DANGEROUS LIAISONSfeel that there would be a potential conflict of interest involved.
However, Robert Mathis, the Kayser Professor of Management
at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, believes that you can't
control Cupid's arrows. "Just as you can't legislate morality, you
can't completely outlaw attraction in the office." Still, he thinks
that companies should have clear policies about dating.
The Gannett Company faces the reality that sex will be an
issue wherever men and women work together. Christine O. Lan-
dauer, the company's director of training and development, re-
marks, "If employees let their personal relationships affect their
objectivity in the office, then we deal with the problem. But we
would consider it unfair to prejudge the professionals we employ
by assuming they couldn't separate their working lives from their
personal lives."SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Another way in which sexuality complicates life in the workplace
is when harassment becomes a problem. What is office flirting
and how far can it go before it becomes harassment? Let's take
the case of Jane, a dispatcher for a large construction company
in the southeast. Dispatching was a job traditionally held by men,
but Jane, a widow with two children, needed the higher salary
the job paid and passed the company test ahead of the other
candidates. She was a good worker and a cheerful one. "I knew
my job, and I did it," she recalls. "I didn't waste time around
the office coffee machine."
Jane was an attractive woman, and all the other employees
were men. "I don't know when it began to be more than I could
take," Jane said. "At first it was jokes, then off-color remarks as
I went by. If I complained, I was a poor sport. But I didn't feel