Annotated Bibliography Proposal

There are several workplace topics I have been thinking about for my annotated bibliography, mostly relating to women in the workplace. The readings we did a couple of weeks ago made me think about sexual harassment and working mothers among other things. It's been hard for me to narrow it down, but I finally decided on intra-office relationships. (This is the correct usage. Inter-office would be between different offices as opposed to the same office.)

I just saw an episode of "The Office" that dealt with that issue. (I've got hooked on the show recently). The human resources guy advised against intra-office relationships, but said that if a relationship was already begun the employees should fill out official forms and turn them in to the corporate offices. I'm wondering what real life corporate policies regarding relationships are. When I worked at a movie theater, I was told that we could date anyone on the same level as us, but no one above or below (meaning supervisors couldn't date the people they should be supervising). This makes sense, because of the imbalance of power; it would be difficult for an employee to break off a relationship with his/her boss without fearing repercussions. I think that intra-office dating (even among peers) is inadvisable, because of the inevitable awkwardness that would happen if the relationship ended. It's hard to maintain a professional attitude towards an ex.

That said, I have thought about Dan's post from a couple of weeks ago. It does make sense that we would be attracted to people at work, especially since we seem to be spending more and more time there. Just as students date classmates, co-workers may want to date. It may be difficult to find a suitable partner outside of the office. In this annotated bibliography, I want to learn how company policies involving intra-office dating have evolved and what issues are still problematic.