The Naked Truth: A Working Woman's Manifesto on Business and What Really Matters by Margaret A. Heffernan

Author:Margaret A. Heffernan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

What I hear in Lynne's story is a very familiar voice. It is the voice of the corporation saying, "You will have no love before me. You will love me alone." Translated into daily life, this means that women often feel that they can't take time away from work to find a partner and they can't find that partner at work. Why? Because either of these activities takes time, effort, loyalty, love away from the business. And companies get jealous.

According to various studies, between one-third and two-thirds of employees have affairs with their coworkers, so having relationships at work can't really be deemed exceptional behavior any more. More strikingly, nearly half of those said that their relationship led to marriage. Not surprisingly, work turns out to be a good place to find someone who shares your interests, aims, ambitions. i Yet some women feel that they should not go out with a work colleague. They feel there is an inherent conflict between their work lives and their private lives, and this conflict makes them very uncomfortable. But when they attempt to resolve this conflict the way the men always have-by keeping work life and personal life separate-they discover that however hard we may try to keep the two lives separate, life doesn't cooperate. The workplace is full of people who are exceptionally compatible with who we are: they have chosen the same area of work, they share many of our interests, they're often a similar age and driven by similar hopes and goals. And we're spending those hundred thousand hours with these people! It's little wonder, then, that office affairs and marriages are so common.

In our quest for an integrated whole life, I don't think we do ourselves or our companies any real favors by trying to bifurcate our lives. I see a lot of stress and unease on the part of women trying to separate roles, and I see an impoverishment of the business culture in companies whose employees are asked to leave their true selvesoften their most vital selves-at the door. If we want a business world in which values are valued and integrity is systemic, not optional, we have no choice but to insist on bringing our whole emotional, sexual selves to work every day.

No, of course it isn't easy. And I should know. In my very first job, I went out with one of my coworkers, Gordon, who was both older and more senior than I was. Everyone knew about it and the affair itself didn't bother anyone. What really pissed them off was the fact that on his days off he loaned me his parking pass. Because he was a presenter and I was just a production assistant, the relationship shattered the office hierarchy. The hierarchy, not the relationship, was the problem. But Gordon was an absolutely wonderful guy, kind, generous, knowledgeable, a serious thinker. I learned a lot from him. In retrospect, I don't think I did the wrong thing. The relationship wasn't an idle flirtation but a serious friendship that outlasted the affair by years.

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