep their job.

      They both divorced their spouses and moved into apartments in the same building. They broke up within a year. Josh was fired 6 months after that because he was an awful trainer. Gabe is remarried to a lovely woman. Brittany is still single.

    5. popcorn.gif*

      LMAAAOOOOOO oh my gosh Sherri! this one is very good and hilarious. this should be a TV show

  47. MailOrderAnnie*

    O I have been waiting for this one! Although I did allude to it in another post a few weeks ago.

    Several years ago, I worked at a very large international law firm, managing the help desk. I hired a young lady who didn’t have much experience – had only worked in her father’s small law office – but she seemed smart and willling to learn, and I love mentoring people. She was also very attractive – just short of a Victoria’s Secret model, but not by much. But since I (decidedly NOT attractive) would not want someone to discriminate against me because I am ugly, I didn’t want to do the reverse to her. So I hired her.

    I should not have.

    She was lazy, incompetent, rude, and dressed very inappropriately, not just for a law firm, but any workplace outside of a beach hot dog stand. Wearing thongs and very low rise pants is just not a good look. There were complaints – this took place way before the concept of “business casual” attire. But she was very successful at getting the attention of the head of IT. Who was married. With children. They had a torrid affair, which ended up with me losing my job (because she convinced him that she should be the manager – that did not happen) and then in him losing his job.

    She also pulled the same stunt several years later when she was hired to work at my company. That time it ended up with her affair partner having to move back to his home country or his wife was going to divorce him. And she, from what I’ve heard from the grapevine, ended up not able to get any job except commissioned sales. She ruined her reputation to the point that she had to change her name to her husband’s (did I mention she was also married during both of these incidents?) because she was fairly notorious.

  48. Elle Woods*

    I used to be in higher ed and have heard a plethora of stories about professors cheating on their spouses and/or dating students over the years. The worst one to me though was the professor in our department (“Brad”) whose wife (“Jennifer”) worked in a different department. From outward appearances, they seemed to have a solid marriage and had two beautiful kids together.

    Brad had gotten tenure and embarked on a year-long sabbatical to do an intensive research project that meant spending a week or so at a time away from campus. As the year went on, his trips got longer and longer (10 days, 14 days, 21 days). As it turns out, Brad was hooking up with a professor (“Angelina”) during these research trips; the affair had started a couple of years earlier during an academic conference.

    Jennifer had no clue what was going on and thought their marriage was solid until she got a call from the department chair at a different university (where Angelina was part of the faculty) asking if she would be joining her husband at his new university. Brad had accepted a job there–halfway across the country–and hadn’t even told his wife about it he was considering such a thing. To make matters worse, she was served with divorce papers a couple of hours later during her office hours.

    Brad wasn’t particularly well-liked by most in our department anyway but that behavior did him no favors.

    2. SHEILA, the co-host*

      Wow. I have seen some things in Academia over the years, but that might take the proverbial cake. I hope, wherever Jennifer is now, she is happy and glad to be rid of Brad.

      1. Elle Woods*

        Last I heard, Jennifer is doing very well. Her career has flourished, she’s got an incredible new husband, and her kids are fantastic young adults.

    4. sarbah77*

      Oh man, the moment when you think “Hey, was that my old department?”

      (I’m staff, who had a female faculty do that – she and her research partner divorced their spouses and he got a job in our department. I would like to note that his ex-wife took him to the cleaners and we had to find some ways to find his move)

  49. essie*

    When I started dating my husband, I referred him by his proper name (let’s say John). But he had a nickname in the family, let’s say JJ, and he always went by JJ when we were with family and friends. So a couple times at work, I used JJ instead of John. One of my gossipy coworkers went to another and said “Oh my gosh, John seemed like such a good fit for her. I can’t believe she went behind his back with this guy JJ!” Supposedly they decided not to “embarrass” me by asking about it, so for a few weeks, my office thought I was cheating on my boyfriend with… my boyfriend.

    1. RecoveringSWO*

      How did they find out he was one and the same? I’d love to imagine him visiting the office, introducing himself as JJ, and the realization hitting everyone at once.

      1. essie*

        HA that would have been amazing.
        One of my less-gossipy coworkers heard me say “JJ” and said “JJ? I thought his name was John” to which I laughed and explained the nickname. Coworker had a good laugh, called over the gossipy group and explained what happened. We all laughed about it; I thought it was hysterical.

    2. Lily C*

      I was in the same situation, but with the order of names reversed. My now-husband’s first name is the same as his father, grandfather, and coincidentally my own father, and when we first met in college he was going by his middle name. When he started grad school he started using his first name, but I didn’t know until I started meeting his new classmates. Apparently I was considered very scandalous by the other girlfriends until the confusion got cleared up. 20 years later I still have to remember to switch which name I call him by around who met him when in his life.

    3. It's Marie - Not Maria*

      I had a similar thing happen. Everyone knows my spouse by his nickname, and very few people know him by his legal name. 99 times out of 100 I refer to him by his nickname. For some reason, I told an amusing story about our adventures using his legal name. I heard a couple days later that a rumor had started I had a thing going with some guy named LegalName, and they felt really bad for Nickname. I had to go back and explain that LegalName was Nickname’s actual legal name.

      1. Retiring Academic*

        I used to have a colleague whose Danish husband is called Hans Christian. She (not Danish) would often refer to him by his initials HC, which in Danish are pronounced ‘hoe say’. For quite a while I wondered who this guy was who played such an important role in her life called Jose!

        1. Coffee*

          My mom was happily single when rumours started that *male name* is living with her and they go everywhere together. Yeah, mom’s *male name* dog indeed was living with her full time…

  50. Sovreignry*

    I had a fellow associate who apparently would routinely cheat on his wife with one night stands. (When he admitted to me what was going on he said he never intended to leave his wife, they just never had intimacy and he needed something.) The way he was finally caught, was that he had rented a hotel room for one of his one night stands, but his daughter at home became fussy/ill/something, and he had the knack to calm her down.

    He left the hotel and went back home. After calming his daughter down, the whole family went to do some shopping. He and his wife had separate accounts, so when it came time to pay, they decided he would pay from his account. He was holding his daughter at the time and told his wife his wallet was in the pocket of his hoodie. It just so happened that so was the hotel key card.

    The key fell out of his pocket onto the floor of the store, and she asked him what it was about. He decided the best lie was, “Well, when I get home from the office you usually give me a long list of tasks that need to be done and so I sometimes get a hotel room to relax a bit before going home.”

    She asked him if that was really the story he was going to stick with and he said yes. I had been away from the office that day with our boss at a trial so when we came back he looked like shit and informed me about what happened.

    I told him he fucked up, which he admitted to, and they wound up divorced.

      1. whimbrel*

        Right? Like literally anything else would have been better. “No idea, I bumped into someone at court [or wherever] and dropped my phone and my wallet and they dropped their satchel, and it must have gotten mixed into my stuff.”

  51. ooof*

    This thread is teaching me that even though I think no one knows about my month-long relationship with a coworker (that ended over a year ago when he dropped the bomb that he got married), EVERYONE knows.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      Eh, some people definitely know. Some of us are oblivious and wouldn’t notice you got married unless you announced it.

      “Wait, her last name is Brown? Really? Huh, must have misremembered it…”

    2. Bast*

      Maybe… or maybe not. I’ve worked with some people who were in relationships that no one knew about until they announced it, and others that even the most clueless person in the building figure out what was going on.

    3. Nannerdoodle*

      Potentially not. There are some people who are dating in my office that no one else knows about. I only know because I was the one who drunkenly told them that they both liked each other and they should start dating at the company holiday party. They only told me months later when they were moving in together and both of them were answering questions in a weird way so I asked about it.

    4. Constance Lloyd*

      I managed to date a coworker for a few months without anybody knowing, but I only pulled it off because apparently everyone had already assumed I was secretly dating a different coworker. Actual boyfriend and I decided not to be coworkers anymore and now we’re married.

    5. Dawbs*

      some of us are saying “oof, been there.”

      I’m still embarrassed 25 years later that I ‘dated’a boss who was married. I was a legal adult but woefully nieve and i had landed in very niche job (1 boss, 5 employees) that I LOVED and it was strongly implied that if i continued the relationship the job would continue. Breaking it off meant he’d shut things down.
      eventually i broke things off (met my now husband) and boss shut it down and during a recession I lost the job and references and then spent 4 years stuck in a call center and it took 15 years tu get back into the niche field.

      Sometimes we know, but also, we KNOW. and sympathize rather than judge.
      Sympathy for falling for the jackassses thigh.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        Please don’t feel shame for that. That ‘jackass’ sexually harassed you. Maybe he didn’t threaten you with physical violence, but he threatened your livelihood: your ability to eat, get medical care, and have a roof over you head. Despite that, you found the strength, the sheer audacity, to get yourself out–at significant cost to your career.

        Maybe you got fooled, but it was only once, and all the shame should be on the man who broke his wedding vows, took advantage of someone working for him, and chose to be cruel and vindictive when they had the courage to break away.

        1. Dawbs*

          thanks.
          it was a friendship that went all sideways and I see it as the field of red flags it was now. Still not my finest hour.

          But i make sure it can’t happen to my staff and i make sure my daughter has better tools. and i occasionally think mean thoughts in his general direction. (he landed on his feet- probably makes triple my salary. and he’s still married. but He also had to bid with himself and he’s a lousy roommate)

  52. Velawciraptor*

    The timing of this is *chef’s kiss* because I was just talking to a colleague about one of our office’s most notorious cheating couples. Both had wives when they began their affair. He’d just had a baby with his original wife. She and her wife were vocally child-free. Yet affair baby came less than 9 months after their divorce date to both file at the courthouse. They’ve come and gone from our office in different capacities over the years. Right now I think he’s dealing with us as a contractor and she’s Goop-ified her career. It’s been fascinating to watch.

    1. Paint N Drip*

      My fellow bisexuals really bringing the juicy cheating scandals! Good luck to them, that sounds wild

  53. Toot Sweet*

    I’m enjoying this so much! Some of these stories bring the term “gross misconduct” to a whole new level!

  54. girlie_pop*

    The wildest situation I’ve ever encountered was at my last job, which was in a very conservative industry (and a very conservative state).

    One of my coworkers on my team came back to our little cubicle group from going to talk to someone in another department and told he had just heard about why an executive who had left recently (which was a surprise to a lot of us) had gone to another company.

    It turned out that the executive, one of the higher-up employees in the department they ran, and a person from another department had all been having what one person described as “sex parties” when they travelled for work. It was apparently an open secret in the department, which was a surprise to me because higher-up employee was married with a bunch of kids! We didn’t get much more detail than that, but this trio traveled frequently for important meetings and conferences related to specific clients and I honestly don’t know how they would have had time for sex parties!

    I guess that after a while, the person from the other department became kind of…enamored? Obsessed with? the director and wouldn’t leave them alone, to the point that the director was concerned enough for their safety that they went to company leadership, told them what was going on, and asked for help.

    OBVIOUSLY director was pushed out because they were sleeping with two of their subordinates, and somehow higher-up employee’s spouse found out about the sex parties, and they briefly separated but are back together now. When I left, higher-up employee and employee from another department were still employed there (employee from other department has a relative who is very senior in the company, so them being protected didn’t really surprise anyone).

    I just saw on LinkedIn a few weeks ago that higher-up employee left their job at my last company…to go work for the director who got pushed out! Hopefully they both make better decisions this time around.

  55. Nora*

    I don’t know if this counts because it’s not *my* workplace but a few years ago my husband and I accidentally discovered that two members of our state legislature were having an affair. Our rep was recently separated from her husband and had taken an apartment in our complex for a few months. The other rep was from a couple hours away but was in the area a lot because he was running for higher office (he lost). We live near our capital so it’s not that unusual to see government folks floating around. They have very distinct license plates and with a teensy bit of sleuthing it’s really easy to figure out whose car is whose. I found it odd that two reps would park in our complex overnight fairly frequently. I told my husband, we looked up the plates, and figured out what was happening immediately. They are from different parties and have very different platforms but I guess that doesn’t matter in a more intimate setting. Either the affair ended or they got smarter about hiding it. She is still in office; he recently welcomed a child with his wife. I’ve since found out from chats with local operatives that the affair is an open secret in those crowds and I’m sure it will come out eventually. But I’ll never forget those few months when I felt like I was living in a mediocre political thriller.

    1. HRneedsAdrink*

      Nora, same for a friend of mine who lived in an apartment not far from our State Capital. Her neighbor was a lobbyist (single), and every other weekend, current Mr Governor (married) would stay over. My friend said they seemed quite brash about it, not really hiding it.

    2. Dawbs*

      the open secrets in this field are WILD.

      my housemate did NOT talk to the cops, not did anyone else, when a political intern decided they were going to “take it to the mattress” and literally shot a legislator’s horse and then panicked before they got to the “put the head in their bed” part.

      everyone knew who had done it but I don’t think anyone toldthe cops.
      poor horse.

        1. Dawbs*

          my housemate was the….”spin doctor”for one of the political parties, so he always knew EVERYTHING so he could get in front of it as needed.

          the intern over heard a “yeah, we’ll take it to the mattresses with Representative Smith” that was followed by jokes about literally killing smith’s horse.
          intern went off on his own, took it all literally and shot the poor horse and ran away.

          and Smith had a bunch as who had murdered his horse but ultimately i NEVER saw a thing published about it and no stats were made.
          I’m pretty sure intern was encouraged to leave very soon after.

  56. RedinSC*

    I worked at a non profit museum that had a pretty high profile in the area because it had a speaker series that was also on local TV.

    Turns out that the CEO was having an affair with the person who got the people in for the speakers series. That explained their “business trips”

    Apparently the wife of the CEO found out, and outted the affair, and there was a massive blow up. Everyone concerned lost their jobs and the board chair had to take over as interim CEO.

    However, I was oblivious to all that happening, and only heard about it after I left.

  57. 1 Non Blonde*

    Not an actual affair, but at a past job, the second-in-command was a married female, who, for some reason, didn’t wear a wedding ring. My also married male manager and her were (are) super good friends (which I now realize is not the best work set up), and often went to lunch together, and, in bad weather (we were in North Dakota, near the Canadian border), would drive to and from work together. I heard rumors from people insinuating that something untoward was going on with them, as, of course, she didn’t wear a ring and THAT WAS WEIRD, but I am 99% sure they weren’t anything besides friends.

    1. ThursdaysGeek*

      Not cheating nor an affair, but my spouse had a manager who thought there was an affair going on. I worked at the same company as my spouse, but we don’t share last names and neither of us wear rings. He saw us arriving in the same vehicle, sometimes eating lunch together, and then leaving together. I thought everyone knew we were married, but apparently, he missed that memo and was scandalized at our behavior.

      1. CV*

        Do a lot of people think that it’s critical for married people to wear wedding rings?

        I see it as fairly optional, depending on the opinion of the couple themselves.

        1. Paint N Drip*

          I think a lot of people consider it critical in that they judge based on the marriage status- they’re thinking it’s weird because they cannot “accurately” judge without the info. I’m thinking ‘dude at the bar who hits on you but then is upset you’re married’ and ‘nosy coworker thinks men and women can’t be friends if someone is married’.

          Personally I don’t think my husband is off cheating if he isn’t wearing his ring, others may disagree. I have occasional swelling issues and for a time was only wearing my ring when it fit (duh) – the postman for my building APPARENTLY noticed, because when I de-puffed and started wearing my ring regularly again he mentioned that he was wondering if I was getting divorced. Honestly didn’t realize HOW significant it is for some folks!

          1. MigraineMonth*

            Some people have face-blindness, where they can’t remember people’s faces. I have hand-blindness, because I never look at people’s hands or remember their ring configuration. I might notice a particularly pretty ring, but I won’t remember which finger you wore it on.

            (Apparently, as a woman, I’m supposed to immediately notice when someone starts wearing an engagement ring or stops wearing their wedding ring. Clearly I’m letting down my sex.)

        2. Jenesis*

          Neither I nor my husband wears our wedding ring. Me, because I’ve never enjoyed wearing rings in general and I’m not about to start just because of peer pressure from dead people; and my husband, because although he likes the tradition, he works with dangerous machinery for a living (he wears a silicone ring instead). None of our peer group has ever given us grief over it. I imagine there might be some older relatives and assorted busybodies who Have Opinions, but I’ve never heard them in person.

          1. ThursdaysGeek*

            I don’t particularly like rings either, but we never even got any rings. At the time, it seemed like spending our money on food and housing was more important than jewelry.

          2. allathian*

            Same for us. I got a lovely wedding ring, but the diamond settings mean that it’s hollow underneath and it started giving me a rash no matter how frequently I disinfected it, and I stopped wearing it every day. Now I might wear it to a more formal occasion like a wedding when I’ll also wear a necklace or brooch (my ears aren’t pierced and I dislike clip-ons, so no earrings). My husband doesn’t wear his, either.

        3. TheBunny*

          I sometimes wear mine and sometimes don’t.

          I don’t sleep or shower with it on as it’s white gold and I hate dealing with taking it in to get it redone (which I need to do) and keep it in my ring box.

          Didn’t wear it today. might tomorrow.

  58. Stella70*

    Another story from my time at a car/recreational vehicle dealership:

    Phil was our top salesman, for reasons no one could define. His jokes weren’t funny, his belt buckle was the size of his head, he wore his shirt unbuttoned nearly to the waist, he referred to himself in the third person – he probably even hated puppies, not sure. Phil never met an elderly customer he couldn’t or wouldn’t screw over.

    Phil was married – as cads often are – to a wonderful woman we all loved, who was unaware of his penchant for picking up strippers, bringing them back to the dealership, and “christening” the new RVs. None of us could stand him but since he had the highest sales, he was untouchable.

    One morning, a few salesmen were standing around, snickering about the night before. They had all gone to a strip club, where Phil met a stripper – “Berry” – whom he brought back to the dealership for the RV portion of his evening. Typically, he would just shoo them out when they were done, and go home to his wife, but Berry was impressed with his new “digs” and resisted leaving. Phil told the salesmen that she delayed him getting home so much, his wife was suspicious.

    I asked the salesmen if they wanted to assist ruining Phil’s morning; they couldn’t agree fast enough.

    Our dealership was huge, covered three buildings and four large parking lots. This pre-dated cell phones/pagers, so to get a hold of someone, you had to use the PA system. Both the buildings’ and the lots’ speakers were insanely loud; the people buried in the cemetery down the road probably never got a moment’s piece during business hours.

    I knew Phil was in the RV lot, tidying up from the night before. Over the PA, I announced, “Phil, please call Reception”. When he did, I said a friend of his was waiting in the lobby, she said her name was Berry. I am fairly certain he dropped the phone. He told me to say he wasn’t available, and ordered me to get rid of her. I hung up. Minutes later, I paged Phil again; when he called, I reported Berry was interested in buying a car, and would not work with any other salesman, given that Phil had promised her a big discount. Phil was irate (cheating on his wife with strippers was one thing, giving a customer a discount was intolerable) and again, told me to get rid of her.

    I hung up and paged him again after another imaginary conversation with Berry. This went on for a ridiculous amount of time; Phil giving me increasingly panicky demands to get her to leave, “Berry” becoming more insistent on getting that discount she was promised. I was just about to let Phil off the hook when the owner of the dealership arrived, perfect timing! I to page Phil twice to get him to come to the main building.

    When he finally stormed over, he noticed the owner’s car and really panicked. He said, “Where’s Berry?” and one of the salesmen said she was waiting in the customer lounge. When Phil couldn’t find her, another salesman said he saw her walk out to the new car lot. Still no Berry. Yet another salesman said, “That chick wearing the blue dress? I saw her walking over to the RVs.” Phil sprinted out the door just seconds before we all broke down laughing. We kept that up for an hour, making Phil jog all over, looking for Berry. Cruel, but highly entertaining. Finally, Phil had sweated through his clothes, and we had gotten bored. The salesmen told Phil they tracked her down and asked her to wait in the conference room. Phil burst through that door, only to find our way-past-retirement (and in on the joke) comptroller sorting files. She looked up at him and said, “Hello, big boy!” and winked.

    Phil didn’t talk to anyone for over a week. It was glorious.

    2. SHEILA, the co-host*

      As the person who inspired my commenting name, I must once again bow down to your story-telling skills.

      1. Stella70*

        You made me laugh today, Sheila, which I sorely needed!
        And it should come as no surprise to you that Phil and your alter-ego Sheila were the ones to bail on that holiday party before it even started. She would brag to me how good Phil was in bed, and I would reply that it was a pity I was allergic to Penicillin and unable to purchase a head-to-toe body condom, a comment she didn’t find funny at all.

