Although there are so many reasons why you should not get romantically involved with a co-worker but office hook ups are laughably inevitable. For Chinedu who spent at least 8-hours at work everyday with people begets very close relationships. At times confusing admiration for a crush is equally unavoidable. Chinedu’s company had guidelines against office romance but following the rules seems impossible not only to him but to some of his colleagues too.
He was a very young man, very smart and energetic. He wasn’t too ugly and hamson. But always very confident in performing his duties at the office. He was also in his late twenties, full of knowledge, strategies and concepts which he usually applies to get good results in the line of his job. Though he was hard working, he hardly had time for any other things than that of his job and work place.
He had no or little time to socializing and making new friends outside workplace. He literally lived at work. He leaves for work as early as 5:00AM in the morning and comes back very late at night. He spends one third of his time performing office business related activities.
He was a single man seriously in need of a relationship but the nature of his job becomed a hindrance. After reading about a study report of “Career Builder of 2011”, where it was stated that about 30% of all workplace romances lead to marriages. Since his job doesn’t give him chance to look outward, so he resorted inwardly in search of his missing rib.
He clicked a relationship with Ada his company’s secretary, whom he had been admiring since she was employed to work with them in the company. They started dating in disguise. They promised themselves to keep their love affairs off the office premises so as to avoid suspicions from the company’s management and co-workers. They tried as they could to hid their romantic affairs but it didn’t worked as they had planned. It later became an open secret in the office amongst their colleagues.
Chinedu’s problem in the office started when Cynthia, a female staff who had a crush on him, whom he never acknowledged for once, started encroaching and harassing him on a daily basis, persuading him to have sex with her. She used every slightest opportunity she had working in the office with Chinedu to make him succumb to her antics, but he remained resolute and unresiciprocal to her advances. She kept on molesting and threatening to inform the management about his affairs with the company’s secretary. While all this were happening, Chinedu did not bothered telling Ada about his ordeals with Cynthia.
Cynthia didn’t stopped and Chinedu too never accepted. So one day in the office, Ada decided to go say ‘hi’ to Chinedu in his office, she barged in and before her eyes was Cynthia, who was forcing herself with an unbuttoned blouse, exposed cleavage, as she tries sitting on Chinedu’s laps while he shoves her off. The incident added another problem to the ones he already had.
Ada became so dumbfounded and irritated that she immediately broked into tears and left angrily. She didn’t gave Chinedu a chance to explain and rushed into conclusions. She drewed a thin line. The bitterness from Ada over what she called betrayal on the part of Chinedu, created a lot of vacuum in her duties. She hardly concentrates in her work and always lost in thought. Pains and worries could only be traced all over her. Her character, attitude and manners of approach changed automatically in the office. She had a fire of anger raging in her to the extent that she hardly walk passes Chinedu in the office without letting him know how bittered she was through her actions.
Having seen the kind of situation he had brought upon himself orchestrated by Cynthia, Chinedu started brainstorming on what next to do concerning his job as all of his efforts and that of his friends to calm Ada’s nerves down didn’t produce good results. To him, he knew that the highest thing that would happen is that, it’s either he resigned or he gets fired by the management. So he started sneaking out of the company with excuses to distribute his CV. For weeks, he was never invited by any company for interview. It then dawned on him that “There Was No Job in The Country”.
