Talking about sex at the office is strictly off limits. I should know

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In the late 1980s I was editing a teen glossy called Sky Magazine. Its pages were full of shirtless images of Michael Hutchence, Prince, Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves, Kiefer Sutherland and the ubiquitous Brat Pack.
Men who took their tops off would be more likely to get on the cover. Hollywood starlets who talked dirty about their sex lives grabbed the headlines. Sex was an issues-shifting seller, an editorial theme and regular office gossip.
One day, a young freelance film writer — Karen Krizanovich, from Big Rock, Illinois — walked into our unit in King’s Cross, London, and began to regale the young typing pool with stories of the loud and multiple carnal adventures she’d enjoyed the night before.
In a routine that ran the potty-mouthed gamut of stand-up material by Bette Midler, Joan Rivers and Sarah Silverman, there was ribald anecdotage of broken bedroom furniture and angry complaints from neighbours about the feral noise-making. Karen’s related injuries included carpet burns, stubble chafes and a pronounced perambulatory complication experienced the following morning.
Were we appalled? Not a bit. We were entertained. As editor-in-chief, did I report Karen to the HR department before escalating the incident to tribunal status? No. I gave her a job.
Based on Karen’s impromptu office audition, I awarded her a monthly sex column and she was a natural — frank, filthy but also very, very funny. “Dear Karen” ran on Sky Magazine’s inside back page for the duration of the publication’s shelf-life until 2001. Karen went on to be a successful writer, film critic, journalist, author and broadcaster, and a “concept researcher” for feature film, film production design and, somewhat appropriately, “graphic content”.
Of course, had all this happened in 2024 I would have been fired, my nether regions paraded through the streets on spikes, the magazine office immediately closed down and Karen’s nascent career left in tatters (a bit like her bed sheets, probably).
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This is what just happened to recruitment consultant Charlotte Tilley who, according to her fellow workers, caused “significant offence” by, variously, showing off a sex tape, editing photos of naked male torsos on her laptop at work and kissing another woman at the office Christmas party.
When asked about her relationship with a fellow (male) company development trainer (that had begun during the firm’s AGM) Tilley was said to have boasted to the office about her and his bedroom performances. “What do you think the gold stars are for?” — a reference to a row of gold star stickers on her computer. This Tilley lass sounds like a proper scream to me.
That said, perhaps Tilley went a teensy bit far if, as the tribunal hearing reported, when one night in the pub she showed a group of staffers “a video on her phone of [her] having sex with an ex-boyfriend”. But it was after work. And I feel sure she would have muted the phone’s sound for good manners.
Anyway, Tilley lost her case and had to resign from her job. She and her office beau are still together and now expecting a baby. And because it’s the 2020s, and I am a flawed but always evolving modern man, I have just this to say to young Tilley: NSFW (Not Safe For Work).
You cannot talk about sex in the office. You cannot allude to a sex life in the office or away from it. You must not even flirt with the idea of flirting. Except for the occasional handshake or high five, there should be no physical contact between any members of staff.
There is no competitive bird-pulling bantz between the Tim Canterburys and Gareth Keenans of the modern office any more. No casual chat-ups with the Dawn Tinsleys on reception and any lairy, sweary, touchy-feely Chris Finch types won’t even get past security.
In my 12 years of hot-desking in a cleaned-up, white-collar working environment, I have never learnt of an office romance, never heard tales of snogging in the bathroom or shagging at Christmas parties and country house conferences. I remain the only male in an office of twenty or so men who ever dares to comment on a female colleague’s nice new haircut or pretty summer frock. Sometimes I hear quiet gasps of disapproval when I do this.
After travelling into work on a Tube train that bears a sign warning against “INTRUSIVE STARING OF A SEXUAL NATURE” and redefining “looking” as “SEXUAL HARASSMENT”, actual eye contact with colleagues, one eventually decides, probably isn’t a good idea either.
In the new workplace, it is as if the sexual part of a man simply doesn’t exist or is effectively chemically castrated from his mind and body as soon as he enters the building. The hot-deskers all seem to be down with this idea.
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According to a recent US survey one’s sex life is the number one topic that people perceive as inappropriate to discuss at work — 71 per cent of workers say that is a no-no. (Personal drug use coming in at 69 per cent, office gossip about a co-worker, 57 per cent, and talk of salaries and income, 42 per cent, as the most off-limits topics on the job.) Male sex talk of any kind is considered objectifying, inappropriate, invasive, disruptive and offensive to fellow workers.
It is, I have to say, slightly different for women. And this is where Tilley may have overdone it a tad. Women, in the office and at the pub after work, get a free pass in objectifying men. They might not be as naughty and randy as Tilley but they do transgress modern rules via torn-out, topless, often teenage hunks stuck to their computer terminals and outspoken fantasy passions with movie stars.