    5. Insert Clever Name Here*

      If you ever write that book, you let us all know because I’d buy it so fast :)

      1. Stella70*

        I am actually mulling it over, InsertCleverNameHere. The winters are long in MN, might as well have something to show for it come Spring!
        There was that time my boobs started playing “Hi, Ho, Cherry-O” during a hospital board meeting. Or, at least, it sure sounded like they did. ;)

  59. KLink*

    I work in a high school that’s a hotbed for scandal. Here’s a summary:
    1. Husband and Wife A are good friends with Husband and Wife B. (Wife A and Husband B are both teachers). Wife A catches Husband A and Wife B cheating IN A VIDEO ON HIS UNLOCKED PHONE. No one ever has enough shame to leave town. Wife A is the only one who’s remarried–to an amazing guy, good for her!
    2. Married Athletic Director and Newlywed Dance Coach/Teacher; she marries in January, is separated by October, they marry the next December.
    3. Football coach and Spanish teacher, both married. She would use her first hour prep to go his weightlifting class, then they had “private trainings” at night. In March, she applies for a sabbatical (which was denied- we don’t do those) and he suddenly leaves for “better opportunities” (mid-season 2021). His now ex-wife finally caught on that this was a pattern for him- he’d had a multi-year affair before. Oh, and she also teaches here.

    There are more. This place is nuts.

    1. KLink*

      And now, more.
      4. My very first year teaching here, the Principal and AP, both in their 60’s, were having an affair and were very bad at hiding it. They were compelled to retire. At graduation, while we were forced into a standing ovation thanking them for their dedication, one student in the front row made a point of staying seated. Another wore a homemade “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” T-Shirt. Little did we know, his wife was just outside, screaming to be let in. Glad it wasn’t my job to keep her out!
      5. And the latest. Divorced FCS (family and consumer sciences) teacher with small kids, married History teacher with older kids, including one in high school. I heard about it 3 weeks before school started and I started a countdown to see how long it would take kids to find out. Week 2 of school, it’s out. Mostly because she hangs out with him with her kids at cross country practice and his big blue truck is always in front of her house, which is on the way to school. Nothing ever stays secret.

  60. xxxxx*

    My boss had an affair with the head of HR. (They were both married with children.) They were not very subtle about it, and it was incredibly uncomfortable to be around them. My boss was also creepy (sexual harassment, discrimination against women, retaliation for reporting, you name it), but it’s not like you could report it to HR… Somehow everyone was shocked when all the women in my department left the company within a year.

    1. Bast*

      This almost has me wondering if we worked in the same place, except the turnover wasn’t quite as bad. HR and Big Boss (both married) had a not so subtle affair, (the extent of which is unknown) pretended they weren’t and that it was entirely professional despite every single employee being aware. Big Boss was also creepy and harassed young, attractive women. One woman decided to complain to HR, HR shut her down with, “He’s a happily married man, he would NEVER do something like that, maybe YOU have YOUR sights set on him, and it needs to end now, blah blah blah.” It was clear she was jealous of Younger and Even More Attractive Woman. My story is pretty anti-climatic because eventually HR and Big Boss seemed to gradually cool off of each other until they were basically never in the office together again. No big fireworks or drama.

  61. The Kulprit*

    I used to work at a job where there were teams of a “lead” and “assistant” and their EAs. The lead was a man and assistant a woman. I worked with her and my colleague L worked with him. Everyone here is married.

    L’s husband always thought she was weird around her lead. He was right. They were messing around and got caught by someone we worked with. There’s a hierarchical structure here, so this is not looked at favorably by our org. They had to admit to the relationship and kept their jobs.

    L also slept with another EA, F. F was dating *another* EA, T. T found out about this and quit her job, so to F. L denied that anything had happened and presented the whole situation (which I did not ask about) as F being a creeper and harassing her, and some (loud and clear) racist dog whistles as part of her denial.

    I felt dirty when I learned all this. The whole team went to the Lead’s house with our spouses. Yeah, let’s meet the family you’re helping wreck, compliment her home, eat her cooking, all while you’re sleeping with her husband.

    I’ve long since left the job, but it was an awful and unstable environment, due in part to this nonsense (of which there is much more).

  62. RedinSC*

    OH, another good one!!!! Well horrifying, actually.

    A guy I worked with found out that he had a daughter, when the kid was in her mid-twenties. THe mother never told him about the kid, and said kid eventually reached out to meet her bio dad.

    Well, they meet, and hit it off so well that she left her husband, moved in with her father. HOWEVER, the husband showed up at the office claiming that they (daughter and father) were having an affair! HOLYCATS! And, well, as far as I know they’re still living together. He left that office around that same time, IDK if it was because of this, if he was asked to leave or what, but WOW!

    1. RedinSC*

      This same office… one of the directors was seeing someone in her chain of command. Not her direct report, but one of the people that reported to her direct report. This was discovered and she was told to 1. end the relationship (which she did) and 2. to apologize to the ENTIRE OFFICE for bringing shame upon them. She had to do that at an all staff meeting.

      1. zinzarin*

        Ooooh, I do not like this apology. Public shaming is just so…. eeeeeewwwwwww.

        Just fire them and be done with it.

        2. RedinSC*

          I KNOW! It was horrible! If I’d had any say in that I would have killed that idea for the public shaming apology. AWFUL!

    2. MigraineMonth*

      Unless there is abuse, I feel that one should make reasonable efforts to notify the other parent that they are about to have a child.

      This would be an exception. Dear god, I hope the husband was wrong about the situation.

  63. Meh*

    So this isn’t technically cheating but we’re in the ballpark.

    Team has 2 fulltime year round staff members, Director and Supervisor (“Atticus”), and maybe 20-30 seasonal staff that work outside in the community (think something like lawn maintenance where some work individual and some are part of small crews). Director is fully a desk job, Atticus has a hybrid field/desk job but typically stays at his desk. Because of the nature of the work, the seasonal staff often take lunch breaks at city parks with bathroom facilities. There are limited parks like this in the area so it’s common to invertedly meet up for lunch. Also relevant, we all drive distinctive work vehicles.

    Aurelia is a seasonal worker on her maybe 4th or 5th season. All previous seasons she was dating fellow seasonal worker Archibald. One year we come back, and Archibald and Aurelia are no longer a thing, it is an open secret is that Atticus and Aurelia are now dating. Aurelia and Atticus never really talk to each other at our daily planning meetings, I assume to keep their forbidden love hidden. Except Atticus meets Aurelia for lunch every day. And remember how we all use the same limited lunch locations and drive distinctive vehicles? What did they think we thought was going on?

  64. Not on board*

    All my best stories come from working in a waterpark. There was a lifeguard, quite good-looking and charming, who would aquire a second girlfriend every summer. So he’d be hooking up with a female lifeguard all summer while his long-term girlfriend was totally oblivious. If you asked him how his girlfriend was, he’d look around to see who heard. By the end of the summer, we’d have a catered end of summer party, which he was obligated to bring his long-term girlfriend. The side-piece would have to spend the whole party watching him be affectionate with his girlfriend. You alternately felt bad for them, or enjoyed the show, depending on how pleasant they were. There one who was super nasty to me, for no apparent reason, so I thoroughly enjoyed her misery at that party. (today I would not, but 21/22 year-old me totally did). People loved bringing up his girlfriend to make him squirm (Hey Bob, how’s your girlfriend, haven’t seen her around all summer?)

  65. TXNJIA*

    The founder and ceo of a company I used to work for hired her husband as a director. They got divorced and both continued in their positions. She got remarried and hired her new husband as a director, then hired her ex’s new wife, also as a director. She also hired her stepson, his wife, her other stepdaughter-in-law, her brother, and several other random family members (cousins of the in-laws). It was a large-ish nonprofit – not a “family business.” Then she and her new husband got ousted for an incredible amount of financial mismanagement, but only after she had hired a man she was probably having an affair with to a made-up high-level position that included paying for his car and apartment. Again, at a nonprofit. It was both infuriating and entertaining.

  66. Coffeebreak*

    I met my husband at work, and we had a scandalous “secret” affair that everyone knew about and kept pestering us about. We’ve now been married for fifteen years, have kids and he still works for the same company. A lot of people meet at work, but he was technically my supervisor and could have lost his job.

    Our big manager literally asked him if he was playing, “hide the salami,” with me. He was, but we have always denied starting the relationship until after we both transferred to other locations (same city, different spots.)

    1. Coffeebreak*

      I was cheating on my jerk (you’ll have to trust me) of a bf with him, but we never were secretly meeting at work or making out or anything. I did grow a spine and end it.

    2. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

      My grandmother met her 2nd husband at work. Technically he was in her chain of command and one or both of them would have been fired. They kept the relationship secret. They were married for 18 years while still working there and nobody ever found out. They never carpooled together, never socialized with coworkers together and each kept their insurance separate. She transferred out of his chain of command when it was a good opportunity to do so. About a year after he retired they decided it would be better if he was on regular insurance so they “got married”. They used a company picnic he attended post retirement as their “got together” story.

      To this day there are people who think that they started dating after he retired.

    3. Magc*

      I got an internship at an organization where my spouse (then bf) had very briefly worked earlier that year. There were several married couples in the department we both worked in, so it wouldn’t have been an issue (other than our “living in sin” status — this was back in the 80’s). However, I was very interested in extending the internship and potentially working there (both of which happened), so I passed off our relationship as simply friends from being students in the same program at college.

      I think it was probably 9 months (and after being hired on permanently) before I admitted that _actually_ we were not only dating but lived together. It wasn’t a big deal, but no one ever seemed to suspect anything. In retrospect, though, the fact that I never referred to my boyfriend by name might have tipped off anyone paying attention.

  67. notagirlengineer*

    I graduated with a technical degree many years ago when hiring was very slow unless you wanted to work in fossil fuels, which I did not. I and a couple of fellow graduates applied for positions with a prestigious, well funded research organization. We all had great gpas for our field and similar levels of involvement in student activities. One of the men, Fred, had spent the past few years sitting outside class copying homework and, well, not keeping his eyes to his own exams. I was a stickler for rules, and seeing this over and over again really bothered me.

    I had my on site interview a week or two after Fred with the same hiring manager. My interviews went quite well and in an unusual turn of events, I was given a written offer letter at the end of the day. They had multiple spots open, so this didn’t automatically preclude Fred or the others from getting offers, as well. At the end of the day, however, as an exhausted 22 year old who still had looming final projects and exams ahead, the manager mentioned Fred. I had no filter, and blurted out that I had no interest in working at the same place as Fred due to ethical concerns. The manager seemed to take my words to heart.

    I worked there for a decade, and Fred clearly did not. I never heard what he went on to do then or later. I wish I had kept my opinion to myself so Fred would have been hired (or not) and successful (or not) without my input. Perhaps I am putting too much stock in my influence. At the time, I felt fully justified, but as I have matured, I see gray between the black and white.

  68. Alanna of Trebond*

    This happened before my time at my current company, but apparently two of my coworkers (both married to other people at the time), “John” and “Jane,”* (of course not their real names) were having an affair, including liaisons IN THE OFFICE. When Jane’s husband found out, he showed up at the office to confront John and evidently the police had to be called to the scene.

    I was hired in the months after this happened, and Jane was by this time separated from her husband. John was (and still is to this day) still married to his wife, so things between him and Jane were over.

    Incredibly, neither of them got fired for their poor judgment and still worked here together for another 2 years after the big confrontation. (Their job duties sometimes meant they had to work together on projects, even!)

    I only found out a few years ago when Jane left the company for another job, so you can imagine my shock at this new information about these two people I had by this time known for a couple of years.

    *Names changed, of course

  69. Not on board*

    Another story, not me, but my friend. She was in HR and had managed to get her boyfriend hired at one of the warehouses in the company. He became friends with “Sara” who had a “fiance”. They’d constantly be doing after work activities together and he’d claim that Sara’s fiance had no problem, so my friend should be fine with it. She wasn’t a jealous person but this felt totally off.
    Then he mysteriously get fired. A couple of months later, he breaks up with my friend.
    Two years later, at a dinner with friends, many of whom also worked there, she finds out that boyfriend was fired for having sex on the company premises with Sara and literally everybody knew about it except my friend. She was totally humiliated. (The ex-boyfriend and Sara eventually got married and had a family so I guess it was meant to be? But still…..)

  70. Popcorn passer*

    Well, it’s not cheating…

    Back in fast-food I had a coworker who had a bad man picker who came into work one day under the influence of something.

    Anyways, this guy comes in during a rush, and my coworker does the cashier part. She then comes to me and says, “Let me make his order. He’s going to be my next boyfriend.”

    We were in the middle of a rush, I’m not even paying attention, and she’s been making VERY messy orders the entire shift, so whatever, I give the ticket to her. Less than a minute later, his wife comes in to collect the order.

    Turns out my coworker had flirted with him, and written her number on his receipt.

    Then I got to hear all about how he shamelessly flirted with her, right? Didn’t he? Didn’t you see that transaction you paid zero attention to? Didn’t he lead me on? DIDN’T HE?

    We’re in a rush, honey, finish orders. It’ll take your mind off the breakup.

  71. Awkward Anon*

    Early in my career I worked for a company where one of the company owners was having an affair with one of the contractors and whilst they initially managed to keep it a secret, coworkers started to get suspicious when they were spotted out at dinner together a few times.

    A few months later we had the company Christmas party which partners/spouses were allowed to come along to. At some point in the night the company owner came over and told me they thought my partner had had enough to drink and I should probably send them home. I was a bit confused as they didn’t seem drunk to me but naturally apologised and ordered a cab. It was only later than I discovered that just before they kicked my partner out he had seen the contractor slap the owner’s ass! They then realised my partner had seen and went bright red before proceeding to find a way to get my partner out of the event as quickly as possible clearly before he had a chance to tell anyone!

      1. 1LFTW*

        Right, which is why he had to preemptively discredit Awkward Anon’s partner as a witness by setting them up as being so “drunk” he was told to leave.

  72. Popping popcorn*

    at a manufacturing site. plant foreman is married with like 3 daughters. He cheats on wife with the HR manager. Wife finds out so he moves in with HR manager then cheats on her with safety manager… who gets pregnant.

    Divorce is finalized and he is left with nothing. He marries safety manager who has to go to site next door because of optics. Hr manager transfers away. no one loses job.

    Years pass when a new scandal hits. 4 of the foreman’s managers are sleeping with same hourly employee who has pictures.

    foreman loses job because he knew about it.

  73. Red Canary*

    My very first full-time job was at a small, extremely dysfunctional family-owned business. There were about 7 of us who worked in the building on a regular basis– me (the receptionist), the office manager, and a handful of support techs. Two of the support techs, Ryan and Anne, were both in long term relationships with people outside the office, but they were close. *Very* close. *Extremely* close. They spent long amounts of time in each other’s offices (Ryan’s office was right next to mine), they would take 2-3 hour lunches together multiple times a week (I answered phones and no one liked that I didn’t know when they would be back), and best/worst of all, I was cautioned that I should be careful about going down into the basement to get supplies because they had been caught having sex down there before. Yeah, everyone knew. Anne in particular was a favorite of the company owner’s, so no one was going to do anything about anything they did; the office manager and I just laughed to each other about them for the rest of the time I worked there.

    Believe it or not, none of that was why I eventually quit!

  74. Receptionists Have Eyes Too*

    I worked reception at a telecom company in the summers during grad school. It was dead boring 95% of the time, all I did was answer phones and route visitors to the right people. Reception was on the ground floor and the rest of the company was several floors up.

    It was glaringly obvious that two of the upper level execs in our company were having an affair. They’d get off the elevators at slightly staggered times but still leave together early several days a week, giggling touching and whispering on the way out. She’d often zip off with him on the back of his motorcycle for 2-hour lunches, then he would roar up and deposit her at the door, where she would go into the ground floor bathroom to reapply her makeup before taking the elevator back up. He would come in a few minutes behind her.

    It was as if they didn’t see us as actual sentient human beings, the mere receptionists at the desk by the door. Or maybe we just didn’t count? We weren’t the only ones though. Buzz around the office was, they’d also been slipping in and out of each other’s rooms at out-of-town conferences and training events.

    Apparently her husband got wind of the affair. He started calling. And calling. And calling. So upset, telling us that he knew about the affair, that it was unprofessional, asking to be transferred to the president, the CEO, the board of directors. He really wanted to spill the tea to the people at the top (who probably wouldn’t have cared but I get his impulse to expose the lies).

    Cheater dude was good buddies with the head of HR, and HR happened to be who Reception reported to. So the HR VP sent a decree down the chain that all calls to the C-suite now suddenly had to go directly to him. Not his assistant, not the C-suite receptionists, but to the VP of HR personally. So I’d send chump-husband’s call yet again to the same unhelpful head of HR, and the guy would just call right back. He was never nasty to me, which is kind of amazing considering my seeming inability to route his calls properly.

    For several days, the husband kept trying to call from different numbers, changing his voice, trying to get through to someone in charge. The head of HR even sent a poor mid-level manager down to hover at the reception desk for the better part of a week, making sure we complied, and also watching the door in case the husband showed up so she could escort him directly to the cheater’s buddy in HR, if it came to that (he never showed).

    I mostly did what I was told but was furious on behalf of the spouse. So I might have accidently routed a couple of his calls directly to the unlisted voicemail box of our company’s president.

  75. Messy Messy Messy*

    One place I worked there 3 managers in one department, all male, all mid-30s, all in some sort of committed relationship. I’ll call them Al, Bob, and Chris. Each had direct reports, and each had one women who was young (right out of college), cute, and single. I’ll call them Debbie, Elsa, and Flora.
    Debbie reported to Al. Al was engaged, but he and Debbie had an affair anyway. Right before Al’s wedding (to his very young, attractive fiancee), he and Debbie approached Elsa for a threesome. Elsa declined. Al got married and life went on.
    Elsa reported to Bob, who was married, and they started their own affair. It was pretty messy and I don’t know what eventually happened, other than Bob’s wife got pregnant while he and Elsa were screwing around. I don’t think that stopped the affair, though.
    Flora reports to Chris and they also started an affair, but they eventually got married. After 2 kids and a few years, Chris starts an affair with Gwen. All 3 of them worked together, and Gwen is a despicable person in her own right. Flora divorces Chris and transfers to another location, but they all still work for the same company, as far as I know.
    Al, Bob, and Chris all report to Hank, who decided – out loud- that the best way to deal with this problem is to “stop hiring cute, young girls”. I heard him say it. No, Hank, maybe stop hiring horny male managers who think nothing of hooking up with their direct reports!

    1. Ally McBeal*

      Man oh man. Imagine being, like, a random accountant or IT person and having to be a fly on the wall while all this BS goes down. I feel like I’d have to start a newsletter to keep my friends updated on the drama!

  76. The OG Sleepless*

    A story of cheating on my work premises, but not my coworkers. We had a couple pull up in our parking lot and…go parking, in broad daylight, every Wednesday for about a month. It’s important to note that not only did we have a back row with a dumpster at the corner of the parking lot, but we backed up to a cul-de-sac that had been cut off from the main road when a rock quarry was put in, with thick dense woods all around it. So, these people were less than 50 yards from several very private options where nobody might have seen them at all, or cared. But they chose to park directly in front of our front door, where it was impossible for clients to miss them. We still let them carry on like that for a few weeks, until it became clear that this was a standing date that might go on and on. My boss called the cops.

    Cop walks right up and knocks on the driver’s side window and they both almost jump out of their skin. He asks, “What are y’all doing? You’re ten feet from these people’s front door.” They didn’t really have an answer for that. When the cop looked at their IDs, they had the same address. Best he could figure out, they BIL and SIL and were part of a big extended family who lived together, and this was how they sneaked off together. Very, very odd.

  77. Chairman*

    I worked for seven years in an all-female office. Any time a man joined the team he would end up having an affair with one of the women. This happened twice while I worked there and once just after I left. (I wasn’t involved in any of the affairs!)
    For a small team of six or seven people I thought those were impressive stats.

  78. Ann O'Nemity*

    So, I think I’m accidentally witnessing the start of an office affair, and it’s juicy. These two coworkers (both married to other people) have been perfectly normal for over a year—just your average, work-related conversations and zero sparks. But recently, things have taken a suspicious turn. They’re now going on these extended “lunch breaks” together, syncing up their work-from-home schedules to be off on the same days, and spending way too much time behind closed doors in each other’s offices. And trust me, they were not doing this before.

    But here’s the part that really seals the deal: last week, I realized I left something in my office and popped back in after hours. As soon as I opened the door, I heard this loud crash from one of the private offices. Out strolls the dynamic duo, looking like they’ve just been caught with their hands in the cookie jar—or something way more awkward. They start stammering these ridiculous excuses about why they were both there, after hours, when literally neither of their jobs has ever required a late night. Like, ever.

