Is it possible to go out on a date within office hours? I don’t mean skipping out at lunchtime to meet up with a handsome stranger. (I’ve done that. I don’t recommend it. Gives you a secret smile for the rest of the day but ruins your productivity levels.) What I mean is: if you go out with someone from work, while you’re at work, can it ever count as a date?
I ask because I need an interpretation of what just happened today. As trailed a few days ago, DOC and I had agreed to lunch. We’ve had a couple of lunches before, in the staff canteen, but today when I sent down a scout to check out the fare – I couldn’t afford to be caught in a situation where I had to eat spaghetti, noodles, or anything bright red – she came back with a damning report. Minute Steaks: possible choking hazard. Vegetarian sausages: grey, and made of polystyrene. She couldn’t bring herself to describe the side dishes.
It sounded like a rotten way to spend an hour with a nice guy, so I suggested we break out. He responded with a perfectly judged list of nearby restaurants. Not sandwich bars; not coffee shops; restaurants. I picked one that was suitably low-key, and far enough from the office that we wouldn’t bump into anyone. Then I snuck away from my desk when no one was around, so they couldn’t ask me where I was headed.
Over lunch, we barely talked work at all. We discussed books; he told me a bit about his past; I over-stated how much I was enjoying the food. We even did the mandatory sibling-counting. All in all, it was classic first-date material. And then, to spoil the mood, we went back to work.
Date or no date?
Date!
[...] DOC has asked me out to dinner party he is allegedly throwing with him his housemates. Setting aside the fact that no one throws a dinner party for their own housemates, he also made the schoolboy error of setting an actual date for said dinner. It happens to be a day I am out of the country. Everyone knows if you like someone, and want to ask them out, you make your suggested plan as vague as humanly possible so that they have less excuse to turn you down. (Or is that just me?) [...]