Nothing says unprofessional like.......

Xhosa is your friend then as pretty much everybody is going to understand if you swear in any European language.

People having affairs and flings with coworkers - a huge no-no in my book, regardless of marital status (which is a separate issue, it bothers me even in the case of unattached people).

Just a personal opinion.

nothing says unprofessional like...

hitting the "reply all" button on company wide emails.

I worked in a 20.000 people strong Swiss company before where some low-level early 20s chick in a callcenter once thought she could try to find a buyer for her second hand car by sending out an email to "all" - probably not recognizing that this is not "all of my call center" but in fact the entire company. There were some ten emails after that in the line of "why did I get this email", "stop spamming this inbox" or "do you recognize what you just did?" all through "reply all". I hope they got all fired. Including the IT person who is responsible for the email lists and permissions.

Geez, there goes the last place that you get to meet single women. With all the options gone now, I guess it will be the single life for me.

So, you didn't buy the car then...?

I just hope they all had their bus passes handy.

Hahaha, never despair, you can always meet people in all kinds of places besides work (including a coworker's friend at a social event outside the office!)

Seriously though, I think it is a recipe for disaster: until all goes well, all is well, but your effectiveness and judgement are impaired at the very least - butterflies in the stomach, etc.

When things start going bad and you have to see the person everyday AND work with the person, it can be awful.

And...well, nothing wrong with the single life either

Sorry but I will have to disagree on this one. As long as you are not working directly with the person on a day to day basis and there is no conflict of interests, I see no issue. I am a mature adult who can control my butterflies in professional situations. I would react very badly to being told that I could not persue a relationship with somebody that I was falling or fallen in love with just because we worked for the same legal entity.

or worse..

PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO TURN OFF THE CAPS LOCK.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...-capitals.html

The expression is "Never screw the crew" - and refers to your immediate team.

Screwing outside of your team is OK

Screwing everyone is the job of management

Not reading "How to send and reply to email"

...dressing up like Rihanna and cavorting provocatively on your boss' desk.

Don't think I'll be doing that again any time soon.

I guess I was thinking about the case you specifically excluded, e.g. working directly on a day-to-day basis, etc., or even worse, a service provider/client relationship. Those are my big no-nos I was referring to.

I would agree with you that there might be cases where it would not be an issue in principle - working for the same legal entity, but say, in a totally different/unrelated capacity. It depends on the specific case - me personally, I like to completely separate work and personal life, mostly because I like to disconnect and talk about something else when out of the office

Still, you can't control love, no?

(I wish I could say I am a mature adult who can control my butterflies, but alas... )

Working as a cashier in Coop and not pack the customers shopping?

Sorry couldnt resist :P

We had a top manager doing that.

HR sent a mail to the entire company reminding us that the end of year was approaching and we should complete any unfiled expense reports. A very very senior manager hit the reply to all button and wrote a mail listing his unpaid bills, attaching scans of the same, and stating his bank account number. This was all the more embarrassing seeing the person involved was the head of security.

Okay, some good points but seriously, somebody need to have a chat to the guy that wrote that.

He seems to have a bit of a stick up his ....

Worked with a numpty once who sent an information email to about 1500 users.

Unfortunately he was one of these pratts who requests a read receipt by default. We were quite amused by the email deluge he got with associated "ping"s (out of office messages are usually bad enough).

Which brings me to;

Idiots that have their default email priority to "High". Like everything they have to say is important or something.

Dressing like , well, abovementioned Rhianna.

While I understand that when you look attractive, it's much easier to get your way when dealing with male co-workers and they are indeed a lot friendlier, there should still be a difference between an office and strip-club. Backless dresses, miniskirts, tops cut lower than your belly-button and skirts without underwear if you know you have to climb some stairs during the day. Some things cannot be unseen. And the most commonly used expression that those named male co-workers will use when talking about you will not be "professional" either.

unless you do work in a strip club.