    So yeah, I’m over here, making popcorn and settling in for what is sure to be an absolute trainwreck.

  79. JP*

    My stepmother found hand written love letters at the office between two coworkers who were cheating on their significant others. She said she made photocopies of all of them before putting them back. I don’t know that she ever did anything with them, but that part of the story always made me uncomfortable.

    1. popcorn.gif*

      HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA i would also do this even if i didn’t do anything with them. too good. just for my personal archives of hilariousness and/or future NYT bestseller

  80. Batzy*

    This one was vile. I worked at a private school for disabled children in the campus housing office. “Mike” was our associate housing director. Mike was married to Lisa, who worked on the other side of campus in administration. Lisa was a wonderful person and I thought Mike was great, too. He was a good boss, super chill, very kind and great with the kids. We all loved Mike and Lisa. We supported them immensely as their toddler was undergoing treatment for a rare pediatric cancer.

    Angie was a mental health counselor who was contracted to work out of our building. Mike and Angie were very flirty almost immediately and that put a bunch of us off. As a contractor, she was only supposed to be on-site like 5 hours a week but that quickly went up each week, even though she wasn’t seeing clients. The agency she was contracted through would call us to ask where she was, and several times sent someone to come get her which was not great.

    The staff all participated happily in a 5k walk in Mike’s baby’s name and had a fundraiser to help them cover some costs. Angie didn’t hide how much she hated it and complained to HR that we were being “forceful” about people participating (we weren’t) and we were spending too much time during our work-day on the fundraiser (again, no). Mike gave us a lecture about focusing on our time and doing more work, but he totally accepted the money we raised for him.

    That’s when we all started to notice that Angie would go into his office and turn on the white noise machine both in his office, and place our mobile machine right outside his door. Mike started asking us to take direction from Angie even though she had nothing to do with our jobs and was an outside contractor.

    Just as we were about to hit our limit as a staff and go to HR, Angie didn’t show up one day. Later that afternoon, she emailed the whole school. She found out Mike was cheating on HER with another contractor on the night shift. To say she went scorched earth would be mild. The screenshots she posted of conversations between her and Mike, or Mike and his other side piece would make Reddit shut down, including Mike admitting to working drunk. Mike got the email while the Superintendent was in his office discussing something else.

    I’ve never seen something so uncomfortable in my entire professional life as I did when the SI walked Mike out. That’s the one and only cheating at work issue I’ve ever witnessed and I never want to see one again. Great news is that Lisa was fully supported by the school and her little got better.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      You know you’ve gone full villain when you’re angry people are raising money to treat a sick baby. That’s past kicking-random-puppies on the pointless evil scale.

      1. Two-Faced Big-Haired Food Critic*

        And this is from a mental health counselor. I shudder to think how discreet she might *not* have been about her clients’ personal biz.

      2. allathian*

        Ouch, poor Lisa, I’m so glad her baby got better.

        If you’re foolish enough to engage in a relationship with a person who’s supposedly committed elsewhere, always assume that you’re going to be cheated on as well.

  81. HRneedsAdrink*

    Too many stories over the years!
    1- Manager and his direct Admin, both married to other people, were caught in the act, in the communal bathroom by the janitorial crew after hours. He ended up resigning. She stayed for a long time after.

    2- Manager and his direct report, both married to other people, were caught during business hours, in his office. Coworkers reported ‘weird’ noises coming from his office. HR caught them in the act. He tried to say he was ‘training her.’ Manager was fired, she ended up resigning shortly after.

    3- Group of about 10-12 Sr Managers head out of town for a conference. About 5-6 of them were caught in the act, completely naked, in the hotel hot tub, by security. They were all also married to other people. All reprimanded when the hotel called us to complain.

    4- 2 engaged coworkers, but did not work in the same department. Dated for 4 years, lived together for 2, engaged recently. She finds out that he can no longer ride to work with her, not because he’s going to work early like he said, but because he’s stopping by his girlfriend’s house before work nearly every day. The girlfriend is a lady he’s worked in the same department with for 2 years now. He resigned; fiancé tried to stay but couldn’t handle the gossip about her. Girlfriend stayed for a while but ended up going to work with him at his new job. We heard through the grapevine that he cheated on her as well.

    5- HR Director and I (also HR) shared a very thin wall. One day I hear him talking on the phone- “baby I love you. I can’t wait to see you tonight. I adore you. You’re so beautiful” etc. I thought, how sweet he is to his wife (they had been married for 3 years and had a toddler). After 20 minutes of ‘sweet nothings’ I hear our Admin tell him that his wife is calling on line 1. This time I hear “what?! well, I don’t know. don’t be so stupid! whatever you want, I won’t be home for dinner I have to work late.” He was very condescending and mean. I was so young in my career I didn’t know what to do. But I lost all respect for him that day. I was never so happy to leave a job even though it took me a while.

    6- from my husband’s workplace: Sr Director starts dating his Admin. She finds out he is still married (he had lied and told her he was in the midst of a divorce). She is furious, charges him with sexual harassment. She gives all her texts and emails to HR. They transfer him 2 states away and demote him. His wife refused to move, but also refused to divorce him.

    2. allathian*

      All of those, OMG!

      How long can the wife stay married if he insists on a divorce? In my jurisdiction, if both parties apply for a divorce, it’s granted after a 6-month period of “consideration.” You can change your mind during this period and withdraw the application together. If one party applies for a divorce and the other refuses to sign the papers, the divorce is granted after two years anyway. The idea is that it takes two people to start a relationship and to maintain it but only one to end it.

  82. Anon Theatre Geek*

    Not at work per se, but at a community theatre I used to be part of:

    I had been cast in my third show (a small show, cast of 12 or so) and we all had a habit of hanging out after rehearsals. Two of my castmates (Ben and Jan) had also been in my first two shows. Ben was married, Jan was not. I noticed that anytime we went out for dinner or lunch or drinks, Ben would pay for Jan. Without fail. Even when his teenage daughter was with him. He also asked us not to tell his wife he was hanging out so late with “us” under the guise that she was super territorial (maybe she was, never met her). It was pretty clear what was going on.

    Fast forward to the next show! It’s a big show with lots of kids. I’m in it, Ben is in it, and Jan is working backstage. Another person associated with the theatre (Darla) doesn’t like Jan. I wasn’t present for the reason she doesn’t, but I get the sense they’re both a bit at fault (Darla tends to take everything as a personal attack). For whatever reason Darla decides to start spreading the “rumor” among the cast and crew that Ben and Jan are having an affair. I don’t think Darla is wrong, but I also don’t think there is benefit to airing it to a bunch of folks who either don’t care or are literally under the age of 10. Chaos ensues, lines are drawn, it’s an awkward show.

    One year later: I’m in my final show with the theatre (including Ben and Jan). Ben has now divorced his wife, and lo and behold he and Jan are now dating! Jan and I are in a dressing room where she is rehashing the drama from last year. She looks me dead in the eye and says, “You know that rumor was bullshit, right?” Sure, Jan.

    (Ten years later and Ben is now married to someone who is NOT Jan and I think is in a better place)

  83. Anon today*

    So in the late 90s I worked in a major corporation where there were a few guys known to be what someone called “horn dogs” — as in, married guys well known to hit on co-workers regularly. I was “the new girl” in their minds, and three of them in sequence opportunistically hit on me, ranging from maneuvering to get me as a running partner on a work trip, to giving me a “shoulder massage” when we were working late to actively calling me on the hotel phone during a conference and talking about my shoulders in a dress and how it was making him want to “take care of things himself.”
    The joke on them was that I was actually having an affair with our boss, and we were both women. (Both in long-term relationships).
    Thinking back that was a shockingly unprofessional workplace for a well known consumer product company!

  84. Scintillating Water*

    Back when I was in grad school, I had a friend who was cheating on her fiancee (a prof on the other coast) with a fellow grad student. He turned out to be bad news in a variety of ways, but instead of dumping him, she decided to get revenge by flirting outrageously with his advisor. She stopped talking to me soon after, so I don’t know if she was successful.

  85. It's Marie - Not Maria*

    Many moons ago, towards the beginning of my HR Career, I worked at a company that was basically a traveling circus for vehicles. Many of the staff were related in one way or another, and there were several married couple who worked there.

    There was a big promotion that one married couple were both in the running to get. He was better qualified, but She got it due to sucking up to the COO. Not too long after that, rumors started going around that She had been observed drunk and leaving one of her male direct report’s hotel room in the wee hours of the morning. An investigation uncovered that She had regularly been sleeping with our male employees, including the COO. She was fired. He acted with a great deal of dignity in the aftermath of this whole mess, and was given the promotion, which, quite honestly, He should have gotten in the first place. The COO left the company not too long after that.

  86. 653-CXK*

    I don’t know if this qualifies, but in a temporary job I had 30 years ago (hotel reservations for conventions), we were located across the street from a hotel on a major highway. Some of our clients used the hotel to stay there while establishing contracts.

    Our bosses told us that under no circumstances we were to go there during working hours unless we were helping clients. I think I was there maybe once, but no other time.

    I, among many others, were laid off a few days before the holiday party (we were disinvited from that party as well), causing a few of the faithful workers to quit on the spot. About three months later, I met up with a colleague who was still working there and it turned out while the workers were not allowed to go to that hotel, the management and a few select underlings did…and it was not for business reasons. Some of the management were married, while the underlings (female) were likely in their late teens, early twenties.

    After an investigation, upper management fired three directors, six managers, and six underlings for hooking up – likely during business hours – at the hotel.

    The cherry on top – for the convention I was working on, some attendees got charged multiple times on their credit card. That company went out of business about ten years later, thanks to the ability to book reservations online.

  87. Unfortunate_Podmate*

    OMG. I was once the unknowing go-between for a coworker’s mistress who would “accidentally” call my phone to reach her affair partner, who sat right beside me. His wife was known to pop into our office to say hi, as she worked right around the corner.

    I was friends with my coworker, and he and our other podmate figured out what was going on when we all went to a concert together and then, bam, suddenly there’s the affair partner.

    After non-cheater coworker and I figured out we were repeatedly being used as insulation for this affair we had WAY too much fun making their communication as difficult as possible until we got a little more mature and had a “Dude. WTF?” conversation with said cheating coworker.

    A decade later we’ve all moved on to different jobs and cheater and his wife are still married. I know from unfortunate personal experience that the affair ended. I do still wonder if his wife ever found out.

  88. Wilma Flinstone*

    80s. Bank branch. Supervisor: a young married man, let’s call him Sam. Took up with one of the desk workers, also married. Both his wife and his mistress got pregnant around the same time. Wife gave birth first, named son Sam. Mistress gave birth soon thereafter, named daughter Samantha. (We wondered what her husband –not named Sam — thought of that, but we were never to find out.) While wife was at home with the baby and while affair partner was on maternity leave, he took up with ANOTHER coworker. This one at least was single! First woman didn’t come back from ML, second woman quit for greener pastures, Supervisor got promoted to a different branch. It was a year and a half of horndog hell at that place!

  89. CubeFarmer*

    Wow! I actually have a story to share.

    A woman, Cressida, started at my organization and there was so obviously instant chemistry between her and a much older, married colleague, Morton. Morton and Cressida started having lunch together, chats in the office, and they were probably hanging out after hours. There was one event where we were all walking to the train, someone said, “Hey, let’s get a beer!” and we all thought it was a good idea until several of us started thinking about the additional time, so one-by-one we dropped out–except for Morton and Cressida. A few days later a colleagues asked Cressida about the after party, “Oh, it was a great time, and Cube Farmer joined us!” Except I didn’t. Colleague came over to ask me what I observed, and I was able to report that I wasn’t there. Of course, we all wondered why Cressida felt the need to create a sort-of chaperone presence between her and Morton.

    Fast forward several months and the flirtation game was still going strong. Another colleague observed Morton and Cressida in an embrace before an important program Cressida presented.

    Then, suddenly, everything stopped. Morton and Cressida exchanged nothing but icy glares and curt snippets. We all noticed this, too. We had no idea what happened for several months, but apparently Cressida told a former colleague, who then filled us all in.

    Cressida wised up enough to put a stop to whatever was going on between her and Morton, and he was having NONE of it. Apparently he became relentless. Cressida went to our leadership with the problem, which finally shut it down. I’m sure she threatened a sexual harassment complaint, which she had good grounds to do. Interesting the former colleague reported that Cressida said that this was the second consecutive job where something like this happened to her. I have thoughts about that, but will keep them to myself.

    I don’t know the details, of course, but both Morton and Cressida remained in their jobs. Cressida moved on several years later, but Morton is still with us. Needless to say, this situation affected my rapport with both of them, and I still deeply distrust Morton.

  90. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

    Most employees where I worked lived somewhere between the job and the “big city”. I lived 30 miles in the opposite direction in the “boonies”.

    One night my husband and I (who both worked for the company) were out together in the divey restaurant in our town and saw the VP – married, mid 40’s and the receptionist, 22, come in for what was very clearly a date. They had come out to our town so they wouldn’t be seen.

    Eventually they saw us, she looked please as she was full on into “now he will have to leave his wife” mode. He looked scared. We kept our mouths shut. I will never be able to say for certain but both of us felt that project requests for our departments were approved at a higher rate than the norm from then on out.

    Not shocking news flash he did not leave his wife for the receptionist.

    More shocking was when the relationship ended he quietly moved her to a job that interacted with him less and I am not sure anyone else in the company ever found out.

    1. Rainy*

      There is literally nowhere you can go to canoodle with your affair partner that you will not be seen by someone one of you works with.

      Case in point: during my PhD, my bff and I got accepted to conferences in the UK one summer, hers in London, mine in Liverpool a week later. We decided to make a little vacation of it. Our second day in London, a few days before her conference started, we went to the V&A. I was planning to stay all day and see it all, so we got there a bit before the doors opened and joined a few dozen other people milling about waiting for 10am.

      Who should we see but one of our professors, striding about clearly looking for someone. We waved at him excitedly, and the look of sheer panic on his face before his habitual bonhomie resettled made us exchange a look. He made jittery small talk for a few minutes–love the V&A! come here every year, meeting a friend, so good to see our students representing the department internationally–while looking alternately at his watch and at the growing crowd, said that his friend must have gone to the other door, must go, have a great trip, and bounded off, already texting, no doubt to tell his “friend” to go to the other door due to risk of discovery.

      We both knew his wife from various department events, so if he’d been meeting her he’d have stayed put. If he’d been meeting some other research collaborator, he’d have waited to introduce us, as he was very good about that sort of networking, so it had to be something illicit.

      1. Ally McBeal*

        This isn’t even an affair or canoodling, but once I was visiting my home town – a city of well over a million people – and planned to meet up with my brother for lunch at 1:30pm (important because that’s past peak lunch hours) at a Waffle House about a 20 minute drive from where my mother lived. She and I were estranged at the time, she didn’t know I was visiting and I wanted to keep it that way. Anyway, a couple hours after lunch is over, my brother texts me “she knows.” Two of her church friends (her church was half a mile from her house, 20 minutes away) happened to be at that Waffle House at that exact same time and called her as soon as they got home.

        Nonsense like that is why I lived in NYC for as long as I did. I once went on a couple dates with a guy who lived literally 4 blocks from me, and after those two dates I never saw him again. It was amazing.

  91. whyisitalwaysme????*

    About 12 years back I spotted our married VP of HR holding hands heading to the subway with a recently divorced analyst. They spotted me and dropped hands immediately.

    After this, I would then run into them periodically in semi compromising positions. Honestly it was starting to become comical.

    Here are some of the events:

    *After an event we all attended we were walking to the subway, but I knew the analyst lived across from the station. The VP made up an excuse to walk towards the station with us.
    I never saw him get on a train but I did see him run across the street… The next morning I came in to an email from him to me and only me thanking me for participating in the event….

    *Another time, while conducting an asset audit, I went to a bathroom with a zigzag hallway and saw them both at the end and it looked they had just pulled apart…. All so awkward! Also why was it always me???

    One day after many run ins, I got a bit bold, we were finishing up a meeting, I mentioned seeing him that morning on my way in. He stumbled and said something about getting off the train and walking towards the office, but it was obvious he was heading towards the subway to take that up.

    They knew I knew.

  92. Rainy*

    During college, my husband worked in a very large, open-plan call center for a major subscription service. The building housed many different companies’ call center teams, but there were no walls between the various companies’ areas (called “zones” in that building). His team lead’s manager, “Bob,” was a likable guy and one of the better managers in that location, and also read to most of his reports as gay, so there was a certain amount of surprise when he mentioned his wife in a team meeting. The wife was a manager for a different company (so in a different zone) on the same floor of that building, and they saw each other at work daily.

    Bob, for whom skydiving and base-jumping were too tame as hobbies, was also cheating on his wife with a team lead for a third company, also in that building, also on that same open-plan floor. Cue the French farce, I guess.

  93. ALo*

    Local government agency in a small town. Building inspectors check out their city car in the morning and return it at the end of their shift, and travel to construction sites throughout the jurisdiction during the day, with sites varying daily and an irregular schedule of appointments. Very common for them to go out to lunch somewhere rather than return to city hall, so you would see city cars in restaurant parking lots around noon. Except this one married inspector, who was domiciled out of town, whose city car you would see parked in a residential neighborhood around noon… for a couple of hours… with no nearby inspections scheduled. It being a small town and a small agency, everyone – even I, a very junior employee at the time – was aware he was providing a very high level of public service to his girlfriend!

  94. dulcinea47*

    I can only think of one workplace affair that I witnessed…. the couple in question (a married woman with two young kids & single man) just gave up trying to hide it after a while. Made for a real awkward holiday party since both her husband and boyfriend were there and literally everyone knew. The married woman stayed married, eventually moved away and IDK what happened with her. The guy still cheats on everyone he dates.

  95. foofoo*

    When I was doing my undergrad degree, one of my professors, who was youngish and interesting and fun, had a grad student working for him…. except there were a bunch of things that looked *super* strange to all the other undergrads. She was always in his office, in his lab, TA’ing for his classes. This all sounds relatively normal, but I knew other grad students and they weren’t around their prof 95% of their waking time. We all had suspicions about it and being young undergrads, gossipped about it, but there wasn’t any proof outside of “well they’re always together”.

    Then he organized a trip to a conference for all the students that were graduating in his program (if we wanted to pay and go to it for networking). A bunch of us signed up and he helped organize everything, including hotels and whatnot, and a whole bunch of us went (about 10 to 15 students, mostly women, him, and his grad student, of course).

    Well, one of the days we were there, three of the students come *RUSHING* over to where we’re having lunch to tell us that they went to the professor’s room to invite him to lunch with us, only for the grad student to open the door and tell them that he’s in the shower and can’t come to the door right now (!!!!)

    As far as I know, neither of them were cheating (he had a kid but never mentioned a wife at all, so we assumed he was divorced), the grad student was in her mid-20s and we all knew she was single, but prof to grad student relationships were definitely against the university rules. Funnily enough, she now teaches at the same university and still hangs out with him a lot, but she married one of my ex-friends and the prof had a long-term partner that passed away, but I still see student comments on the “feedback on your teacher” websites about her saying “just admit you’re sleeping with him, we all know it!” and this is nearly 20 years later.

    1. KLink*

      Were we in the same program? Extremely similar, except the prof is a widely-detested a-hole and she is an engaged, naive grad student. She’s the only one in our program who called him by his first name. On the day of Master’s Exams, she tested alone in his office (everyone else tested together in a conference room). Test day was also her birthday, so he got her a bouquet of daffodils, her favorite.
      His marriage ended. Not sure what happened with her.

  96. Just a Girl*

    This was at my first out of college job. There were multiple sets of in-laws working at this place. So one set of sister-in-laws: SIL1 was the Vice President of our branch (married, with kids) and SIL2 was an entry level, part time worker at our branch. SIL1 was having an affair with the President of our branch (married, with kids) and SIL2 would come to work furious on behalf of her brother and she and SIL1 would get in heated arguments over it. No place was off limits, even in front of customers. One time when SIL1 was having a “meeting” with the President in his office, SIL2 stood at the locked door, pounding on it every so often and yelling, “don’t get too comfortable in there.” There never appeared to be any repercussions for any of this behavior at work.

    Later a new person was hired (I forget his title, but was basically in the reporting tree up to SIL1) and he reported SIL1 and the President to the corporate HR. After hours SIL1 screaming, chewed him up one side and down the other and he transferred to another branch. I eventually moved away so I don’t know if either of them ever got a divorce to marry each other, or if the corporation ever really did anything about all this going on. But with so many sets of in-laws at that place there was constantly family drama being brought to work. It was a horrible, toxic place to be. I lasted 2 years, left the company and the state.

