14 DAY TRIAL // A new online study shows that 31 percent of all marriages in the United States take place between people who meet at the workplace, in the office. As far as dating is concerned, more than 40 percent of employed Americans have dated a co-worker over the last years. Many of the people responding to the survey said that they had no time outside of work, to go out and meet new persons, and that when they found a colleague at the workplace who matched their criteria, they were more than willing and happy to go for it. The new study was released on Tuesday, by the CareerBuilder online job website.
Of the 8,038 people that responded to the online questionnaires, more than 10 percent admitted that they were looking forward to going out with at least one person in their office, while some 18 percent maintained that they had already met with a colleague twice or more times, over the past year. All the individuals that have been surveyed are full-time working employees at several large companies throughout the US.
The investigators behind the new survey also argued that affairs at the work place ended badly for 7 percent of those answering their questions. These people explained that they had to leave their job because of romantic relations gone wrong. Stress was the main factor involved with their decisions, as they couldn't stand meeting with the person they went out with every day. Maybe that's one of the main reason why employers rarely encourage relationships between their employees, so as to avoid creating a tense atmosphere at the office.
Some 30 percent of the people who went out with a co-worker last year pointed out that they did so with a more senior member of the company, and not with someone their own rank, or lower on the hierarchy. 42 percent of these individuals admitted to going out with bosses, although they failed to mention if they did so on account of attraction, or only to help further their professional career.
As far as genders go, only 5 percent of the women that answered the test unveiled that they wanted to go out with someone in their company. Conversely, 14 percent of men (nearly three times more) disclosed the fact that they would like to meet with a female colleague off-hours. This difference is very big, and researchers share that the reasons for this are complex, mostly because females generally dissociate the work place from their private life, and tend to keep the two as much apart as possible.