The Wall Street Journal plug in their own Alien: Director Cut Your Heart, Your Job, and Dating a Co-Worker article authored by Yoree Koh and Rachel Feintzeig. Lawyers weight in:

WSJ: ” Mr. Smith [a lawyer with Jackson, Lewis’s Pittsburgh’s office) is recommending that they put strict rules in place barring managers from dating anyone further down in the organization, with firing as a potential consequence. He said every company he makes the recommendation to is following suit.”

What are the rules at megabrands such as Google and Facebook ?

WSJ: “One rule at Facebook and Alphabet’s Google: Employees are only allowed to ask a co-worker out once. If they are turned down, they don’t get to ask again. Ambiguous answers such as “I’m busy” or “I can’t that night” count as a ‘no’, said Heidi Swartz, FB’s global head of employment law. At Facebook, if ‘a potential date involves a person in a more senior position than the other, the date itself doesn’t necessarily need to be disclosed to the HR…But real life is never as cut and dried as the scenarios that appear in sexual-harassment training modules [of course !]…”

The article touches on the so called “love contracts” -in which a couple agree to behave professionally at work and acknowledge they weren’t coerced into the relationships.

We also have University of Toronto professor Jordan B. Peterson who’s got a huge following with young people. Obscure professor ? Not a chance ! Watch carefully the latter part that starts at 5:52.

So what are the rules of dating at work ? As if you couldn’t tell it from the most popular article I wrote last year:

1. You do not date people at work. Period. The Rules. It’s actually one rule, dummy.

If you are serious about your career, and I assume that you are, you do not throw it away and become susceptible to a woman’s whim. Women will hold you ransom five years down the road. I am not a lawyer, but I completely agree with the lawyer’s opinion in the article that would ban managers from dating subalterns. What women are currently doing (and it shows no signs of slowing down): they are getting their meal tickets by gunning down men’s [careers].

If you want a career, you need to make some sacrifices.

2. Go to the HR office and ask: What is their policy on dating. Stay informed. Ignorance is no excuse.

3. If and when women proposition you, stand firm, stand clear. Don’t let them entrap you. You’ve got better things to do. Answer: Thanks, but I don’t date coworkers.

4. On the “love contracts”, once again, I’d err on the side of caution. It is only a matter of time until they get dragged into the courts.