Risky Business

The workplace has become a sexy place for many people, as men and women increasingly team up or bump into each other on the job. In fact, for plenty of people--not just Bill Clinton and Monica S. Lewinsky--the workplace has become a place to have sex.

And the hanky-panky is happening in all sorts of business settings.

For night janitors and others who maintain office buildings, accidentally discovering couples in embarrassing embraces is a known occupational hazard. Mary Marx, a property management executive and chair of the Building Owners and Managers Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, said that in her field, “Everyone seems to have a story about an incident on a conference room table.”

Workplace sex also has emerged as an issue for lawyers such as Michael D. Karpeles, who advises corporate managers on sexual harassment and other employment matters.

He said some of his clients have begun including bans on workplace sex, along with prohibitions on carrying guns, in their employee handbooks.

“It’s amazing what we’ve had to add,” said Karpeles, who practices law in Chicago.

And consider what USC researcher Cliff Cheng has uncovered so far in his current study of anti-fraternization, or no-dating, policies: They often backfire. Not only do many upper-level managers and professionals defy bans on dating, some even have sex with co-workers right at the office.

The sex-at-work phenomenon represents different things to different people. It can be viewed as a sign of modern moral decay, evidence of the ages-old human capacity for sexual intrigue or an expression of healthy, robust sexuality.

For employers, it also is a nuisance that inspires wicked gossip in the hallways and, when romances turn sour, provides potential grounds for harassment lawsuits. For the lovers themselves, workplace sex is loaded not just with thrills but with personal and professional dangers.

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‘What Are They Doing for Brains?’

“These things never stay secret,” said Joseph Posner, who hears about sex-at-work incidents in his job as an employment lawyer. “You keep running into cases where this comes up, and you just have to wonder, ‘What are they doing for brains?’ ”

But libido being what it is, sex at work seems here to stay.

Lee Blackwell, a Huntington Beach-based psychologist and sex therapist who was co-director of the UCLA Human Sexuality Clinic until its closing in 1993, estimates that up to 40% of American adults have had a sexual encounter at work.

“If you’re not doing anything self-destructive, like getting yourself fired, it can be a fun, adventurous thing to do,” he said.

The trouble is, sex at work often is self-destructive--not to mention sleazy.

Hollywood’s legendary casting couch, after all, is part of the history of workplace sex. So is the calculating secretary or low-level staffer who wins special treatment, or compromises the boss, by seducing him in his office.

“I was on top of the world,” said a woman who, while in her 20s, had an at-work affair with her boss at a San Fernando Valley electronics plant. “This was a person with authority over a lot of people.” (The woman wound up losing both her job and her lover.)

In recent years, the rising tide of sexual harassment litigation has occasionally involved sexual relations--consensual, coerced or an ambiguous combination of the two--at work. Such was the story with Mechelle Vinson, the former assistant bank branch manager who scored a landmark victory in a 1986 sexual harassment ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

At trial, Vinson testified that she had about 50 unwelcome sexual contacts with her onetime supervisor over a two-year period--including being forced to have sex inside the bank vault. She said she submitted out of fear that, otherwise, she would lose her job.

The sordid side of sexual contact at work also includes, among other things, the employee who is raped by a co-worker and the patient who is sexually exploited on a visit to the psychiatrist.

Given the surge in the number of women in the labor force over the past few decades, most experts surmise that sex at work is far more common today than in the 1960s and 1970s. What’s less certain is whether the increased attention to curbing sexual harassment in recent years has slowed, or reversed, sexual contact of all types on the job.

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Encounters Persist Despite Obstacles

Still, workplace sex has survived numerous challenges over the years, including the damper that the threat of AIDS has put on casual affairs. Workplace sex also has thrived despite the growing use of security cameras and open office designs that make finding a private place trickier than ever. (On the other hand, the growing popularity of telecommuting and home-based business has created new opportunities for sex during normal business hours.)

Psychologists and other researchers offer an array of reasons for the staying power of sex at work. Many even say that uncontrollable “sexual compulsion” or “sex addiction” plays a role--an explanation that isn’t likely to impress most betrayed spouses.

More commonly, though, the impetus for sex at work is the excitement that comes from the risk of being caught.

“It was almost the thrill of making love in public,” said a Los Angeles entrepreneur, referring to an encounter he had with a woman he hired for a few weeks to help organize his office.

He said that in the office immediately next to his, accountants were hard at work.

“We knew that if we made any noise above the level of low conversation, they’d be able to hear us,” the entrepreneur said.

In many other cases, consensual sex happens in the workplace simply because that’s where the opportunity presents itself, perhaps after an office party. For someone involved in an extramarital affair, the office might be a safer rendezvous site than a hotel, particularly in a small town.