  97. Two Fluffy*

    Ok, so years ago, I worked for a company that was located inside a building that had apartments above. One of the lower-level guys (Brad) lived in the apartments. Several years into my work there, the head of one of the departments (Suzy), started dressing really different. Tighter clothes, fake lashes, lots of make-up. Very different from her usual look. We thought nothing of it until word started getting around that she and Brad were dating (she was his boss by several levels). It was just rumors though.

    Anyway, one day the early morning people come in to find it looks like a murder took place in the office. Blood all over the communal kitchen, blood in the hallways, lots of blood in the elevator. Cameras are consulted and there is video of Brad and Suzy coming down from his apartment together to the communal kitchen to dip into the wine. They end up fighting and Suzy stabs Brad (if my memory serves, it was in his hand) with one of the kitchen knives. Then they run around the building trying to find a first aid kit, dripping blood everywhere, and finally end up on the elevator (presumably heading back to his apartment or the hospital).

    Brad had quit suddenly a few weeks before “the incident” and needless to say, Suzy was also let go shortly after.

    1. popcorn.gif*

      affair plus knife fight!!! a knife fight really takes it to the next level.

      someone i was friends with was having an affair with the guy who was crashing on her and her husband’s couch. she got a divorce but the ex moved into the trailer next door and they would all have dinner together (???). this also wound up ending in a knife fight, which i read ALL of the details about on livejournal dot com in ever-increasing shock that culminated in the ex-husband calling me with a raspy voice because the new husband had slashed him in the throat. i stopped talking to everyone involved but the new husband and wife are my mom’s neighbors now so there’s THAT.

  98. ReallyBadPerson*

    I was new to the office world, fresh out of college, and the only unmarried person in my small office. I came in early one morning to find that two people had been fooling around on the copier and running it to take images while they did…things. I never knew who it was or why they left the copies, but I bleached the hell out of the copier, buttons and all, and even then, I’d do anything to avoid making copies.

  99. Anne Elliot*

    Yonks ago when I did document review work as a very young attorney, I was reviewing emails between a very powerful male Fortune 500 CEO and his female EA. Lots of “did you file the TPS reports” (from him) and “your flight to Bankok is confirmed” (from her) and then (from him) “Have you been naughty?” I was very young and up to my eyebrows in financial data queries so I just thought “What? She didn’t do the filing?” Then: “Yes, I’ve been very naughty, what are you going to do about it?” and then “I’m going to have to spank you,” and I hate to admit that it took me until that point to go “OH.” And we were OFF TO THE RACES on spanking: Spanking, number of swats; spanking, implements for; spanking, where paddling will be applied, etc., etc. — I cannot overstate HOW MANY ET CETERAS. I toggled between amusement and acute second hand embarrassment as I worked through the rest of that set, and I had to flag it for my supervisor because I was likely not the only person who would be seeing those emails due to how batches were assigned. I would see that guy’s face occasionally in the media and think “That’s Mr. Spanky.”

    2. Jane Gloriana Villanueva*

      Welcome to the land of Glorious Naivete! I cannot stop giggling at “What? She didn’t do the filing?” never mind the rest of the story!

  100. Jerry*

    It hasn’t yet come to fruition, but I think it’s very close. My boss’s husband is currently living and working overseas due to being offered an insane salary. My boss, meanwhile, has been seeing one of the finance people from work (we don’t know, but, we know). He tendered his resignation a few months back, taking a very similar job elsewhere for no obvious reason. Meanwhile, boss has been selling her house (to “move closer to family”) and we’re all pretty sure that as soon as the house sale goes through they’re going public. If it weren’t for the fact boss’s current husband is a bit of an asshole we might feel a bit more conflicted about it…

  101. Harriet Vane*

    When I worked at a Sizzler in Rock Springs, Wyoming, way back in the day, I initially thought our front-of-house manager was awesome because she would always stay late after closing and let all the other employees go home. Then I caught her making out with our (married) cook in the walk-in chiller. I was 18 years old and beyond mortified. Then I heard from other employees that the restaurant was essentially their late-night love nest and that she had bragged that she and Cook had … y’know … all over the kitchen. That’s when I stopped eating meals from that place. Yuck.

  102. CommanderBanana*

    In my first job out of grad school, I was working for a federal agency that shall remain nameless, but it involved most people moving from country to country and office to office every 2 or so years. After the director of my office got orders to his next posting, he and the deputy director started having a not-very-discreet affair. He was pretty much checked out of his job and he and the deputy director would leave in the middle of the day for “lunch” a few minutes after each other and then just…not come back.

    It mostly didn’t matter, since he and the deputy didn’t really do any actual work, but it did make things awkward when people from other offices came looking for them. Something happened that actually required the director to respond, and one of my coworkers had to call his cell, and he couldn’t explain where he was.

    I think they were getting a hotel room near our office, or maybe going back to one of their houses. It was super gross, especially since his wife worked in the same agency and we’d all met her, and even went to their home for a party once.

  103. AnnonnyForThisOne*

    I have one that end with the FBI.
    I worked at a company where a married Director was in a relationship with a coordinator. I worked in another department and would have never have known…BUT…the Director was wooing the coordinator by using company funds to pay company contractors to renovate the coordinator’s house, where she was living with her (other) boyfriend. It went on for years!
    At some point she decided to rat him out and made a deal where the company would let her keep her job. Since we were a publicly traded company, the Director’s use of company funds was considered fraud and the FBI removed him from his office in the middle of the day.
    The most bizarre part was that the coordinator stayed in her role for years and EVERYONE knew that she was living in a house with a new pool, patio, driveway, and all sorts of renovated delights that were built at the cost of our profit sharing.

  104. Posting for once*

    The military is rampant with affairs. Our base’s Commanding General was relieved of duty because he got into a fist fight with his mistress at a very high-end restaurant downtown. It was a Saturday night, and the place was booked solid, so lots of witnesses.

    I worked in a small theater company. The male lead, who we will call Bob, caused lots of drama trying to hook up with many of the female chorus members, despite his girlfriend being one of the other leads in the show. One day after rehearsal, a few of us ran into a woman and a toddler waiting in the lobby of the building. None of us recognized her and we asked if there was something we could help her with, since the building wasn’t open to the public at this time. She was Bob’s wife! She and their son had come into town to surprise him for the weekend. No one knew Bob was married, not even the people that had worked there for several seasons. We just said he would be out soon and bailed immediately. No one wanted to be in the crossfire. I heard the argument was spectacular. Bob had assured girlfriend he was single, so he got yelled at from both sides. The girl friend dumped him, and Bob was divorced soon after. The rest of rehearsals were really frosty.

  105. Leslie*

    I have always wanted to get this out….I worked at a now defunct Western Wear store when I was about 20. There were so many shenanigans between coworkers. My boss Kim was seeing an engaged coworker, Tim. His fiancé found out and ended the engagement. Kim then started unofficially and unauthorized by upper management, training Tim to be an assistant manager, so this jerk somehoe got a pay raise and would simply tell us to do the work that he used to be assigned to, while he did absolutely nothing. We had two another employees, David, who was married and Laura who was smokin hot and single.. I was working the closing shift one day with these two and we all walked out to our cars together that night. I turned to wave and saw them kissing. I quickly turned away. I didn’t care but didn’t want them to know that I saw them. Too late though! David proceeded to tell multiple lies about me to that wonderful manager, Kim. He didn’t want his marriage to end so he was trying to get rid of me?! The bullshit lies stopped when I informed Dave that I knew that he stole hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise from the store that same night I saw him kissing Laura. David would bring stuff up to the till and start a open order, then when nobody was looking he would press cancel, swipe a card or get the till drawer to open for good measure.

  106. CommanderBanana*

    Oh, had almost forgotten about this one – there was a man in a circle of my acquaintances, not someone I knew well at all, who showed up at a brunch with a toddler. I was surprised because I didn’t know he was dating anyone, much less had had a child.

    Turns out he’d started sleeping with his married boss, she got pregnant, but she and her husband decided to stay together and raise the baby. He had visitation rights.

    I have no idea how it shook out at work – they were feds, and you can pretty much set your office on fire and not lose your job if you’re a fed – but I have no idea how you navigate something like staying married and raising your affair baby with your spouse while your former affair partner comes by to take your/their kid on outings.

  107. Harper*

    When I was 19, I was a receptionist for a manufacturing company. The president was a good-looking guy in his 30s who had a very sweet-sounding wife (I answered the phones and she called often) and small children. This was the late 90s, and we had an instant messaging program called Win Pop-up. One afternoon, I received an IM from the president saying things that were clearly about a clandestine relationship. I don’t remember the whole message, but it included phrases like, “what if they find out” and “we need to be careful”. Immediately, I knew the message was not intended for me, and I knew exactly what it was. I hit delete almost in a panic. The president came to my desk within seconds and said, “Hey, Harper, I just sent you a message by mistake, can you please delete it?” I answered, “Already did!” without looking him in the eye. A few minutes later, the young female Controller came flying into the lobby and hissed – yes, *hissed* – into my ear, “The message you just saw was regarding a confidential financial matter and you will NOT tell a soul.” I assured her I wouldn’t. And I didn’t – not a single soul, as long as I worked there.

    Just a few months later, when the company hit a downturn, I was one of the first employees to be laid off. I’ll never know if my layoff had anything to do with the errant IM, but the president didn’t look me in the eye the entire time he told me I was being let go.

  108. Catgirl*

    A friend worked at a company with a married couple. The wife found out the husband was cheating on her and shot him in the groin. At work.

  109. My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada*

    There was a group of people at my job who were roughly around my age–mid-to-late twenties–and would occasionally go out for happy hour after work. One of these people was the EA, and he had a colorful work background that I honestly kind of envied (one of those “bumming around Europe doing odd jobs” types) and a Canadian girlfriend.

    But for real. She existed. I’d met her.

    Due to immigration bureaucracy, they were often apart because she couldn’t stay in the US. At one point, the girlfriend was back in Canada and we were at happy hour. It was just the two of us, the EA and me, at the table as everyone else had gone up to use the restroom, get a refill, etc.

    We’re making light chitchat and then, basically out of nowhere, he says “Ha ha, did you know that everyone thinks we’re going to, like, hook up? Ha ha ha…” I just stared at him and said “huh.”

    The conversation died until other people came back and he never brought it up again. I keep bouncing between “maybe he’s an awkward dude” and “no no, he was trying to hint that he’d be down to cheat.” A few months later, he quit and sadly, I don’t have any follow-up as to whether he and Canadian Girlfriend stayed together or not. I also never asked my fellow coworkers if any of them really thought we were going to hook up, but I imagine they would be surprised to have that attributed to them.

    1. A Significant Tree*

      Those poor Canadian girlfriends! I worked with someone (Paul) who did indeed have a girlfriend who lived in Canada (she visited a few times). Paul had an extremely flirtatious relationship with another coworker (Sally) that sort of waxed and waned over years, and it wasn’t 100% clear that they had crossed any physical lines beyond “casual” hand-touches/shoulder rubs but the emotional affair was very obvious. Canadian girlfriend, who Sally had met multiple times, eventually went away and Paul and Sally got married and moved away for other jobs.

      Sadly, during Sally’s maternity leave a few years later, Paul’s affair with a coworker at his new job comes to light. The coworker knew Paul was married with a child on the way from having met Sally a couple of times. Sally divorced Paul, which meant that Sally was fortunately available when she met and married a much better man who became an excellent adoptive father. By his own choice Paul was absent from his child’s life for a few years but did eventually come around on the being-a-father thing. Last I heard he was still with the affair partner but it’s been a few years…

  110. Oblivious Giraffe*

    In my early 20s, I started a role in an entirely new field that I struggled to adapt to. Most of my team had known each other for years and I was very much an outsider in the beginning. My boss, who was only a few years older than me, took me under his wing and we became friends. He was married, I had met his wife once when she stopped by work, she was nice and they seemed happy. We became friendly outside of work (I know, I know) and we went on a couple of hikes during which he expressed that his marriage wasn’t as smooth as it seemed. I sympathized with him, but we didn’t discuss it much. One day, he told me that she thought he was cheating on her and that she had become upset when she saw a text from me confirming our plans for a hike. In that same conversation, he admitted he had considered cheating on her.

    Up until that point, I, in all my glorious naivete, had never considered that his wife might consider me “the other woman” or that he was considering me as a potential candidate for an affair. I finally realized what a precarious position I was in and immediately began to withdraw from the friendship, but it was too late. Coworkers thought we were having an affair, as did his wife. I cut off the friendship, distanced myself, and worked my butt off to turn things around, and thankfully I became a very well respected member of the team. I no longer work in the industry, but we cross paths from time to time. Almost 10 years later, they are still married, have a kid, and his wife still hates my guts.

    1. Jane Gloriana Villanueva*

      I’m glad you were able to extricate yourself without getting damaged beyond wife’s enduring hate. The more I think back to my 20’s and 30’s, the more things I can categorize under “Glorious Naivete,” as well! Including a very similar situation to the one here, in that I got along well with a male coworker and his wife and fam (not a family business, I had simply met them all a few times when they would stop by to say hello to him). After I left the job, we continued to get together for lunch about once a month. Then it turned out he and she were having some problems and he stopped telling her about his and my meetups. I put an end to our lunches after that one!

  111. AdequateAdmin*

    When I worked at a printing company, the GM (Sandy) and Owner (Dave) were having the most obvious affair you could possibly have. They would be super flirty and touchy, spend long meetings locked in his office, and just generally make us all uncomfortable with the lack of discretion. Once I walked into his office (he knew I was coming!) to find them sitting side-by-side, chairs touching, and his hand rubbing her leg.

    At the time, I figured it wasn’t my business and it was fine as long as I continued to be employed. Which was the general stance all employees took.

    Then they hired Sandy’s son’s girlfriend, Joyce. Two weeks in Joyce asked me if they were having an affair. Knowing my employment was potentially on the line (because if I said yes and it got back to Sandy I would absolutely get fired), I stammered something about they just worked well together and got along good. Joyce clearly put two and two together, but thankfully didn’t ask again.

    And then they hired Dave’s daughter as an intern. And put her in the office right next to Dave’s and across from Sandy’s. Then Dave’s wife started to pop in to help Dave’s daughter with other stuff (family business, yay!). I have never suffered from so much second-hand stress over someone else’s personal life. This was all happening while I was clocking massive late night OT in the production area and I did NOT want to witness that affair getting discovered.

    I left after two years (for reasons unrelated to their affair). As far as I know they are still having the most poorly-concealed affair known to man and putting their employees uncomfortably in the middle.

  112. I was the cheater*

    Oh man. At my first job in college my high school best friend’s mom hired me to work with her. She ran an office that hired students from my university. It was a mix of student volunteers and hired students. I was 18 and the youngest person working there. I worked three days a week and “supervised” three sets of three volunteers. They were mostly 19-23 years old.

    My first week of college I started dating a fifth year named John*, he was handsome but not very nice but I had never really dated before so I didn’t have a barometer for what a relationship should be. One of my volunteers was Alex, who was 21 or 22 and cute. He and I got a long really well and I remember thinking he was such a nice guy, and wishing that John was nice like Alex.

    Alex had a long-term GF back in his hometown. He mentioned her when we first started working together but then stopped mentioning her. I always looked forward to Fridays because that was the day that Alex and I worked together.

    One weekend, about 2-3 months into us working together, after John and I had another one of our many fights I went to a party at Alex’s house. It was like a huge dorm, so I knew a lot of people there, but Alex and I ended up hanging out all night talking and laughing and drinking.

    I drank way too much and then woke up in his room the next morning. I remember the first thing I saw was a long, sharpied note written on his wall by his girlfriend and I felt so guilty and bad and left. The next day he called me to hangout and I asked if he was still dating his girlfriend and he said yes. I told him that I felt really bad/guilty about what happened and he seemed a bit annoyed.

    He didn’t show up for his next shift, and then when he did return it was like a completely different person. He was suddenly rude, and really argumentative with me. Little things like I would assign each volunteer a job (which was part of my own job) and he would refuse to do what I assigned him. It ended up being super stressful and I’m sure the other volunteers noticed.

    I was so relieved when the semester ended because all the volunteers only signed up for one semester. But then at the start of the new term, all eight other volunteers had left but Alex signed up to work specifically with me again. I actually felt a little afraid because I wasn’t sure what his motivation was for signing back up and when I asked him why, he angrily told me I couldn’t tell him what to do.

    He continued to be awful for a few more weeks until one of the non-student employees talked with him and then he left. In a weird way I’m kind of glad I had such an extreme bad reaction, because I NEVER dated someone I worked with again. After seeing Alex’s Mr Hyde, I always think that other people are capable of turning like that.

    I only dated John for a few more months and then finally broke up. Not my finest moment!

  113. the quiet quitter strikes again*

    Many years ago now, I was sent out of town for a month to train at another company location. I had to share a hotel room with a coworker (I was young, naive and hungry, and I didn’t recognize how much I was being exploited by my cheap-ass company). Never. Again.

    It became obvious by like day 3 that my coworker/roommate was having an affair with a manager who kept finding reasons to come to this town as well, and must’ve also gotten a room nearby because she didn’t always come back to our room after meeting him for drinks in the evening. Which was fine by me.

    What wasn’t fine was that it was very clear her husband knew, or at least suspected. And I knew this because he would call the room at all hours asking for her, and then yell at *me* when I honestly said I had no idea where she was.

    It was a long month.

  114. AbsolutelyAnonymous*

    I worked for a tech company years ago. The male CEO/founder had an affair with a low-level employee and promoted her to VP. CEO’s wife caught wind of it, threatened divorce AND dumping all her (wife’s) company stock to deflate the value of the company. CEO broke it off with VP, who stayed at the company and had her boobs enhanced as consolation. I was a low-level employee myself, and it blew my mind that EVERYONE knew all the details.

  115. Jane Gloriana Villanueva*

    Ugh. I’m thankful that the worst offenders I’ve known are two solid decades behind me. I worked retail over a Christmas season and it was a dramatic 4-5 months. All the employees, including me, were late teens through mid-20s. My manager, Michael, got married a few weekends after I started; his wife, Holly, whom I never met directly, managed a store diagonally across from ours in the mall. If she stood at her store entrance, she could zero right in on our check-out area.

    I don’t know how it got started, but Michael and my coworker Jan began locking the door to the back room to engage in Duck Club activities. It didn’t seem like they ever snuck off together outside of work, but they made work difficult as we at front of store couldn’t then go to the back to get supplementary cash, or find extra stock for a customer, or use the one bathroom. And we never knew how long the back room would be off-limits. To dissuade suspicion when the staff started whispering about an affair, Jan started a rumor that it was I, with my married coworker Jim. Holly never set foot in our store while I was around but she figured out something was up with Michael and would regularly stand at her store entrance and glare at all the women who worked the till. She seemed to be prevented from coming all the way across the mall promenade by an invisible fence; somehow she never made it more than halfway.

    It was such a disaster even though nothing terrible occurred in my presence. I hated being around these people, having my work affected by it, and having my character maligned in the interim. Thankfully, staff saw through Jan and quit whispering about me very quickly, something got up to corporate and Michael lost his job, and Holly filed for divorce after less than 2 months of marriage. Merry Christmas! (So, unrelated, but another coworker who was just not great at her job got fired by Michael on Christmas Eve day. She had been my Secret Santa and made sure to come back to bring me the gift. It wasn’t a flaming bag of poop or anything. She held no malice towards any of us, but I’ll never forget her writing all over the wrapping: “Happy Yuletide gift-esque things. Festive jolly tidings of joy and such.” I quote this in a deadpan tone every year, lol.)

  116. Seven If You Count Bad John*

    I don’t have a really great one, but once got a job because the receptionist at this place had been having an affair with a married technician. Apparently Drama Had Ensued and the receptionist was “going on leave for a few weeks” so they needed a temp to cover. (It was generally understood that she wouldn’t be coming back, and I was privately assured that my position was secure. No idea how they arranged that or how legal it all was. The place was a dumpster fire in a lot of ways and I ended up walking out anyway a few months later.)

  117. Anon for this*

    Years ago, very early in my career, I worked in a support role for a company with traveling consultants. A married male employee and a single female colleague started a relationship while traveling for a project. At some point the female employee accidentally left a long voice mail on my office phone that was intended for her affair partner. I think they were on a project together and the voice mail was left late at night with her sounding very tired.