Recently, I made a casual worktime reference to Brad Pitt’s rooftop cigarette break in that scene from Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. A bunch of women in my office (mainly in their thirties and forties and fans of buff Brad’s bod) overheard and began a barrage of bawdy phwoaring, wolf-whistling, cat-calling and detailed sexual intent that seemed to belong in a different decade. The females in the office thought this banter — what tribunal Judge Liz Ord decried as “a high tolerance of matters of a sexual nature” — most amusing.
The message? Men talking sex is disgusting. Unsafe, unsavoury and uncomfortable. In the 21st century a man saying — out loud — that a women, any woman, is attractive/beautiful/well dressed even, during office hours, is tantamount to sexual assault.
If he wants to stay out of trouble, a middle-aged man (like me) must turn his gaze to the floor, his book or computer screen and act like a monk. Had I drooled and simpered in a similar vulpine fashion over, say, Eva Mendes or Scarlett Johansson, in my office, I would have been marched to HR.
It’s different for the girls … who are really just having a right laff. The truth, of course, is more subtle, nuanced and conflicted. Reformed “new lad’’ David Baddiel recently gave an interview to The Times setting out a thesis on the subject of his sexual arousal.
It was simple; he likes women. He finds women attractive. He also keeps the information pretty much to himself. And most men feel and behave the same way, which doesn’t stop us being made to feel very bad about it. (And yes I know Baddiel has never worked a day in an office, but hear him out.)
Despite the London Underground’s warning, men don’t stare. On the trains or in the office. We don’t “undress with our eyes”. We know that we would be harshly judged if we were caught doing so. Yes, our internal monologue is constant, but being civilised, developed, mature and reconstructed men, we know not to articulate our thoughts on the matter. This makes for a happier, more productive and efficient working environment. Of course it does.
In the meantime, Miss Charlotte Tilley, do call if you ever fancy a new career as a sex columnist.
by Olivia Petter
“It wasn’t the best orgasm but it was definitely in the top 20,” warbled the drunk intern who had just started working in our office. This was early on in my career, when I was still fairly junior too. On a Tuesday evening we’d ended up at the pub after one of our shifts, and by 10pm the idle chatter that is appropriate and commonplace, if a little dull, with colleagues had descended into stories of sex and debauchery.
This would have been fine had all of us been lingering on the same low rung of the ladder in the company. But for whatever reason, one of the company executives had stuck around. And it transpired he didn’t drink.
So he awkwardly listened on, sober as a judge, while the intern, blissfully unaware, continued to ramble about her various orgasmic escapades in front of him. It wasn’t bad enough for her to lose her job, or even be called into a meeting. But she definitely felt embarrassed, which was abundantly clear when she called in sick the next day.
I felt for her. Not just because of the office gossip that continued to circulate for the duration of her internship, consequently making it impossible for anyone to take her seriously as a colleague, but because it’s the kind of thing I used to do a lot, too, particularly when I was in my early twenties and still figuring out the nuances of workplace dynamics, and what is and isn’t OK.
Thankfully, it never got quite as bad as it seems to have done for Charlotte Tilley. When I was younger, and still learning how to navigate these new professional relationships, I would get overexcited and try to bond with people in the same way I normally would outside work: by oversharing.
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There were mornings when, after drinking too much, I’d roll into the office after a night at the pub and be told about the details I’d divulged the night before, most of which revolved around my sex life and who I was dating at the time.
These were stories I’d not told even some of my closest friends, so why was I telling colleagues I barely even knew? Sometimes, I’d try to own it. Like the time I waltzed into work in the same outfit two days in a row after spending the night with a date, loudly (and obnoxiously) regaling my colleagues with details from the evening at my desk, lapping up all the attention it brought me.
Looking back, I can be a little easier on myself. I was struggling with some issues in my family at the time and desperately craved distraction, validation and connection. And when you’re going into the office five days a week, as we all were back then, it’s only natural to seek those things from the people you’re spending most of your time with.
There is something to be said about fostering intimacy through vulnerability. It’s important to have trusted friends in the workplace — and yes, you might make those friends by talking about your sex life. As I said, there’s a fine line with it all.
I learnt quite quickly to be careful about who I opened up to, where I chose to do it (ideally not at my desk within earshot of more senior people) and to curb my drinking in front of colleagues so as not to get it wrong.
But I’m so pleased I didn’t refrain from talking about my sex life at work, strange as that may sound. Some of the closest friends I have now are people I worked with early on in my career and overshared with. Would we have forged those relationships had we stuck to conversations about spreadsheets and other insipid subjects related to our jobs? I’m not so sure.