With the development of working from home, it might have been feared that, like the mythical Atlantis, a whole part of work life would be swallowed up for good in the abyss of distance. Team-building seminars? No, sex at the office! Despite a climate that has largely evolved, rest assured: Cupid can shoot an arrow through a heart at the water fountain.

In the study "La Romance au Travail : Amour, Sexe et Autres Histoires" ("Romance at work: Love, Sex and Other Stories") presented in February by the Technologia group, 46% of those surveyed have already experienced a romantic relationship in their professional environment, and 17% had a purely sexual one. For 91% of those surveyed, this had never been a problem.

The first lesson to be learned is that the old "don't shit where you eat" adage, which would have had us believe that sex in the office is a source of more problems than pleasure, is now resolutely obsolete. Admittedly, there are potential pitfalls – gossip, suspicions of favoritism, jealousy, inappropriate nicknames uttered at the coffee machine, etc – but surely not enough to extinguish the flames of passion. "Desire is rooted in social experiences, most of which have little to do with sexuality," writes Rébecca Lévy-Guillain in her highly recommended book Le Désir Est un Sport de Combat ("Desire is a combat sport").

As part of a wider demand to be able to experience emotions at work, the very possibility of sex at the office underlines the fact that it is not robots but indeed fully-fledged human beings, with their needs, complexities and emotions, who engage in professional activity. While there is no risk of stumbling upon ChatGPT engaging in a "quickie" in the break room, banning this type of fleeting relationship would be akin to McCarthyism of the fly, and frowned upon. Only 8% of those polled were in favor of regulations that would make it compulsory to declare a sexual relationship within the company.

On the other hand, a key term has come to the fore in the wake of the #MeToo movement: "consent." For 77% of respondents, a close physical relationship is acceptable so long as there is explicit consent from both parties, while 91% of respondents wished for potential abuses to be regulated with sanctions against sexist behavior and sexual harassment. As a result, office Pygmalionism now gets a bad press.

As a side-effect, the main turn-off these days consists of occupying a hierarchical position. We have come far from the days when leadership conferred a supposed sex appeal, but was usually harassment disguised as a pseudo-erotic game. Your position in the upper echelons of the organizational chart now drastically limits your room for maneuver, raising suspicions of potential coercion on your part.

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