    I got into work the next day, checked my messages, and when I heard her say “Hi, -male employee’s name-” at the start of the message, I stopped listening and forwarded the voice mail to him, saying it sounded like it was intended for him. After they got back from the project, they made a bigger deal about me forwarding the voice mail than I would have expected, but I didn’t think much of it and was none the wiser. I’m sure they were trying to feel out if I had listened to the voice mail and was going to spill their secret.

    Some time later, he announced that he was getting a divorce and they were getting engaged. In conversation about their relationship, they told me they thought I was the first to know. Apparently the voice mail included some incriminating content later than I had listened. So all this time they had been speculating about whether I knew and how I was going to handle their news, and I didn’t have a clue.

  118. IdRatherNotSay*

    At the posh art school where I occasionally lecture, the beautiful and glamorous wife of the handsome and glamorous male head of the hippest department threw thousands of flyers describing his affair with an assistant she had just found out about from the top floor into the atrium, while screaming her head off. Went from the insta-perfect somewhat power couple to Real Housewives extremely fast. The relation with the assistant was not explicitly against the school’s rules (just against sound judgement I guess) and he was not particularly hiding it, so most people just shrugged and went on about their day, but I heard some people kept a flyer.

  119. Adverb*

    This is going to be a wall of text. I worked as part of HR for a consulting company of ~500 in the early 2000s. This predated most people having email on their phones.
    I was working later one evening (~7:00 pm) when the following email came through to the all-company mailing list from one of our senior consultants (not a people manager, director or partner). I opened it and grabbed my boss. We had it pulled from the email server before almost anyone saw it. I have removed the names and places.

    The email was written by the wife of the consultant and sent from his account:

    Dear {affair.partner}

    Even as we come to the bitter end, I know I will regret so many mistakes made in my marriage. I will regret so many faults of mine and I will probably regret not having taken the high ground at this moment in time. I will even experience genuine remorse for causing Kevin discomfort and having broken my promise to him to continue to keep quiet and not “lose-control.” But I will find comfort in knowing that you two no longer have to wear the face of deception in every encounter you have with each other and with all those around you. You can heal each others wounds in the open….. you can comfort each others sorrows and pains and continue to build the connection you have that only the stars above could have aligned so perfectly! You should be able to find some amount of comfort in beginning a relationship in the bright new day of sunlight, with an abundance of honesty and a fresh clean slate of new, young love. I hope you can find the strength inside to understand my intentions are good and wholesome.
    My intentions are to ensure that you two can begin (oh, wait… you began while I was pregnant with our fourth child – Emily Grace… she is a real cutie by the way!)….I’ll rephrase. My intentions are to ensure that you two can continue without any distractions…without the burden of the slightest thoughts of your families…. your children….. and you can finally stop worrying about my ugly, vengeful reaction. This should finally be a relief to you.
    I am sure you will receive plenty of condolences from many around you…. So many have been in your shoes. So many are in your shoes now and they will welcome you into their club with open arms. You will find comfort and peace with them. You will console each other and bolster the beliefs that you desperately cling to… that the marriages, the future, the relationships destroyed in your path were destined one way or another to end the same way they have ended. You will enjoy the role that I will assume in their minds. You will enjoy the fact that my reaction will be the only thing many people remember….
    I will be happy to wear the badge of the “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”….the psycho, the crazed lunatic…. All of the many things that people will utter. We all have our crosses to bear. I will wear mine with regret and sorrow that I hope will eventually pass, and you two can now proudly wear your scarlet letter and scream from a mountain top, “I am in love!”
    I will accept these ugly labels of mine on behalf of you and {letter writer’s soon-to-be ex husband}, consider it a favor, a kind deed on my part to ensure that I exit the picture, totally and completely, once and for all. That there are no doors,windows or rat holes, that remain open in the slightest for him to ever fathom returning to my side, with the sweetest words that I know you are familiar with. You can stop fretting about how and when you will be together…. How and when your relationship can move from the cold, crowded parking lot of {grocery store} and the dark, desolate back-alleys of {city} to a more appropriate environment for two adults far more mature than I…. one that can foster true friendship and genuine love. Your sweet beginnings of Sarah McLachlan, long emails and endless conversations that last until the wee hours of the mornings will hopefully last far longer than those exact beginnings did for us. (Yes, Sarah McLachlan is what you call “a sure thing” .)
    I am well aware that my correspondence with you will will not diminish my pain in the slightest….. I am well aware that there are some bitter truths that I will have to come to grips with somehow, someday. As my husband knows, I have always been a little fond of the person in the crowd willing to cough “bullshit” when the manure being shoveled reaches new heights.
    I will do more than my fair share of soul searching….. my fair share of learning to face and accept the truth.
    I will embrace the reality of my internal demons, slowly and surely…. But I have to think at some point you are desperately longing to be able to do the same.
    I am here to help you both begin to deal with this “small” part of the truth. Since there has been no shame in your actions, your choices, your deceit and betrayal behind the scenes, there should not be any now. The thought of shame and humiliation has never entered your mind each moment you decide to fulfill your desire for each other…. You have relied on my conscious alone, my kindness, my strength…. to be the adult, to be the only one to consider the possible nasty repercussions after the fact.
    Unfortunately even the strongest and most mature people have a breaking point… my breaking point has arrived and I cannot deny any longer my desire to express to you how very sorry I am that I have stood in your way and delayed your journey with my husband…. I am sorry I believed so childishly in a love I thought was worth saving. Call me a crazy fool in love… you should understand how your emotions can cause you to act in ways you simply can not control, in ways I am sure you and {AP’s husband} never dreamed of.
    And you certainly should begin to understand that he has helped to nurture this deep belief in me to save our marriage all along. He has helped in his most abundantly, charming, loving ways to ensure that I remain here believing in our love, our life and family, while he takes the time to discover you without the silly ole’ chains of me.
    But no longer will I cause you two any more sufferings and deny you one more moment that should be shared between you (and eventually another, and another and another). Please don’t read into that too much…. I am sure you are “the one” who will provide far more love and support than I ever did. You will certainly be the one to alter him at his very core. And if by chance, you are not…. The next one will be.
    I am so sorry for the road block I have been in the two of you running off into the sunset together, that I almost feel the need to offer you some minor insight into this amazing man. “This catch”, that I know you simply can not free your mind of. But I won’t. I know he has a way of doing that….crawling into your veins….. and his voice seems to become the very life line flowing throughout your body…. In business, in love, in everything he does. You only really got to see a very small amount of his talents during {work conference} and your long lunches, coffee runs, weekend office “work meetings”, blah blah blah…. Hold your breath my friend, it only gets better.
    I will exit the cast of this nasty, ugly, gut- wrenching, heart- breaking love triangle, full of shoulda, woulda, coulda’s…. full of a pain that lives within me every minute of every day. I will find peace someday with myself and dear god, somehow with the father of my children…. I know you will too and I hope my apology here helps you through that process.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      Ah, love a good back-handed email.

      “Your sweet beginnings of Sarah McLachlan, long emails and endless conversations that last until the wee hours of the mornings will hopefully last far longer than those exact beginnings did for us.”

      “You will certainly be the one to alter him at his very core. And if by chance, you are not…. The next one will be.”

      A masterpiece. Thanks for hanging on to this for 20-ish years!

    3. popcorn.gif*

      “How and when your relationship can move from the cold, crowded parking lot of {grocery store} ” is pure gold. Thank you for this post

    4. CV*

      I agree with the others: a masterpiece. Wish it had been seen by more at the time, although removing it was the responsible decision.

    6. Rhamona Q*

      I will regret so many faults of mine and I will probably regret not having taken the high ground at this moment in time.

      The only thing she should regret is not sending that email at 9am!

      1. Adverb*

        I think she had to wait for him to get home from work and set his laptop down so she could use it.

  120. Cochrane*

    Not sure if this rises to “cheater” territory, but forescore and several jobs ago, we had a tense situation in the office parking lot where the jealous husband of an employee was loudly calling out one of the service reps who allegedly made a drunken pass at his wife at the holiday party the week before. They had some heated words outside but simmered down before things got physical and went their separate ways. Our GM seemed to find this humorous , obliquely mentioning it in his last all-hands meeting of that year with the line “it’s the holiday season folks, let’s deck the halls, not each other”.

    I’m sure his tune would have been different if they came to blows, but busting out that line to old co-workers never fails to get a laugh all these years later.

  121. MAnon*

    So a tale of early 20s bad decisions: I was working at a bar and a new manager started. I had just been dumped by a coworker unexpectedly and when the new manager started flirting with me, I was super into it. We wound up hooking up. A few weeks later, we were both working and his previously not-mentioned girlfriend came to visit, and he put his arm around her and started introducing her to other people in the bar. Then he had me go outside the bar with the “we need to talk” line and it was unpleasant. I wound up getting blackout drunk and my brother had to rescue me. A few weeks later we got stuck working together on New Year’s Eve and he tried to chat me up again. I reacted very loudly to that and he scuttled away. We did manage to become civil enough to make it through shifts. He wound up getting fired a couple of months later because he kept hooking up or trying to hook up with other bar staff, and kept hiding in the office which meant everyone else had to take care of his work. I did learn my lesson where getting involved with a manger was concerned!

  122. Forty Feet*

    When I was in 10th grade, everyone in my high school found out that a teacher was sleeping with one of the assistant principals. How did we find out? The entire school went into lockdown one afternoon because the teacher’s husband came to the school with a weapon to threaten the assistant principal.

  123. Napster*

    My ex-husband met his new wife at work. While we were married, of course. He supervised her, too. He divorced me, married her, and now they are divorced. I do like to say now “that b!tch did me a favor.”

    But as somebody else said earlier in the comments, just don’t.

  124. Jen P*

    I worked with a couple that was having a really poorly-hidden affair. He was married, she was single. Coworkers reported hearing them having sex after hours, and when he got swapped into a different office the person who got his old office found condoms in a desk drawer. But my favorite moment was when I was out for dinner with my spouse, and the two of them were seated at the table right next to us. She hastily assured us that they’d come here to discuss work, and I sat back and enjoyed the fact that I had just ruined their date.

  125. LL*

    I was one of the few non-facilities employees who had access to the freight elevator because I needed to it to access a certain part of the building for my job. One day I caught two of my coworkers making out. They jumped apart as soon as the doors started to open, but they weren’t quick enough. I just walked on and made them stand there awkwardly until one of them got off the elevator. It was so weird.
    I know that at a least one of them was married at some point, but I’m not sure if they were both married at the time this happened.

  126. PropJoe*

    At a former workplace (teapot factory) I was friends with two coworkers, with each of us being in separate departments. Lysa worked in purchasing and handled admin duties, and Petyr worked in maintenance and tracked scheduled maintenance (“ok next week we’re shutting down these four teapot lines so we can rebuild the handle subassembly”).

    I knew Petyr from before we started working at the same place, having met him at a different job. Lysa started some time after I did, and I met her because my duties (IT peon) had me circulating everywhere. I was friendly with Lysa, but was long-term friends with Petyr.

    Lysa & Petyr were married, but not to each other. Both were into fitness, were reasonably attractive by the standards of middle age, and were high on the charisma scale too.

    Apparently they started hanging out after meeting each other in the on site gym for lunchtime workouts. Eventually they started a physical affair. Lysa had keys to office supply storage closets, and evidently they enjoyed having secret trysts during the workday.

    Petyr confided in me that Lysa said she planned to leave her husband for him (Petyr), and was trying to convince Petyr to do likewise.

    Petyr expressed his recalcitrance long enough that it finally sunk in for Lysa that he only saw her as something to stick his willy in, and didn’t actually care about her. Either that, or he wasn’t interested in getting divorced for the nth time. Or both?

    Lysa handled this by going over to his house, causing a scene, bringing the affair to the attention of Petyr’s wife and children and in a perfectly sane move, used a baseball bat to smash in all the windows on Petyr’s car. In hindsight, it must have been a mix of Jerry Springer and that one scene from The Big Lebowski.

    I found out about this a week or so afterward from Petyr, who started the conversation by saying he & his wife had agreed to not press charges on Lysa if she gave him cash to cover the insurance deductible.

    Not too long after all this, I broke off friendship with Petyr because I realized all he ever wanted to talk about was who he was cheating on his wife with and I didn’t need that in my life.

    Lysa eventually got fired for messing up paperwork too many times, Petyr left for a similar job at a different factory (where presumably none of the women knew his reputation), and I left later on when I got tired of all the bs and drama.

  127. Semi-retired admin*

    Oh, where to even start…boss and co-worker cheating on their respective spouses. I was the assistant to the boss. When it started, boss left with said coworker at lunchtime and apparently skipped out on his son’s 5th grade graduation. Son called work looking for him, increasingly distraught, the calls coming more and more frequently as the afternoon progressed, until they were every 10 or 15 minutes. Coworker spent a good two years sitting in boss’ office all day, no one else could get in to him unless I intervened (which I did!) and neither got any work done, although boss consistently gave coworker glowing evaluations. We also had lots of dark nooks and crannies in our building so I put a bell on my keys and would swing them if I needed to walk around the building because we never knew what we’d stumble upon. They both got divorced, and married each other, but it didn’t last, shockingly.

  128. Goose*

    Freshman sophomore year of high school I had the same female math teacher, so I got to know bits about her life. She was married to another (male) math teacher at the school. Junior year I show up to class with her husband, greet him and ask how female math teacher was. Turns out he’d been cheater on her with a THIRD math teacher and over the summer they’d divorced. I later had math teacher #3 for class because the school was not that big.

    At the same school, my “health” instructor (the one in charge of telling you the dangers of unsafe sex) went on maternity leave for the baby she was having with the married football coach.

  129. Glad I'm Not Still in the Rat-Race*

    I think I started an office affair for two co-workers, and I am heartily sorry. The scene is an aerospace defense contractor; the era is 1988-ish. Please adjust your views accordingly; most engineers and computer experts at the time were super-geeky, myself included. Heterosexual monogamy was the expected situation. Oh, everyone discussed here is under 30.

    We computer folks were shifted between airplane projects as they ended/began, and I’d worked with a graphics database group for long enough to know everyone’s personalities. I got shifted to a smaller group to help them update their software to a new db, not a long project but I sat with them and got to know them too. When their whole project finished, one programmer who was really NOT a programmer/engineer-type (athletic, party-girl, probably got her CS degree because Dad’s deep pockets insisted) was going over to the db group, where I knew there was a guy who was also more athletic than geek, and I told her I thought they’d get along well together, because she was worried about starting with a new group.

    Boy, did they. She came to me just a couple of weeks later, saying, “I thought you were just telling me that to make me feel better. WOW, he’s really very much like me. I like him.” (Once in a blue moon I just KNOW. See also: my baby sister’s current partner.)

    Unfortunately, he was also married, well before seeing his 10th wedding anniversary, and had just had his first child. While I knew my female colleague was very much a good-time girl, I did not expect them to hook up, especially given that he had a bit of a rep as being super-besotted by wife and baby. But sho’nuff, there they were, walking out for verrry long lunches together with none of the rest of the group. *insert face-palm of “wtf have I done?” here* Is it possible they really were just very close friends? Yes, but unlikely.

    Apparently he WAS still besotted enough not to leave his wife and baby for her BUT he did introduce her to his younger brother — who was very much like him in both looks and temperament apparently — and they eventually married. Then Younger Brother came down with colon cancer (in his late 20s / early 30s: not good) and Party Girl could not handle it and divorced him. She got on with her life; no idea what happened to her ex-husband or his brother.

    I am very sorry for any part I played in introducing her into those guys’ lives, but do realize that it was minuscule at the very most so I don’t beat myself up about it 35 years later.

      1. Glad I'm Not in the Rat-Race Any More.*

        AWK-WARD… He was NOT one of the known horn-dogs in the area, but his family was from a smaller town well outside the metro area and I dunno if the brothers were just dazzled by Ms. Easy-Breezy Raised-Rich or what.

        She, OTOH, was truly a soap-opera character, including BITCHING ABOUT THE COMMUNITY SERVICE she was sentenced to after totaling her very expensive convertible while drunk enough to blow well over the legal blood-alcohol limit and needing 2 weeks in the hospital to recover. Apparently Daddy had pull as well as deep pockets. At least there wasn’t a second car involved in that crash.

  130. Fun Times*

    Two stories from my early career days:
    1. I worked at a high-end salon in a mall. Nancy, the nail tech, has two clients who see her biweekly to get fill-ins. Neither woman knows each other, but both are dating a man with the same name. That did not raise any flags until the man started stopping by the salon during each woman’s appointment. Turns out they were both dating the same man. It placed the nail tech in an awful position. I don’t think she ever told either one of them.
    2. VP Paul and his wife, Senior Director Portia, work for the same company but in different functional areas and on different floors. VP Jason oversees a department of at least 100 new college grads in front line roles that has a relaxed sales-type environment. VP starts hooking up with front-line staff. He hooks up with them in his office, in the bathroom on an empty floor, and in his car parked underneath the building in the executive parking lot. He hooks up with at least 15 women that we know of. He is eventually caught and terminated for violating policy. VP tells wife he was laid off. VP and wife move 1,000 miles away from their family for his new job. I am sure he’s doing the same thing now, but as a manager.

  131. The Coolest Clown Around*

    Oh hey, I actually have one this time! My spouse works as an independent contractor for a larger company, where each person/team is paid for jobs completed and difficulty, not hourly. Those able to complete the greatest number of jobs and/or who have expertise in the most challenging specialties make the most money. There was a woman who worked in sales who realized she could calculate which of the subcontractors were making the most with the data she had … and then she proceeded to date ALL of the top earners (this is a very physically demanding, male-dominated industry). At once. The company is spread out across the country, and most subcontractors travel frequently, so it was actually pretty easy to keep them secret from each other for several years. However… when it got out, the whole company kind of exploded. She’d been in “exclusive” relationships with at least 12 men, some of them with wives and children, and almost all of whom she’d convinced to spend extravagant amounts of money on her in gifts and vacations. There were several divorces and at least one physical altercation. One employee literally disappeared into the desert for several weeks and then just… went back to work and nobody said anything about it. The saleswoman was let go, but almost all of the men stayed with the company, so… now all the top performers just hate each others guts. No one with any of the key specialties can teach the whole system, and they absolutely refuse to work together on anything ever, INCLUDING teaching the same person in sequence, so the company is now slowly crumbling because one woman was the world’s most manipulative player.

    2. Dry Cleaning Enthusiast*

      It’s unfortunate she was the one let go because the level of strategizing, project planning, and client management on display here from her is amazing.

    3. The Prettiest Curse*

      I am impressed with the sheer organisation and time management skills of anyone who can simultaneously cheat on so many people with so many other people. She must have had multiple spreadsheets to manage all the logistics!

  132. Funemployed*

    Worked at a restaurant that hired a lot of young, hot people and a lot of backpackers so it was pretty transient work environment and a lot of cheating happened.

    There was one bartender, Doc, who had a live in girlfriend but still managed to have sex with just about every girl who passed through. I was pretty committed to a chef there, so I just listened to the morning after stories and offered a shoulder when the odd girl would need it. Anyway, he had some resentment toward the GM. The GM had a really privileged life and basically talked his way into getting the job when the restaurant got a new owner. To be fair, he was working really hard to learn the ropes. Doc dropped out of high school and came to the city from a pretty rural background and was a super self-conscious person in general. I think the last straw was when the GM didn’t hire a woman he was sleeping with (not his girlfriend) as a manager and went with someone younger who he was hoping to mentor. Keep in mind the GM was 24 at the time, Doc was 21, I think the new manager was 18, and the woman that wasn’t hired but was sleeping with Doc was 28.

    So a few weeks go by, Doc had put in his two weeks to pursue a job inline with his passions. On his last day, he had sex with the new manager in the office above the restaurant after closing and everyone went home. I only heard about it secondhand and never saw Doc again, so I didn’t try to figure out if it was true. I mean what was I supposed to do? Go up to my new manager and ask if she really had sex with someone who worked for her in the office? I definitely should have done that.

    Anyway, there was a resolution. On another manager’s last day, he told the GM about the rumor and GM was able to confirm it because there were security cameras in the office. The new manager got fired after working there for less than a month or something. The GM was pretty hurt no one told him. I think he took it like we thought he was a laughingstock, but really, no one wanted to get involved.

  133. Salsa Your Face*

    I worked with a married woman who reconnected with an old flame and spent hours every day loudly talking to him on the phone. This went on for months, and she was completely slacking at her actual job in favor of these lengthy conversations. She somehow didn’t realize that we all knew what was going on, but we did, and we were annoyed because her work kept falling on us.

