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No sex, please

11th Nov 2015
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So, it is reported, accountants don’t like “relationships” in the office and there ought to be a “work relationship policy” in place. One notes the slightly prudish use of “relationships”; it presumably does not mean families, as so many local accountancy firms operate on dynastic principles.

Three quarters of accountants, it says, know of at least one relationship that has gone on or is going on in the office right now, which suggests that one quarter are so uninterested in their fellow persons they are effectively blind to what’s happening. Or else the other three-quarters are prowling round looking under the furniture with a torch, giving a whole new meaning to “Hot-desking”.

I can boast that there are no “relationships” in my business, but then it’s just me, so it would have to be onanistic. Get any bigger than one, though, and relationships loom.

Not that anyone believes it about accountants. Do we see steamy soap operas set in accountants’ offices, compared to TV doctors and lawyers and copshops, even undertakers, where they steam constantly like a couple of black fives struggling up the Lickey Incline (which for the benefit of younger readers is not at all a sexual reference; ask your dad)?

Alternatively women could be made to wear the red sash of the Junior Anti-Sex league.

Historically, It has also been the case that the (male) partners of accountancy firms were very uncomfortable in dealing with the opposite gender at all, many of them apparently believing that women were by definition innumerate (not to mention unpredictable, over emotional etc etc).

What we need to do here, I suspect, is read between the lines. This is a way of suggesting that there’s lots of rumpy-pumpy going on in accountancy, so it could be an option for red-blooded girls and boys.

There is of course a very long and noble tradition of hanky-panky in the workplace, much of it from times in the 1970s and 1980s when workplaces were on the whole much looser places and office Christmas parties were reliable sources of trouble.

There is a clear and distinct danger here, which is the use of power to compel sexual relations (which is not to say that the possibility for young lads of being seized on by the office cougar is as likely as fantasy might suppose). But I suspect the moustache-twirling office lothario and the old groper are fading into the background in this day and age (and much more likely to get thumped than once they were).

In any case we are heading as things stand to a world in which there will be very few males left in accountancy office, young men being by definition innumerate (not to mention unpredictable, over-emotional, etc.).

But all is not lost, they say! You can write an office policy to establish what needs to be reported to whom! That should sort it out.

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Replies (3)

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By Duhamel
11th Nov 2015 22:54

Must be feeling ill
No mention of the evil Tories and their fiendish schemes this week.

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By k743snx
12th Nov 2015 13:11

Office policies

My company now has nearly as many policies (IT usage, harassment, nuisance calls, parental leave, expenses - to name but a selection - than there are employees (25 actually).

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By Steven Dring
13th Nov 2015 14:22

Glad there was no policy

I met my now Fiancee while we were both working in an accountancy practice. We have been together happily for 4 years and have a son. It never interfered with work and I don't see why it should be prevented.

Plus it saved work some money as neither of us needed a +1 for the x-mas do!

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