美国国家公共电台 NPR In A Crisis Of Sexual Harassment, Whither The Office Romance?

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

The near-daily stream of revelations of sexual harassment 1 has become a cultural crisis. So we asked one of our cultural correspondents to think about the place where many of these incidents seem to happen - the workplace, where people meet and date and fall in love, but where power can be abused. NPR's Neda Ulaby considers the state of the office romance.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE 2: Given that I work in a newsroom, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised by how many office romances in the movies take place there, like "Broadcast News" from 1987 or "His Girl Friday" from 1940, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "HIS GIRL FRIDAY")

CARY GRANT: (As Walter Burns) We've got something between us nothing can change.

ROSALIND RUSSELL: (As Hildy Johnson) Oh, well, I suppose you're right in a way, Walter.

GRANT: (As Walter Burns) Sure I'm right.

RUSSELL: (As Hildy Johnson) I am fond of you, you know.

GRANT: (As Walter Burns) That a girl.

ULABY: So a real-life copyeditor might have had these movies in mind when she started a new job about 10 years ago.

CAROLYN HUCKABAY: I got to the paper and I noticed this really cute boy who was a senior editor. And that was Brian.

ULABY: Brian Howard, the cute senior editor, eventually married Carolyn Huckabay. Recently they had a baby. But when their romance sparked at Philadelphia City Paper, they ignored potential pitfalls 3.

HUCKABAY: We were just like, I think you're cute. You think I'm cute. Let's do it.

ULABY: OK. University of Alabama law professor Daiquiri Steele says there are studies that show office romances can increase job satisfaction, motivation and morale 4 overall.

DAIQUIRI STEELE: Office romances have also been found to lead to increased creativity, to add more dynamic energy to the workplace.

ULABY: But when they go wrong, she says, former office romances can lead to decreased productivity, morale and charges of sexual harassment.

STEELE: Employers have not figured this out.

ULABY: A lot of us haven't. You may have heard a certain kind of person bemoaning 5 that office romances may wither 6 away because of complaints about sexual harassment. Let's hear what the feds have to say about that. Chai Feldblum of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (ph).

CHAI FELDBLUM: There is no way we are going to stop office romances. And that should not be what we are setting out to do.

ULABY: The commissioner 7 recently co-wrote a report on workplace harassment.

FELDBLUM: It doesn't need to be the end of office romances. It needs to be a catalyst 8 for employers to think about what they don't want happening in their workplaces that will cause people to feel uncomfortable and not wanting to show up at work.

ULABY: Some employers ignore office romances. Others completely ban them. Others, like NPR, discourage romances between supervisors 10 and the workers who report to them. Yet another approach suggests disclosing relationships to HR to ensure they're truly consensual. Law professor Daiquiri Steele says that might sound like a buzzkill, but consider the consequences of an ugly work breakup.

STEELE: There can be an instance where the one that does not want out continues to pursue.

ULABY: That might start to feel like harassment. Or say a supervisor 9 ends things with an employee.

STEELE: And almost as a revenge measure, for lack of a better term, for being dumped, then the one who did not want out now claims that the entire office romance was sexual harassment and now claims that it was indeed unwelcome.

ULABY: So disclosing consent actually helps employers and employees protect themselves. None of this occurred to our office lovebirds from earlier in the story. When Brian Howard first asked his co-worker, Carolyn Huckabay, if she wanted to come and see the Phillies play baseball...

BRIAN HOWARD: There was a pause after I asked it.

ULABY: And he thought, oh, no. It's now awkward with my co-worker.

HOWARD: So I said, yeah, we should get the whole office together and go to a Phillies game. So...

HUCKABAY: Our first date was chaperoned by 12 of our closest colleagues.

ULABY: That's a story of good boundaries and reading signals correctly. But take a guy who asks out his co-worker four times and gets told no repeatedly. Chai Feldblum says that might not rise to the legal level of harassment, but she says maybe now is a good time for employers to consider not changing what people think is appropriate but how they behave at work.

FELDBLUM: So a man can continue to believe that a good dating strategy is to ask someone four times because maybe she's just playing hard to get. That person can continue to believe that's a good dating strategy, but not in a workplace.

ULABY: Feldblum says employers might consider making clear that such behavior at work is unacceptable preventively between men and women or anyone else. Law professor Daiquiri Steele says that might sound like common sense.

STEELE: This is true, but I learned a long time ago that common sense is not common.

ULABY: Generally, says EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum, women understand the difference between flirtation 11 and harassment.

FELDBLUM: The main thing this cultural and social moment of talking about sexual harassment should give us is that men should begin to understand this as well.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "HIS GIRL FRIDAY")

RUSSELL: (As Hildy Johnson) Would you mind if I sat down?

GRANT: (As Walter Burns) There's been a lamp burning in the window for you, honey. Here.

RUSSELL: (As Hildy Johnson) Oh, I jumped out that window a long time ago, Walter.

ULABY: Listening to each other, making sure we're on the same page might not be shutting workplace flirtations down, but making them work a whole lot better. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.