    While some people in our company traveled a lot for projects, her role didn’t require travel. But she invented a reason to her husband why she would need to go on a trip, and went to visit the guy, who lived halfway across the country. There was no actual project happening that week, and no reason for her to travel. We weren’t supposed to know that she had made these plans–she just told us that she was taking a week off to spend with her family–but she was so freaking loud that we knew everything.

    Her husband had figured out something was going on, and when she was away, he dropped into the office on the pretense that he needed to pick something up, then casually asked us about the imaginary project his wife was on. Once again, there was no project, we had not been directly told about the plan, and we were not supposed to know about the affair. We stumbled through some sort of “oh, is there a project? Is that where she is this week?” sort of explanation, but we were PISSED about being put in that position in the first place.

    Anyway, her husband figured out everything and there was drama. Coworker came back from her trip very sad and very quiet, and her husband accompanied her to every work social event and offsite meeting for the rest of my time there because obviously the trust between them was completely shattered. They did stay together, though.

    1. Magc*

      Similar experience but no marital cheating (or at least not except in the epilogue), just a direct-report relationship very much against employer policy.

      Long ago and far away, I was on a team of five (four women, one man) with a male project lead as our direct supervisor. The newest addition to the team was a relatively good-looking woman (tall, blonde, &c) who was not particularly diligent about putting in a full day of work. She couldn’t get to her cube without me seeing her, and I figured out early on that her work week was 30 hours at best.

      (This was several decades ago and I was employed by a very bureaucratic, conservative employer; working short hours was simply NOT DONE in the department I was in.)

      She and the project lead started hooking up after she’d been there a while, something that was definitely against policy. They tried to keep the relationship a secret and it mostly worked. There were several married couples in the large department, so they’re being a couple wasn’t a problem, but it would have meant she would have had to shift teams and there wasn’t another team she could have moved to. Being unaware of the real relationship between my boss and teammate, I was perplexed that nothing was being done about her time card fraud, and also irritated about workload redistribution because of her shorter hours.

      Eventually the relationship got serious enough that she gave notice. I was happy she was finally leaving but didn’t understand why a huge to-do was being made about her upcoming departure (this was very much out of the norm). One of my team members had found out they were seeing each other and spilled the beans; apparently it was an attempt to obfuscate the real reason she’d resigned.

      Very shortly after I’d been enlightened, I remember my boss telling me how he’d worked _so_ hard to get her to stay, as though she was a brilliant team member without whom we’d be lost. The top manager and department director had individual meetings with her as well. She was thrilled by all the attention and gleefully told us which people in the department she didn’t like and had said crappy things about to both men. The director was a quiet and very religious guy, and I imagine he was fairly uncomfortable with what went down in the process of getting her out the door.

      (They did get married, but it only lasted a year or so, and IIRC she cheated on him before they got divorced.)

      1. Magc*

        P.S. I hadn’t thought about this in many years, but it suddenly occurred to me that it’s highly likely someone high up had figure out what was going on (my boss lived very close to the main campus) and my teammate’s resignation was not optional.

  134. Not-So-New Mom (of 2)*

    Man, I might just be a sourpuss, but this seems in poor taste to me. By the definition of “cheating” we’re talking about lives being destroyed here.

    1. Rainy*

      When you are subjected to people’s shenanigans at work, where you can’t escape them, sometimes all you can do is laugh.

  135. Nilsson Schmilsson*

    When I was in Catholic grade school, a mom (Mrs. FrostedHair) was always hanging around the office. Then one of the priests (Fr. ReallyTall) started hanging around too. As kids, we joked about it, to the point where our parents insisted we stop talking about it, because we and they were all good Catholics, blah, blah. Until they weren’t. Mrs. FrostedHair left Mr. FrostedHair, and Fr ReallyTall left the priesthood and they both left the Church. They did marry, but did NOT live happily ever after. And he tried to get back into the Priesthood. The Church noped out on that one.

  136. AnonForThis2ndFamilySurprise*

    At a family reunion earlier this year an older sibling who’s very fond of Ancestry.com revealed dramatically that thanks to DNA testing and the “you may be related to” posts she discovered that our large group of siblings is one person larger than we thought. My dad had an affair between the birth of that older sibling and my birth ten years later. Older Sibling did the detective work to figure out that Surprise Half-Brother is the son of my dad’s executive assistant. Dad and the mom are both dead now. She was married at the time and of course none of us would know whether she even knew who the father of the child was so we don’t know whether Dad knew. This discovery diminished my father’s memory and I wish I didn’t know. He stayed married to my mom for 68 years, including through many years of her dementia.

    Thing is, we also have Surprise Half-Sister, announced much earlier in our lives. That was more understandable; Dad was engaged when he met and fell for my mom, broke off the engagement, former fiancee didn’t tell him she was pregnant, raised child on her own in another state (but with my dad’s last name), daughter finally chose to reach out and reveal herself and I got to meet her when she came to visit. As a tween I thought that was actually kind of romantic, not recognizing how painful it was for my mom who thought she’d been Dad’s first because he was her first. (But hey, Mom, it was WWII, lots of uncertainty and less waiting.)

  138. Jam on Toast*

    At my first job after university, I worked with a woman a few years older than I was who was very outgoing. Let’s call her Natalie. We worked for different but adjacent teams, and she’d taken me under her wing while I was learning the ropes, so we were friendly, and often ate lunch together or ran errands together on our lunch break. When we did, we’d share superficial anecdotes about our lives outside of the office: me with my new husband, and she with her long-term boyfriend. She even had a nice picture of them together on her desk so I knew what he looked like. He was quite a bit older and divorced but she seemed happy, so good for her!

    Six or seven months later, Natalie and another coworker decide they’re going to rent an apartment together to save money. To celebrate, they throw a house-warming party and invite everyone from our office. Both women had a big circle of friends, so the party was jam-packed but other than the hosts and a few of my office mates who’d showed up, I didn’t know anyone else.

    I end up standing beside a friendly-looking woman in her mid-thirties and we start the usual strangers-at-a-party chitchat. “Hi, I’m Jam. Nice to meet you. How do you know Natalie and Office Roommate?” “Oh, I don’t know Roommate at all, but my husband used to work with Natalie at her last job,” she says, pointing across the living room towards her husband and giving him a happy little wave.

    I freeze, unable to think of anything to say because when I look across the room to see who she’s pointing at, I’m horrified to realize that I’ve actually seen her husband’s face many times before.

    On Natalie’s desk.

    In a romantic picture frame.

    Turns out my conversational partner’s husband and Natalie’s boyfriend were one and the same! It’s been more than twenty years, but I don’t think I’ve ever endured a more miserable five minutes in my life, murmuring ”Mmm’s” and “Oh, very trues” while she’s cheerfully telling me about the couple’s two kids and how she and her husband had gone to cheer them on at a kiddie soccer game the weekend before. I don’t know if she ever found out her husband was cheating because I left on maternity leave not long after and never returned to the company. But it definitely changed how I interacted with Natalie for the remainder of my time there and certainly left an unflattering impression of her in my memory long after we ceased to work together.

    1. Harper*

      Why on earth would she invite her boyfriend’s wife and the coworkers who know about their relationship to the same party?? Natalie doesn’t sound too bright.

      1. Jam on Toast*

        Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe because being ‘friends’ with both was one way they hid what was actually going on? Or maybe she got a thrill out of humiliating her boyfriend’s wife by making her think they were friends (which would just add another level of ick to the story!) But my best guess is she just didn’t expect someone she worked with to remember the face of some guy they’d never met, and only ever seen in a 3×5 desk photo and connect the dots in a loud, crowded party full of people. I mean, I didn’t tell anyone else that I worked with that I’d recognized him, at the party or later at work, and if anyone else met him there, too and suspected Natalie was dating a married man, they never told me, either.

  139. No Regerts*

    Oh goodness, do I have a cheater in the workplace story! Fake names, true events: Mary has worked in our office for a few years now. She has a strong personality, very “I don’t care what you think” and opinionated, but is a generally enjoyable person. She’s complained about her husband, John, for as long as my coworkers and I have known her. They have 2 young daughters together and have been in a relationship for close to 20 years (since highschool). Last summer she was starting to make moves towards a divorce. After returning to work from a vacation with her extended family Mary tells us that she almost put the moves on her brother-in-law, Cory. Cory is married to John’s sister Lisa and they have 2 young sons.

    Mary is regaling us all with her coulda shoulda’s about Cory and jokes that she’s going to text him something suggestive. We all meet her with encouragement because WE THOUGHT IT WAS A JOKE. When Mary comes back from lunch she proudly tells us she texted Cory and that he responded in kind. We’re all aghast that this is happening but try to laugh it off. The next day at lunch she meets him in a nearby parking lot to hook up in his truck. From there it continues to hooking up regularly on the lunch hour, to going out to dinner, to shopping at the local adult store, to coming back to the office after hours to hook up (much to our shock and disgust).

    Now John has always been controlling and suspicious. I’m sure you can guess how that increased during this period. Mary would leave her phone in the office at lunch so that when John checked her location, she showed up appropriately. She would say she’s going to the movies with one of us and try to give us her phone while she went off with Cory instead. As it turns out, this was not the first time she had cheated on John. Back before they were married she cheated with HER OTHER BROTHER-IN-LAW, John’s sister Penny’s husband, Mark. I know, it’s confusing. John, Lisa, and Penny are siblings. John is married to Mary. Lisa is married to Cory. Penny is married to Mark. Mary has had affairs with Cory and Mark. Cory has cheated on Lisa many times. Still with me? Let’s keep going.

    One Friday afternoon as we’re working, Mary gets a text from an unknown number with something ominous along the lines of “if you don’t tell him, I will”. She plays dumb in response and is then sent a few damning photos of her and Cory coming out of the sex shop with fresh purchases in hand, smooching, and getting into the car together. Mary goes through the gambit of emotions from fear to denial to thinking one of us is behind all this. The weekend comes and goes without much word from her in the work group chat other than confirming for us that she was alive and that the whole family was, in fact, told about the affair by the unknown number.

    The following months are full of restraining orders, calls to the police, and awkward conversations. Eventually Mary is removed from her home and restricted from seeing her children. At this point she is also plotting the murder of John and the abandonment of her kids so that she can flee to South America. Cory has taken little to no blame or responsibility. Lisa is suspected of being the one behind the unknown number. Mary goes through 3 different lawyers trying to find one that works like she wants them to. There is strong evidence that John and his family are influencing the law enforcement and court system in their town. Divorce papers are served, court dates are scheduled, and eventually things start moving in a semi normal way.

    It’s now been a year and Mary is back in her house. John supposedly has a new job and new place to live. They share custody of the kids but are not yet legally divorced. Cory dumped Mary a few weeks before they planned to go on vacation together as she had “too much baggage”.

  140. Elle*

    Not sure if it counts, but: several jobs ago I was a contractor at a stereotypically messy tech startup. I had some from a really toxic small business type environment and was new to this area of tech. In general, I was terrified and wanted very much to succeed. I got very close to the person assigned to supervise me; she was quite a bit older than me, had been in the industry a long time, and really knew her stuff. She ended up becoming a mentor to me and one of my closest friends for several years. She was the #1 person I went to for advice and support, both personal and professional. My partner and I spend tons of time with mentor and her wife, even going on vacation together. Then the pandemic hits. Spouse and I are separated, considering divorce but still spending significant time together; I’m very torn, but mentor aggressively encourages me to go ahead with the divorce and to start fresh. As 2020 goes by, it becomes clear that the two of them have spending time together, but both claim that nothing is going on. Even mentor’s wife acts like I’m crazy to be suspicious. Mentor has mentionitis BAD and is talking about my ex an increasingly sus amount, but won’t admit anything. 2020 progresses, and mentor and her wife separate and things progress, and I feel increasingly insane. Finally, I end the friendship and stop spending time with my ex. Neither of them ever admits that they are together, and I move on, just glad to wash my hands of the whole bunch. 2021 comes and with it the vaccine; I start dating. One night out (on a date with my now-partner), I run into them and yep, they are beyond a shadow of a doubt together.

    The only thing that still gives me pause is the idea of running into her through work, or people who know both of us finding out about the whole story. Most of my network knew how close we were and people always ask about her when they see me. I just say we lost touch. Our industry is gossipy and I feel like between the age difference and betrayal and all that, there’s no way it wouldn’t make the rounds. Eek.

  141. Gossip gossip and more gossip*

    A story of one coworker trying to cheat with another completely oblivious coworker:
    Bob and Mary were in separate departments, but worked together on a couple of big projects. They became friends. Mary had a serious boyfriend and made no secret of it. Bob wasn’t seeing anyone. On more than one occasion coworkers asked Mary, ” You know he has a crush on you, right?” Mary couldn’t see it and would firmly reply they were just friends.

    Mary came in one day with this oh so funny story about visiting Bob at his place Saturday afternoon after something or other. Someone had knocked on his door and he pretty much had a panic attack because he was such a private person! He really didn’t like company much at all! At this point I went, “Umm…are you sure he isn’t seeing someone?”
    “No, of course not! He would tell me! We’re friends!”

    Mary became engaged shortly after that and Bob lost it. Hurt feelings and sulking all over the place. Things became quite acrimonious between them and Mary had to admit that we were all correct about the crush. She started applying for jobs elsewhere including at one of our branch offices which she didn’t get. Someone from that office gossiped that she hadn’t gotten an offer because of complaints and concerns about her work from our office…Her work had been stellar. Fingers were pointed. There was drama. There was uproar. Grandboss had to get involved. Nothing really came of it except a lot of regs about who could give references and what they could say.

    When the ground finished shaking, Mary accepted an offer elsewhere. Most of us were sorry to see her go; she was good at her job and very pleasant to work with. We would have preferred Bob to leave for several reasons, not least of all because no one wanted to work with a guy who would take revenge against a young woman for not being interested in him.

    A few months later someone transferred to our office from the branch office. She was a bit of a gossip and caused some jaws to drop. “Oh that’s Bob, is it? He’s the one that had that young woman Mary chasing after him. It upset his girlfriend Stella so much!”

    Wait, what?
    It turned out Bob had a serious girlfriend who worked in the branch office, was living with her even. We had never heard of her before, not at all. So instead of revenge, Bob had lied about Mary’s work to keep her and Stella from ever being in the same room together even though Mary wasn’t interested in Bob. I guess he was concerned his girlfriend would figure out he had been trying (unsuccessfully) to get together with Mary. Once we all stopped gaping, we did try to set the record straight with Gossiping Gabby. But I don’t think she ever quite believed us.

  142. Seen Too Much*

    In one of my first “real” jobs the president/founder of the company was having a long-term affair with one of the VPs. No one was supposed to know, but EVERYONE knew. They went out to lunch together, left work together, were locked in his office for 2-3 hours. Then the VP brought her son to the office, who was the spitting image of the president. I mean the EXACT face, hair, smile, etc. The kid was old enough to know not to call him “dad” in front of everyone. But you could see the dad was proud of the son.

    At one point before I left, VP and president had a rip-roaring fight and the walls came tumbling down. She threatened to tell his wife. She was screaming she had “the goods” on him. She called him every name you can think of. He left and slammed the door so hard the glass broke.

    The next day they were both back in the office. A HUGE bouquet of flowers was on her desk. Nothing was ever said about it again. At least for as long as I was still there.

  143. Elara Harper*

    My sister’s story is still the wildest I’ve ever heard, and resulted in her being interviewed by the FBI and testifying in both a criminal and a civil matter. My sis was a very naive, young (20 or 21) legal secretary working for the Husband half of a husband and wife founded firm (several other attorneys as well). Husband begins affair with younger (also married) attorney, occasionally in HIS OFFICE, with my sister sitting at her desk, 8 feet from the closed door. One day when the couple couldn’t resist a little afternoon delight, my sister goes to the lobby to hang out and wife sees her and asks what she’s doing. Sister just gets doe in the headlights face, because she has no idea what to say. Wife takes off running, finds Husband’s door locked and throws a fit, picking stuff up off the secretary desk and throwing it at the door, screaming, etc. Office manager tells my sister to take the rest of the week off, which sister used to find another job. Then, months later, sister gets subpoenaed to testify in civil suit filed by younger attorney’s husband against lawfirm. Then, the FBI comes knocking on her door a year later (sister has married and moved out of state by then). Seems during bosses divorce, it comes out Husband was embezzling from firm to support a different affair partner who he had a baby with. Unfortunately the client he stole the most money from was a federal agency, so he was criminally charged and she got another subpoena to testify in his criminal trial 2 years after that. It was 5 years before she was rid of the crazy bosses and their drama.

    1. EarlTheSachem*

      Unfortunately the client he stole the most money from was a federal agency,

      That takes a special kind of stupid.

  144. DivineMissL*

    I used to work at a small company that was run by two siblings. One of the owners was married but having an affair with his EA. The owner was using his company credit card to pay for the dinners and hotel rooms (so his wife wouldn’t see the bills). This was in the days before online accounts when you actually got a paper statement in the mail. He would open the bill and use scissors to literally cut out any incriminating charges before he would give the carved-up statement to the bookkeeper to pay the balance due with (his) company funds. I’m sure the sibling knew but didn’t say anything. After the affair fell apart he made her quit her job, but then she would send him handwritten love letters to the office (we recognized her handwriting and return address on the envelopes) for years afterwards. He had long moved on to another woman in the office.

  145. ThisIsCrazy*

    I used to work for a guy who was the worst human being I had ever met. He was the owner of the company and he was in a relationship with the coordinator. They were actually living together, but they thought nobody knew about their relationship. A few months after I started, we hired a new editor. The owner immediately started coming on to her and they started having an affair. The coordinator found out, but she did nothing. The three of them would even go to dinners or hang out after work while the two women did their best to hide their hatred for each other. This went on for a couple of years. Then, we hired a new project manager. Of course, the owner started having an affair with her too, while he was still in a relationship with the coordinator and continuing his affair with the editor. I guess the second affair was a bit too much for the coordinator because she would often cry at work or drink to drown her sorrows. At one point, we had to call an ambulance because the coordinator and project manager had a fight over the owner and the project manager had a nervous breakdown. While we were trying to help the project manager, the coordinator had her own nervous breakdown on the street, throwing her shoes and her bag, screaming at the top of her lungs. I later found out from the editor that the owner had to take the coordinator to the hospital but pretended he didn’t know her and just left her there on her own. The editor also told me that the owner had to hide the knives at home because he thought the coordinator would hurt herself and that the reason why we didn’t see the owner for a few days that one time was because things got physical and he had bruises all over his body. I left that place shortly after the breakdowns. Once I distanced myself from all that craziness, I realized that the owner was exclusively hiring attractive women fresh out of college who lived alone and whose parents/relatives were in another city. He was a predator. This was ten years ago. Last year, I ran into someone who works there and found out the coordinator is still in a relationship with the owner and the editor is still his affair partner. I just can’t understand why.

  146. Chris W*

    I used to work at a small agency owned by two partners. One afternoon, a coworker looked over at me across the open-plan working space and whispered “Have you checked your email?” When I did I found an email from the wife of one of the partners addressed to the entire company with the subject line “Big News!” and the text:

    Hey Everybody!

    [Partner] and [Designer] are sleeping together! She can have him!

    I sat there for the next fifteen minutes or so as you could watch people go from quietly working to gazing around with the same shell-shocked expression that I and my coworker had. Eventually the designer in question read the email and left in understandable embarrassment. I left shortly thereafter, texting my wife with the location of a bar near her office and informing her that I would be waiting there with a stiff drink until she could get off work.

  147. anotherfan*

    Reading these brought up a memory or two … back when I was a young reporter and working my second job at a small town paper, we hired a young woman perhaps a year younger than I was who felt she was the bee’s knees. I lived in a small eight-unit apartment building and Ermentrude lived directly above me. For a young woman, she walked like an elephant … anyway, she was a piece of work and felt perfectly comfortable telling our editors that they had no business making changes in her copy while being perfectly happy to have a source read it before it was printed, which in this business, is unheard of. She routinely condescended to me because she had gone to some high-end university (I can’t recall which) and generally let me know I wasn’t worth the gum on her shoe. Ah, youth.

    Anyway, we were all single and relatively young and I was dating one of the photographers … until she decided that wouldn’t do and started hanging out with him as well until he transferred his affections to her and I would see his car parked opposite my apartment door and … very loud noises coming from upstairs. At one point, the bed broke and that was pretty traumatic, what with the huge bang and then their cackles of laughter which were perfectly audible through the ceiling. I’d been dating someone else kind of off and on and after the bed broke, I fled to his apartment just to get away from it all. We were all still working in this small newsroom and I’m sure something was said the next day in a joking way, but really?