The pressure-cooker environment prevalent today at so many companies, with more men and women working together intensely for long hours and lowering their emotional guards, also is commonly offered as a reason for workplace sex. That sort of environment, particularly the long hours, “doesn’t leave a lot of time outside of the workplace to meet sexual needs,” said William L. White, a researcher in Bloomington, Ill., and author of the 1997 book “The Incestuous Workplace.”

Monica Ballard, a Santa Monica consultant specializing in sexual harassment and other workplace issues, said she has seen a similar pattern. She cited an instance when she was hired to counsel a young downtown Los Angeles lawyer caught having sex with a paralegal on one of his firm’s conference room tables.

“His justification was, ‘I work 70 to 80 hours a week, I don’t have a chance to see anyone else,’ ” Ballard said. “His remorse was more over being caught than over doing something wrong.”

Al Cooper, a Santa Clara psychologist and sexual therapist, says sex-at-work exploits reflect the general increase in sexuality in modern life that also has led to such things as phone sex and Internet pornography. Many people, perhaps compensating for the lack of true intimacy in their relationships, “are looking for more novelty and quick highs in their relationships, and the workplace is a way they can get there,” Cooper said.

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Sexual Compulsion and Sheer Thrill

He says that sexual compulsion--an inability to control sexual impulses--also is a major factor. Cooper estimates that 5% to 8% of American men have at least some sexually compulsive traits.

Gary Schoener, a Minneapolis psychologist who has studied sexual misconduct by clergy and other professionals, offered a similar view.

“People with sexual impulse control disorders exist everywhere,” he said. “They’ve got sex on the brain.”

Workplace sex might even be an outlandish expression of defiance; one of the most popular spots, according to an informal magazine survey and other accounts, is on the boss’ desk.

Cheng, the USC office romance researcher, said some of his interview subjects “related the boss’ desk to their parents’ bed when they were teenagers. Both situations defy authority--parental authority or organizational authority.”

Behavior specialists willing to speculate on President Clinton’s conduct with Lewinsky see a variety of psychological forces at play. One of the common theories is that he is motivated by the excitement of risk-taking and defying convention.

“The people who ask why he’s taking this sort of risk aren’t paying attention [to Clinton’s personal history]. He likes taking on big odds, and getting away with the sneaky thrill of having sex with Monica in a windowless hallway by the Oval Office is part of that,” Cheng said.

Cooper speculates that Clinton was driven by out-of-control sexual compulsions. Some of the characteristic traits of the sexually compulsive, he said, appear to match Clinton’s profile. For starters, they resort to psychological denial. They also make persistent efforts to end or curb their sexual behavior and yet continue in it despite significant risks to, among other things, their careers or personal relationships.

Like many others who engage in sex at work, Clinton acted when his wife wasn’t around. According to the report issued by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr in September, the sexual encounters and telephone sex between President Clinton and Lewinsky tended to take place when First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was out of town.

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Usually the Long-Term Consequence Is Shame

There are few, if any, reliable statistics on sex at work. One of the best-known surveys related to the topic was an informal 1994 poll by Men’s Health magazine. It found that 56% of the 1,400 readers who responded claimed to have had sex at work.

That finding might have been inflated, experts say, by wishful thinking on the part of the people who chose to respond to the survey. But Blackwell’s estimate of the percentage of adults who have had sex at work, in the 33% to 40% range, still surprises many people.

He says that the figure likely is a little higher for gay men and a little lower for lesbians but that, overall, the percentage of homosexuals who have had sex at work probably is about the same as for heterosexuals.

Whatever the reasons someone has sex at work, the long-term result often is a sense of shame.

Take the example of the woman who, while in her 20s, carried on the romance with her boss at the San Fernando Valley electronics plant. The woman, who asked not to be identified, said over the course of several years she made love dozens of times with the manager in the company’s photography dark room.

She explained that she, like many other single people having affairs with married co-workers, was “stuck doing it at work because there’s no other choice.”

Her motivation for having the affair?

“It was exciting,” she said. “It was rebellious. In my case, it also was a feeling of control over him, due to the fact he was married, and it wasn’t appropriate.”

The relationship eventually came to the attention of co-workers and upper management, causing her embarrassment and prompting her to leave the company. Today, more than 15 years after the affair ended, she is happily married to another man and attributes her behavior at the plant to being “young and stupid.”

The affair “still haunts me some times,” the woman said. “My reputation has followed me. People who I haven’t seen in 15 years will say, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember her.’ ”

Still, she isn’t counting on many people taking her advice to be more circumspect in their own romances with co-workers.

“That’s life, and that’s lust,” she said.