Office romance for creeps

There are certain rumours about me floating around the cubicles of the office. These rumours tend to involve my liking for a certain type of hair – pshaw to all those people boiling down affairs of the heart to something as silly. But more often than not, rumours originate from some degree of truth, don't they? Maybe a certain someone walked past once and I happened to have a smile on my face. Statistics seem to show that office romances are not all too uncommon, and given that the same bunch of people will be working in a closed environment for days on end, certain feelings of the gut-churning variety can arise. If you are one of these people, who found love behind cubicles, here's what not to do.

So your office hired the perfect woman you had always dreamt of, and as fate would have it, you have been assigned to the same team as her. You think it's a good idea to send her a friend request even before she joins the office, send her a text asking to be friends with a wink smiley and then like all her Facebook photos? Unless you are trying cultivate an image of yourself as the office creep, not a good idea.

There's a fine line between the loving gaze that poet's speak of and downright workplace harassment. It is in human nature to admire beauty in the opposite sex. Taking out your smartphones and taking a picture is not. Another tactic that has been known to be quite popular is to stare with the intent of a serial killer – despite the hopeless romantic intentions that you think you are portraying, this simply does not work. And if your office actually has a proper HR department, might even get you hunting for new jobs.

It should not be hard to imagine that rumours travel fast. If you like a girl, keep the publicity to a minimum. Word spreads, and even your totally harmless intentions might get twisted to portray you as a pervert on the loose. Nothing makes you look more like a creep to a girl than overhearing your macho friends talk of how you have "the hots for her."

Romantic gestures will earn the card shops a whole lot of money this Valentine's. And a simple token of love cannot go amiss – or so you would think. Meeting her socially outside work and giving her a card is ok, while having an a capella quartet delivering a hundred roses and a card with that picture of her sleeping where she looks "so cute" is not. Nothing can do more harm for your potential future love life than a tag labelling you as the office creep.