    Anyway, at one point, Ermentrude began covering cops and fires and … took up with a married firefighter. They would meet late at night under a streetlight opposite the apartment where he was ostensibly walking his dog. This went on for months. I’d look out my window and see them meeting and them walking off into the fog, dog on a leash at their side. I have no idea how that worked out for her. I got a job somewhere else and left that drama behind!

    1. Writer Seeks $$$*

      dude from the first mention of her approach to sources reading drafts I knew this was gonna be a hot mess. wykyk

  148. Art of the Spiel*

    The small city I grew up in had a locally-founded ‘state’ bank, and the founder was well-known in the area as an outspoken leader of a conservative political action committee. It was a rite of passage for many young people to work there, which meant it was quite the open secret that this famously “family values” dude had a decades-long affair with an employee. The two were often observed feeding each other in the lunchroom – literally taking a fork or spoon of something and putting it in the other’s mouth – and calling each other by kitschy nicknames. They acted like this was a perfectly normal thing for co-workers to do, fooling exactly no one.

  149. Czech Mate*

    One summer when I was about 20, I worked in a store at the mall. My direct sales lead, despite seeming to not like me very much, decided that she needed someone to confide in and told me that she was cheating on her baseball player boyfriend with a DJ. Baseball player found out, so she had to end things with the DJ. Like any normal twenty-something, she therefore told him to come TO THE STORE so that she could break up with him DURING HER SHIFT and in front of ALL of her coworkers.

    Yes, it was awkward.

  150. Star Trek Nutcase*

    In my late 20s, I was still pretty naive about workplace shenanigans & life. I was the staff assistant to the chair of a large research university department. So one day, I get an urgent message for Prof. S but couldn’t call because his phone was busy. So I rushed to his office. The door was closed but I could hear voices (assumed he was on speaker phone). I knocked emphatically, heard a loud “Come..” start so I entered. Well, he wasn’t on the phone and the “Come” wasn’t meant for me. He and his much younger graduate student were nude and in mid-hump on his desk. I threw the message down & left. (Both were married to others & he had 2 little kids.) From then on, we all pretended nothing had happened.

    Surprisingly, a month later, he left me a beautiful expensive Christmas gift on my desk. I waited until I knew he was out of the building and left it on his desk. We never spoke of that. I always wished I had reported him to the university for abuse of his authority over his graduate student. (FYI Research professors have extraordinary power over their research graduate students both while in school and in future careers.)

  151. EarlTheSachem*

    My wife is a high school teacher. Two of the married-but-not-to-each-other teachers in an adjacent department (they share an office with my wife) have been in an affair for at least the last two years. I don’t know how hard they’ve been trying to hide it, but EVERYBODY knows about it, including most of the students.

    They both teach one of the classes our son is taking this year, and one of them is legitimately a better teacher of the class than the other; so my wife utilized her very rarely used ‘I am on the Faculty’ powers and ensured our son has the better teacher for the class after he asked her “which adulterer do I have for (class)?”

    When I was in high school, one of my classmates’ (married) mother taught at our school. Apparently she had been having an affair with one of the (unmarried) Physics teachers.
    The first most of us heard of it was one fall she was suddenly Mrs Jones, instead of Mrs Smith.

    Extramarital affairs must be a popular thing amongst educators.

  152. Anon for this*

    I had a brief affair with a boss when I was 21. He was much older and I was a temp, so the power differential was not a great look for him in retrospect, but I was an enthusiastic participant.

    There is…no way I was the first person he messed around with at work. On, like, day 4 of working there, he invited me out with some friends, including, I believe, his business partner, and we got very drunk. The next week we spent sneaking around the office both before and after hours and hooking up in his office or the flooded basement (hot!).

    There is no way that the other people in that small office didn’t know it was going on. Given how quickly he made the moves on me, I assume he was serial philanderer, so maybe they were just rolling their eyes rather than actively horrified. I’m so sorry, temporary coworkers in 2001. Adult me knows not to involve colleagues in my shady sex life.

  153. Rita*

    Many many years ago, I was hired into a company on a small team. I was the only woman, and it became pretty clear within a few months that there were some *very* strained relationships on the team. Eventually I got the back story behind the tensions. This is what I was told.

    1. My predecessor (also a woman) dated Coworker A.
    2. She broke up with Coworker A for Coworker B.
    3. At the same time, she was secretly seriously flirting with married Coworker C, who was considering leaving his wife for her.
    4. She told Team Boss all of this, and also told him that she was a regular user/poster of Craigslist casual encounters.
    5. Eventually reported married Coworker D for sexual harassment with the support of Coworkers A and B.

    HR investigated and did not find merit to the claim, and she left of her own accord. Things were tense for a while, though eventually rifts were healed by extreme mutual irritation of a terrible intern (the common enemy can definitely be an effective uniter!). I actually loved that job, but looking back it violated SO MANY workplace boundaries. I would have zero patience for it now as a middle-aged person who finds even the memory exhausting (and all the liability!!!), but in my 20s it was pretty entertaining…

  154. But Liquor Our Prices Are Lower*

    I started working at a new company. The sales manager, Dwight, had an executive assistant, Angela, that he personally hired. Angela was engaged to someone else when she started working there and Dwight was able to break off the engagement and start dating her. I learned this was the second time he starting dating an assistant he had hired. Dwight was very good at his job but his management style was that of a tyrant. He believed people were motivated by fear of repercussions. As such he came down hard on anybody who made a mistake. This unsurprisingly created a culture of fear of trying anything new and blame shifting when anything went wrong. Under the guise of “making her better” Dwight would tear Angela down for any mistake she made (which were numerous). One memorable exchange, that I was present for, Angela had scheduled two meetings back to back that were about 40 miles apart. On the way to second meeting Dwight called her and shouted a series of condescending questions. “Do you understand time!? Do you know what distance is!? It doesn’t seem like it when you schedule me for an appointment in Mudville ten minutes after my appointment in Whoville!” Angela was clearly a bit naive and believed that she should mirror his role as the enforcer, but without the title or the accomplishments. She routinely attempted to come down hard on peoples mistakes and was mostly ignored. Dwight ended up leaving and starting his own company. Angela stayed behind until she gave notice and announced, to no ones surprise, that she was joining Dwight at his new company. She was supposed to spend her notice period introducing me to clients. After one day I told the owner that she wasnt needed and all she was doing was actively recruiting these clients to the new company. The owner made that her last day. Angela joined Dwights new company and within two years was phased out. Dwight was now dating his NEW assistant.

  155. Lore*

    Two stories:

    My freshman year of college, my roommate’s sister, who was a few years into her first job and as far as we knew single, calls in tears to say she’s pregnant and doesn’t know what to do. The information slowly trickles out that yhe father is her boss. Her married boss. Her married boss whose wife is 6 months pregnant. Wife has the baby, by which time Boss has left Wife for Sister. Boss and Sister have now been married for 25+ years, raised six kids, and worked together in some capacity most of that time. We always joke that Thanksgiving was probably super awkward the year the two oldest learned how babies get made and did the math, but otherwise happy ending.

    Other one less happy. I had two coworkers, Andrea and Martin. Andrea was Martin’s boss; she was one of those middle managers who no one knew what she did all day and he blew more deadlines than anyone else in our organization. Abruptly, one day she announces she’s taking a position in another division of the company; on paper it seems like a step down but we all figure we don’t know the whole story. Turns out her husband had shown up at the office one day to tell her he knew she was having an affair with Martin and if she didn’t go to HR right away, he would.

  156. Anon for this*

    Ages ago I was working in a huge office with smaller units that each functioned like a tiny mini office. My unit was pretty tight-knit and whoever was free would generally eat lunch together in the break room. I left the unit for a few months for a special project and apparently while I was gone two of my coworkers got together. One was married, one I think was divorced at that point?

    So I came back for my first week “home” after the project finished, and those two were in the break room having lunch together. I just assumed that they were the only unit members free at that point and happily sat down with them to catch up. Only the vibes weee super weird. I noticed over the next few days that the two of them always sat together and never with the rest of the unit. And I put the pieces together; presumably everyone else already knew.

    Eventually one of them had to leave the unit because one was a team lead and that was considered too close to a supervisory relationship. Again, when that was announced I had a funny feeling, but the person leaving was really good at our job, so I asked if it was a promotion. They told me no and everyone looked super awkward, and I was horribly embarrassed! Not to mention feeling so naive.

    (They eventually got married and as far as I know are still together.)

  157. MsMaryMary*

    This happened at my high school several years after I graduated. I went to school with the people in this story but they were a few years older. CW for sexual assault of a minor.

    Sam and Diane were high school sweethearts. He was captain of the football team, she was a star soccer player. Homecoming king and queen. Sam’s best friend was Woody. He was also a football player, homecoming court. After college, Sam and Diane get married. Sam and Woody return to our high school to teach and coach football. Diane is not a teacher but coaches girls soccer.

    After a couple years, Diane has an affair with the father of one of the girls on her team. Word gets out, Diane is asked to resign. Diane and Sam split up, and Sam moves in with Woody while the divorce is going through.

    One day, Sam comes home from school and finds Woody having sex with a student. Sam interrupts, makes the girl leave, tells Woody he cannot sleep with students, but does not tell the school or the police. After all, Woody is his best friend and the guy who took him in after his wife cheated.

    Some weeks later, Diane texts Sam to say she’s not trying to start trouble, but can he talk to Woody and make him stop calling and texting her? She is not interested but Woody will not leave her alone.

    Upon learning his best buddy is actively trying to hook up with his ex wife, Sam goes to the school and tells them Woody had sex with a student. The school notifies the police. Woody is fired and eventually goes to prison. Sam moved away and started a new career. Diane remarried and her sons play soccer.

    This was at a Christian high school.

  158. Frinkfrink*

    I temped at a large company for six months right out of college. My first week there I was told of the two managers who pursued a torrid and, they thought, secret affair the previous year.

    They would park their cars next to each other on the next-to-last floor of the parking garage, which was usually deserted. They’d meet at lunchtime for, er, highly personal meetings in one car or the other, blithely unaware that the mirrored windows of the office building looking down at that floor of the parking garage were those of the non-management staff break room.

    I gather they provided lunchtime entertainment for some time before their respective managers were tipped off and the pair found another location to rendezvous.

  159. DeeDee*

    Executive named Bob had a wife named Kelly. Bob’s admin assistant was also named Kelly. Kelly’s husband’s name was Bob. Executive Bob and admin Kelly were having a (not so) secret affair. The comment most heard was that they never had to worry about calling out the wrong name in a moment of passion.

  160. DoxNotThyNeighbor*

    So, lets try to run this w/o to much identifying information leaking through…so some details are changed to protect the guilty.

    Many many years ago, I was a student worker (and student. It was a long time ago) at a small liberal arts college that couldn’t decide if more loyalty to Hugh Hefner or Billy Sunday. It was Mayberry hosts hedonism and the (small, often sheltered) student body ran the gamut from homeschoolers who prayed aloud in the cafeteria to debutantes who dealt drugs from the dorm and staggered drunkenly to class. It was interesting, and the college was headed by Mr. Dick Rich, who always was charismatic and always rumored to be notorious for cheating on his wife, Mrs. Dawn Rich.

    Rico Rich (Dick & Dawn Rich’s son, aka Dick Rich II) was a math professor although really he was almost the trailing spouse in many ways. His wife, Mrs. Lillith Rich was the editor-in-chief of the publishing arm of all things college related. (She was also known to be sharp and belittling toward people. Student workers avoided her–technically she was my grand-boss. She held a lot of sway on campus and her office was in the administration building with Mr. Dick Rich and the upper tiers.

    I worked in the bookstore mail area (grunt labor for the part of the publishing arm that sold to the public). Meaning we’d take all the orders and prep them and package them and they’d get shipped to purchasers.

    Richie Rich (Dick & Dawn Rich’s grandson/Rico Rich & Lillith Rich’s son, aka Dick Rich III) also worked in bookstore mail.
    He was a semester ahead of me. There were only 10 or so of us working there, so we all knew each other–he seemed to be an OK guy (he was required to work a certain number of hours for his scholarship [apparently that was their workaround for him not being able to attend for free], he was probably the only one of us who didn’t need the money. Also, he was on super-secret-probation because of some difficulty with underage drinking. Or I guess because he had not difficulty obtaining and drinking in spite of being underage.)

    So. Dick Rich ordered his wife out of “The white house” (president’s house which belonged to the college) and filed for divorce. He had a health scare, so all of the younger Riches were in and out of living in the white house to help take care of him (I heard the scuttlebutt from Richie Rich and my bosses–Lillith Rich was their boss/grandboss). Then Mr. Dick Rich decided to marry a woman he met on one of his many business trips–Jess Rich. Apparently none of the rest of the Riches were really aware Dick was dating, and it was family drama (they displayed very little of it in public, but when the family had to suddenly move back out of the white house to move in Jess, it was a little obvious)

    Some things happened and Lillith disappeared. Flew to the other side of the country unexpectedly. (work became chaos)
    And then she reappeared, work settled, we all moved on. She cheered up and, allegedly Dick Rich asked for her editing help on his divorce letter to Jess Rich…

    And then there was a morning where Jess Rich called his son Rico because of a recurrence of his health scare. Rico told Lillith he had to go check on his dad, and by the way Dick and Jess seem to have reconciled. And whilee Rico was gone, Lillith Rich committed suicide. Went to the rose garden near the white house with a gun. Rico called 911 saying his wife shot herself (there have been some allegations it was murder, but they seem unlikely).

    And then he leaked (to everybody) that Lillith had confessed to him, that for the past 20+ years, she’d been having an affair with her boss/FIL, Dick Rich. (And, foreshadowing, she had ‘joked’ repeatedly, (in front of Rico Rich), that she had a crush on Dick Rich but he was married so instead she came to the college and fell for his son Rico).

    Rico went into a holding pattern, Richie crawled into a bottle and unless you were super close friends said he didn’t want to see anyone. Dick said of course it didn’t happen, and Dick stayed for the funeral, then took Jess to Tahiti for a postponed honeymoon. Rico packed up a uhaul and he and Richie disappeared.

    The college imploded and exploded dramatically and….all around it was a helluva time to be a student. I went for a job interview the next year where I was asked about it and I awkwardly shut that shit down because I couldn’t figure out what the hell was appropriate to say.

    As far as I know, none of the ethical crap that lead to all of ^^^that was ever dealt with. The board members who were rightly concerned eventually resigned in protest and the folks who were ok with it kept themselves in charge.
    In retrospect, even for those of us who were way out of the loop, there were SO many signs of *hand wave* everything.
    But yeah, it was a lot of drama. and rather sad.

      1. DoxNotThyNeighbor*

        It was, sadly, very real.
        Some of it made the international news at the time.

        it was Richie I felt worst for- he was a kid lost to the crossfire and when they left, he just cut all ties and disappeared with his dad.

        1. DoxNotThyNeighbor*

          (I should add, writing this (is to long, I know) inspired me to check back…a few years later, Dickil still denied an affair and says Lillith was mentally ill. Rico, who had initially believed his late wife reconciled with his dad.
          Dad/ Dick said that meant his son/ Rico believed him. Rico’s public statement has been more “i don’t know, I’m burying it).

          and there was a Law&Order episode that didn’t follow it closely (‘ripped from the headlines’means first headline, no nuance) but explored it in the vein of Lillith being a murder victim. (Which a vocal minority still believes)

  161. ReallyREALLYAnonForThis*

    A bit late to the party here, but this is a non-affair from the 1980s. I (late 20s, female) worked on a very dysfunctional team with a guy (early 30s, male). We’ll call him Bob. Bob and I got along, and we both hated how dysfunctional our management was. I worked there for a few years, and I because Bob and I worked together and quite obviously got along well, I am sure some of the other kids (40 years later I think of us ALL as kids at that 20s/30s age) thought we were having an affair. Only we weren’t. Bob was happily married to his wife, and I was living with the man I eventually married.

    1. ReallyREALLYAnonForThis*

      When I left that job and told people I was leaving, everyone’s first question ws “Does bob know yet?” Of course, I had already told him.
      Anyway, 40 years later, Bob and I are still friends. We talk on the phone every few months. He and his wife came to my husband’s funeral a few years ago, and I recently met him for lunch.
      So just because everyone THINKS there’s something going on, it doesn’t mean there really is!

  162. BekaRosselinMetadi*

    Oooh, I do have a story! Mid-late 90’s, receptionist at a consulting firm in DC and my second real office job. I liked it although in retrospect it was a little crazy. Anyway, a VP at a large firm decided he needed to leave his job Down Under and come back to the US. He was good friends with a chairman of my company who was going to help him get a new job, which indeed he did. But for a couple of months he came into our office and sent out many FedEx packages-presumably his resume and relevant info. Correction: I sent out those packages for him and the spare office he used was up near my desk. I liked him! I’d spoken to his wife (she was great) and he was a good guy. Until the day I came to find on our general voicemail (he didn’t have his own) a message from his Russian girlfriend (she lived in Russia) completely bitching him out because he had cut off all credit cards-on and on. Yes, I listened to the whole thing but I really didn’t know what to do. I finally went to my boss who gave me good advice-“tell him there’s a message for him, bring it up so he can listen and get out of his office ASAP and never mention it”. That’s what I did-amazingly I kept my mouth shut about it. I think about it now and maybe that’s why he gave me an exceedingly generous gift at Christmas? I honestly thought it was because I worked hard for him, which I did. And he got a fancy new job and worked there until he retired. It was a tad painful-I genuinely liked him although I fid think it was hilarious he cut off the gf’s cards-he was unemployed! He was looking for a job! Maybe he reinstated them again, I don’t know.

  163. QuinceAnon*

    Dramatis personae for this tale of how I found myself in a tricky situation in my old job.

    Mary, my team leader
    Michaela, my colleague
    Brad, another colleague
    Laura 1, Mary’s partner
    Laura 2, Mary’s sister
    Rose, Michaela & Brad’s team leader

    Michaela (divorced) and Brad (married) joined the company about a week after I did, all of us new immigrants to this country. Michaela and Brad were both from the same country and went through the (quite intense) one-month training programme for the job together. It became apparent soon after they started working with the rest of us that they were having an affair. He wouldn’t have been my pick, but de gustibus and all that.

    Fast forward 6 months, and Mary (also originally from the same country as Michaela and Brad) has decided she’s quite keen on Michaela. Michaela was hitherto (as far as she was aware) not attracted to women, but Mary was very a) charismatic and b) persistent, and after a great deal of angst on Michaela’s part (including pouring out her heart to my husband at my birthday party), Michaela and Mary settled into an affair.

    6 months further down the track (by which time I’ve been out for Mary’s birthday along with Mary’s partner Laura 1, and her sisters, including Laura 2), I take a call one day for Mary, who I later discover has taken to getting another team leader to log on to her computer so that she shows on the phone system as there, but not to be disturbed, then turning up late for work so she can see Michaela, who works the opposite shifts.

    The caller identifies herself as Laura and asks for Mary. I ask Rose (also from the same country as the others) where Mary is, because I’ve got Laura on the line. “Which one?” asks Rose. I take the caller off hold and ask, “Sorry, which Laura?” to which Laura (evidently Laura 1) replies, “Does it matter?!” Which was an entirely fair question, I had to admit.

    Not long after, Mary and Laura split up, Michaela moved in with Mary, and Mary and Rose were both asked to leave the company because of falsifying Mary’s presence at work.

    It wasn’t the only affair I observed at that company, but it was definitely the messiest!

  164. Cardboard Marmalade*

    I worked one summer at a place that produced high end home goods. Think: big warehouse, country music playing nonstop on the radio, and every single item we touch costs more than we could possibly earn in 2 months. Did I eventually leave mid-summer and go back to waitressing because the rampant racism, misogyny, and homophobia got too much to bear? I sure did! But before that, I was paired up to work with the only other young woman working in my section, and she had a LOT to get off her chest. I’d only been working there a couple weeks when she told me that she’d dated our (2 levels up) boss a few years back. I was like, “I mean, I don’t think he’s very good-looking, but we all make weird choices in our 20s…” She clearly thought I was an idiot, but she had literally nobody else to talk to, so she patiently explained that it was AFTER she’d gotten married to her current husband (who, of course, also worked at the same plant). I agreed that wasn’t ideal. She told me further that she’d ended the affair, never told her husband, and had the baby. Her husband adored the kid, was a great dad, she felt so guilty, etc. At this point, I thought the story was over, but no! The boss, she told me, had gotten his wife pregnant around the same time. Which would just be a little sleazy detail if it weren’t for the fact that his wife and kids regularly attended the weekly company softball games. That my coworker… and her husband… and her kid… also attended. And nothing my coworker could do would keep her son (boss’s illegitimate kid) and boss’s (same age!) daughter apart! They were BFFs in the way that only 4-year-olds bored at an adult softball game can be. The quote that will haunt me forever is, “And I don’t know how he (her husband) hasn’t figured it out yet, because when you see them from the side, you can just SEE it, their noses and everything look exactly the same.” Anyway, this was well over 20 years ago now, so fingers crossed those poor kids didn’t end up getting married to each other. What a mess.

  165. sunny*

    I work in an industry where several-month temporary contracts for the duration of a project are the norm.

    Years ago, I spent a summer working for a company that had three teams working on three different projects simultaneously. “Jane” and “Michael” were both hired to work on one of the other teams. They were both good employees with solid reputations in the field, who were currently working together on a project at another company that was scheduled to wrap up soon.

    However, while working at the other company, Jane (who was single) and Michael (who was married) had secretly begun having an affair. Towards the end of that first contract, Michael told Jane that he had come clean to his wife about the affair and asked for a divorce because he was in love with Jane and wanted to build a future with her.

    Jane said something to the effect of, “Wow, this is really awkward! I wish you had talked to me first, because I’ve just been having fun, definitely do not want anything serious, and think we should end things.”

    Michael was very upset, and they parted on acrimonious terms…only to start working on the new project together a few weeks later. Jane did her best to avoid and ignore Michael outside of work requirements and became friendly with the rest of the team. Michael saw anyone being friendly with Jane as a personal betrayal and refused to speak with the rest of the team outside of mandated work interactions. Instead, he skulked around shooting wounded looks at Jane (and anyone who dared to speak with her) and accosting any members of the other two teams he encountered to hint darkly about what a difficult time he was having due to a terrible “betrayal” by Jane. He eventually escalated to bringing in a guitar so that he could accompany himself while singing angry, angsty, someone’s-done-me-wrong songs during his downtime.

    (We worked outside running outdoor events, and Michael frequently completed his set-up tasks before the rest of the team was ready, so this was not as disruptive as it would have been in an office environment. It was still incredibly odd and uncomfortable, but Michael claimed the team leader thought music would entertain any customers who arrived early for the event.

    After the three projects were completed, the company president threw a farewell party for all three teams. Michael brought his wife, Faith, and put on a show of being incredibly, loudly solicitous to her while pointedly ignoring Jane. None of us had any idea how much Faith knew about Jane, but she was kind and lovely to everyone at the party, and we all thought she deserved better than Michael.

    I worked with Michael once more, about 18 months later. He was still trying to complain to me about Jane.

    He and Faith remain married to this day.

  166. Needed a diagram*

    I found this out technically via gossip but it was the only way a colleague could explain to me why Bob will stay in a “temporary” placement elsewhere in the company because he could no longer work under his former manager. I needed to draw myself a diagram to understand but I think I can describe it as a chain.
    Zac worked elsewhere in our company and was in a LTR with Anne.
    Anne worked in my department and was having an affair with Bob, also in that dept.
    (They thought it was a secret but it wasn’t. Newsflash people having office affairs – everyone always knows)
    Bob was married to Claire, not working at my company
    Claire was the sister of Darren, previously in my dept but now elsewhere in company
    Darren is married to Emma, in my dept.
    Emma was Bob’s manager.

    It came out within the family and Bob blamed Emma for telling her husband, SIL etc. I don’t know if she did but I wouldn’t blame her; how could you not?
    They could no longer work together.

  167. Tech Writer*

    (Content warning: bodily fluids, but contained, not free-flowing):
    I used to work for a law firm that threw very good Christmas parties. The parties were always held at some nice venue, not in the office, and there was food, drink, dancing… and sometimes this led to one or two “extracurriculars”. Everyone had fun and came away with topics for gossip for numerous coffee breaks.
    In the office, there was a resting room, that is, not a “restroom” but a room with a bed, that you could go to for a rest if you were feeling under the weather. One year, the Monday after the party, one of the paralegals had a headache and went to lie down for a bit. On the bed was a used condom. She was, understandably, not very happy about this.
    Management chose to issue a company-wide email promising a thorough investigation, including whose key cards had been used to enter the office over that weekend (DNA analysis was not mentioned as I recall, probably because it wasn’t really a thing back then). How that played out, I don’t know, because we heard nothing more from management. Presumably some sober person took charge and stopped stirring the pot further. However, the incident fueled gossip and speculation for weeks after, with one couple (known to be cheating) being universally thought to be the most likely culprits. I don’t think they were, actually. There turned out to be another (cheating) couple that were just less obvious about it.

  168. definitely anon for this*

    I worked with two lovely people who were both married to others; one spouse was an absolute nightmare and I don’t even think her family liked her, the other spouse was an absentee husband and father. My coworkers struck up a friendship that turned into more and for the most part, were pretty good about hiding it – at least we thought so at the time.

    I was close with the woman and we had a small friend group. One day she asked us all to get a drink with her after work because she had some news to share, and we all figured it was cancer or something. But she told us she’d been having an affair with the guy that had been discovered.

    And the way it was discovered is that my friend went to lunch one day and forgot to lock her computer. She was an administrative assistant. I also had an administrative assistant who was completely unhinged (like weird, aggressive, paranoid, accused me of plotting against her whenever I went to lunch with someone and didn’t invite her, which was usually), and I had tried and failed to fire her many times. She was doing lunch coverage at the friend’s desk and decided to start going through my friend’s email, where she found many incriminating messages between the two coworkers. She printed them out and mailed them to the respective spouses.

    And then one hired a private investigator, who had been tailing all of us in the friend group for MONTHS. And then all hell broke loose and everyone got divorced.

    Except…these two were absolutely wonderful together and it was really hard to blame them for connecting when their marriages were so objectively awful. They ended up marrying each other almost 20 years ago and are honestly so happy. But man, the path they took to get there could maybe have been a lot less dramatic?

  169. ConfusedCoworker*

    It’s not a cheating story exactly, but it is a work dating story! My company is pretty small (<50 people), but we have 3 divisions under one umbrella. So there are company-wide meetings with everyone, but also people I barely know because we never work together. Once at a company-wide meeting, our President was telling a family story and said (names changed) "Lucille's mom–and Fergus's mother-in-law, I guess– did…" So I thought, Oh! I didn't realize Fergus and Lucille were married. (I barely interacted with Fergus and not at all with Lucille.) So I go on at least a year thinking they're married. Then at some point Facebook was suggesting people I should add and it suggested Lucille, and I noticed the man in her profile picture was NOT Fergus. Being a nosy Nellie, I then look at Fergus's profile, and his picture is definitely him and Lucille. The plot thickens! Did the two of them get divorced and he just doesn't update? Unfortunately, I have no way of finding out. Months later I'm working on a project with another employee who was part of the family, and she says something about Lucille being a twin. Someone else says "I didn't know Lucille was a twin!" and she says "Yeah, and the twin is married to Fergus." I excitedly go "OH!!!" as everything falls into place, and have to explain to everyone else my misconception.

  170. VideoKilledTheRadioStar*

    My co-worker was cheating with my boss and I got to stay in the country. Seriously. I moved to Europe a long time ago from Australia, initially on a work and travel visa. It’s quite difficult to convert these temporary visas into longer-term work visas, but I found a job in a team with another Australian. It wasn’t the greatest job but it paid the bills. I was always very surprised – and honestly mad on her behalf – that my co-worker kept working unpaid overtime. They just didn’t treat us well enough for her to be dedicating so much time to the company!
    Anyway, our visas were expiring at around the same time and to my surprise, the company pulled out all the stops to convince immigration that we were essential to the company (we were not). The process took like three whole months and a huge amount of bureaucratic back and forth. I was grateful, of course, but a little puzzled. I eventually left the company when my contract ran out (in possession of a permanent-residency track visa). My co-worker stayed on.
    Years later, I found out that actually, she wasn’t working late – she was in a clandestine relationship with our boss and was cheating on the boyfriend she moved to Europe with – hence the secrecy. The only reason the company was so weirdly invested in extending my visa is that my boss was desperate to extend my co-workers visa so his girlfriend didn’t have to go home, but since we were from the same country it would have looked highly suspicious to only put in all that effort for her and not for me!
    And that’s the story of how my co-worker slept with my boss and I got to stay in the country!

  171. Very anonymous for this*

    We met at work (different depts, neither of us reported to the other). Neither of us was single. We became friends, then, one weekend hanging out, more than friends. We both immediately broke up with our partners, and got together, keeping it quiet at first. Now we’ve been extremely happily married for almost 20 years now.

    I don’t feel great about the origins, but at least there was no long period of cheating.

  172. Kumari*

    I had two coworkers (Jane was married with kids, Fergus was single) who were having an affair for at least a year. Jane insisted they were not together and how dare anyone suggest otherwise. Fergus, on the other hand, bragged to anyone who would listen. It was definitely affecting work — one time another coworker split a portion of project work between himself and Jane, as he had been instructed to do by management. Fergus, her definitely-not-boyfriend, did what any normal platonic coworker would do and rather aggressively demanded to know why this colleague was “bothering her” and “throwing his work at her” instead of just doing the whole thing himself “like a man.”

    Their direct manager, Flynn, liked both of these employees better than he liked his boss and would dismiss any concerns (including work-related ones) about their obvious affair as just slander. It turned out that Flynn was dating two other women at the company at the same time, so I guess that must have biased his perspective… When they found out about each other, one snuck in after hours to “return” everything he’d left at her apartment, which included dumping a variety of hair products all over his office’s carpet. She was terminated for vandalism.

    Any time Fergus or Jane (or Flynn for that matter) were confronted about their obvious favoritism toward each other and the resulting work problems, they deflected and claimed they were the victims of an unfair smear campaign. As evidence, they stated that I was obviously having an affair with another coworker, but no one ever cared about that! I am asexual, queer, and married. The coworker I was allegedly carrying on with is a very anti-adultery Christian. The very idea of us hooking up together is hilarious and my wife laughed her ass off when she heard this rumor.

    In the end, they all ended up leaving the company one way or another. Flynn married the girlfriend who did not vandalize his office. I don’t know if she ever realized the very angry woman she met at that one work event years ago was also dating him. Fergus and Jane are also married now with even more kids and were still working together at a different company, last time I checked. I ran into Jane at a grocery store a few months later and she remarked that she couldn’t believe I was still at the first company considering “all the drama and toxicity at that place.” In true socially awkward person fashion, I did not even think how this would come out and just said, “Oh no, it’s been fine since you all left. The new crew just does their work and there’s no drama” in a pleasant small-talky voice. It was a wonderful accidental slap-in-the-face end to the saga.

  173. I'm just here for the cats!!*

    Years ago I worked at a call center that Alison could write a book abut it was so toxic and problematic. But the biggest thing was that the HR director was having an affair with his assistant HR person. They were both married to other people, both divorced at the same time. Within 6 months she left for a different company and they were married. I don’t remember the details but I did find out later that they would meet up in the office afterhours and either the Operations manager or the office head knew what happened because they walked in on them.

    There was also the time a team lead was having an affair with his team member. They would go to a back office to “review calls” and be off the phones for 1-2 hours. They weren’t very smart as they went into an office with a large window in the door and the other team lead caught them. The team member was actually the girlfriend of another team lead, and they were all close friends. It was wild!

    1. it was so long ago*

      This happened a long time ago but it left a strong impression. The HR director was widely assumed (we really don’t know) that his top deputy was his lover; all of the usual signs plus swagger because they didn’t think anybody could do anything about it.

      New leadership comes in and instructs HR to develop sensible, modern policies about romantic relationships within the change of command. Here’s why I remember it: The policy draft highlighted that consensual relationships were exempt. When HR Director and Deputy were told that wouldn’t fly, they insisted, with astonishment and vehemence, that of course consensual relationships between bosses and their director reports had to be carved out. The new policy development was shelved and their relationship and their employment continued for a coupla more years until they moved on …

  174. Federal Worker Drone*

    I’ve been working in private and public industry since the 80s. And those folks who think their romance is a secret are usually fooling themselves. Granted I keep my mind open to the idea that some people exist who really are discreet, but those folks are few and far between (and it probably helps because so many people are really bad at it).

    But most people can tell when something’s going on.

  175. Former Admin Turned PM*

    I was speaking with my husband a few nights back about the CEO at my old company (I worked there 1996-99ish) and the open secret of his affair partner getting her fancy financial officer title based on absolutely no relevant education or experience (she’d started in admin support without ever earning a college degree, but her title by the time I worked their implied much more finance and accounting experience). My husband was *appalled* at the idea that she’d gotten a high-level job with so little qualification, and noted that if the press had gotten hold of it at the time, the CEO would have been eviscerated for his lack of professionalism.

    Firstly, the press wouldn’t give two hoots about a privately held company with less than 200 employees having an unqualified person being in place based on a relationship. And even if they did care, I assured my husband that the boss would not have been considered the bad guy. He didn’t agree with me, until I pointed out that I was much more familiar with how women were treated in corporate America in the 90s than he (a male teacher) was.

  176. Always Tired*

    OH DO I HAVE A GOOD ONE.

    The background info: I worked for a Multinational, and we regularly brought in employees on the US L1-B Visa (intracompany transfer with specialized knowledge) and would bring spouses on L-2 visas (dependent of an L1 holder). We frequently had couples where they both already worked for us, but one wouldn’t be high enough up for the L1 requirements (think wife is Sr. Alpaca sheerer, and husband is only a Jr. wool washer), so would come on an L2, wait 6ish months for employment authorization, then start working for us again in the US.

    The Incident: We brought “John” over on an L1, and his wife “Jane” on an L2. They decided to rent in an apartment complex where several other transferees already lived, since the price/location/quality were all known factors, and built in friends from the home country. Jane waited for her L2, hanging out with the other L2 spouses, decorating the apartment, finding things to do that weren’t illegally working.

    Well, apparently one of the things she found to do was Chris, another one of my L1 employees. All this came to light about a year in, and John immediately divorced Jane. Which revoked her visa. So back to the home country she went, and Chris was transfered to another project in a part of the country with much worse weather, since he and John refused to work together and John was more important on the project. I left shortly after that, but Jane ended up quitting as everyone back home loved John, so her infidelity was looked on poorly, and John was asking questions about how to get the company to sponsor a green card, so I assume he’s still in the US living him best life.

    Don’t cheat when your visa depends on your marriage, kids.

  177. Oh, for sure using a fake name for this.*

    While working at Past Job, I was absorbed into a fairly close-knit group of similarly-aged coworkers, which revolved around “Bill,” “Charles,” and “Francine.” Charles and Francine were in a relationship, and Bill and Charles became very good friends; my entrance into the picture was mostly because Francine was looking to balance the core group with another woman. When I left the job for another opportunity about 15 months later, “Belinda” was hired to replace me at work and quickly filled the vacuum in the social group as well. It is relevant to note that Francine was a shift leader and so occasionally had some operational supervisory responsibility towards both Bill and Belinda (but not Charles, who had always worked in a different department) – not actual management or evaluative power, but the authority to say “Bill, you’re responsible for Typical Job Duty X today.”

    Belinda and Bill started dating within a few weeks, but then almost as quickly, Belinda and Charles started cheating together on Bill and Francine. I don’t have any notion of how long this stayed a secret, but once it came to light, things obviously went to hell. Francine broke up with Charles almost immediately (GOOD), but because of the low pay at this employer/in the field in general AND the fact that this was happening during the Great Recession, neither of them were able to get new jobs or take the financial hit that would come from moving out of their shared apartment…so when Charles and Belinda officially started dating, things got EVEN MORE AWKWARD.

    Francine – who is the one who told me most of this story, btw – said she could be professional and continue her (extremely low stakes) supervisory responsibilities over Belinda. Upper Management, wisely, was like “Sure, Jan,” and stepped in to put distance between the two. Upper Management, UNwisely, did not consider that enforcing some distance between Bill and Charles (who, recall, did work in different departments) would probably be a good idea until after Bill and Charles’ Parking Lot Throwdown #1. Logic would certainly suggest that firing two guys who got into a physical altercation on company property would be the right call; however, unfortunately for Logic, Bill was a nepo baby. “Well, we can’t fire Bill because of nepotism, and it would look bad to only fire Charles, so I guess they can both keep their jobs,” Upper Management presumably said, shrugging.

    It did turn out that being a nepo baby wasn’t enough to save Bill from being fired after Bill and Charles’ Parking Lot Throwdown #2, though. (Charles also deservedly got fired.)

    Belinda left town for…something (grad school? a new job? IDK.) within about a year of taking this job. Francine and Bill both weathered the challenges and were and are more or less okay. No idea what became of Charles.

  178. A Slightly Damp Alpaca*

    So this situation is going on right now. I work for a small city in a western state. A supervisor of one of the departments (not mine) needed to fill a part time position and hired someone that he told everyone was a friend of his daughters (roughly late 20s to 30 years old). Let’s call him Lino and call her Jenny. He later told several people that she and his daughter were good friends in high school but Jenny did some horrible things to his daughter, causing his wife and daughter to dispise her and cut her out of their lives. He hired her without telling his wife or daughter and thinks it is hilarious. Again, this is all from Lino himself.

    Jenny starts coming in outside of her normal working hours and hanging out in Lino’s office, lounging on a futon he has, making everyone else uncomfortable. He says she has “a bad situation” at home and needs some space from her boyfriend. This turns in lots of time with the door closed while he “advises” her. People start seeing both of their cars at work on the weekends. Several people who got called in on various weekends start seeing her car hidden in the shop, lights on in Lino’s office and the door is closed. Lino pulls some strings to get Jenny brought on full time. Jenny starts getting approved for a lot of overtime, which is unheard in our city. No one knows if she is actually here for those hours but her timecards are approved. Management starts asking questions but all they do is take away timecard approval from Lino. Jenny has a small office/shack out where she works and Lino’s truck is parked by it for several hours every day. They spend a lot of time in her “office” with the shades drawn. At this point everyone suspects what is going on but there is no solid proof. Then they get even less careful. Several people hear their explicit conversations when they think they are in the shop alone. Jenny essentially stops doing her job, probably because she figures Lino is going to cover for her. Finally last week City Hall caught wind of the rumors and started investigating. They have supposedly found new proof of timecard fraud (so we’ve heard) and are interviewing people about the relationship. I don’t have a good ending to the story because the investigation started this week. I see terminations on the horizon but Lino has proven to be coated in teflon before. I have a feeling that Jenny is going to take the brunt of it but I really hope Lino gets what is coming to him as well.

  179. BlerktheTerk*

    For several years, I worked for a private security company that was driving intensive. Any form of driving infraction could be serious. We had a coworker who was widely known to be terrible, but who was strongly suspected of sleeping with the boss. They were seen together after-hours several times, and she frequently got preferential shifts. But what really cinched it for us was when we were in roll call and she suddenly crashed through the door with a liquor bottle, screaming that she had killed Bambi with her car. The boss covered for her, drove her home, and didn’t report her drunk driving.

  180. Ex-maths*

    I was a teacher, and so were Ms Science and Mr Geography. Ms Science offered me a lift in her little 2-door (this is relevant) car to the staff Xmas social, which I tiredly accepted although it was a walkable distance (also relevant). As I was about to get in, Mr Geography hurried up and asked for a lift too. He has longer legs than me so I got into the back and he got in the front. 5 minutes down the road, he, either forgetting I was there or not caring, started expressing his feelings, how he was desperately in love with her, couldn’t stop thinking about her, how their “stolen moments together” had been the most exciting of his life, and how she really must see she had to leave her partner for him. Incidentally she was about 8.5 months pregnant (from context I gathered by her partner, not Mr G), and shifting around uncomfortably for both physical and psychological reasons. This was a small car such as a Londoner would own, so I was sitting about 50cm behind him, stunned into immobility. She said no. I coughed. He looked around, startled. Then we sat in silence in a traffic jam for what felt like 1000 years but was probably 10 minutes. I thought about escaping and walking the rest of the way, and leaving them to it, but had no way to get out until one of them did. Then when we got to the pub parking lot, he just said “PLEASE!” and sat there staring at her. She got out, I scrambled out behind her, she shut the door and went into the pub, leaving him in the passenger seat of her car. We did not see him again that night. I politely pretended to have never heard a thing.

    1. Seeking Second Childhood*

      On the flip side a word of caution – sometimes managers taking offsite lunches with direct reports is completely appropriate.

      In my office, rumors got nasty about my married female manager and my married male co-worker. I was hard pressed to find a way to derail the rumors without revealing that I knew he was on a PIP and close to being fired.

      It was an open office and she had no walls. There were also too few conference rooms, and none without glass walls. HR said to take him off-site to maintain his privacy – but had no suggestions for maintaining her reputation.

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