You don't have to be in a relationship to get a warning off
I recall becoming friendly - in the non-biblical, proper friend sense - with a woman I used to work with. We had a similar sense of humour and similar interests and used to chat in our free time and on breaks.*

So one evening, two minutes after this woman had gone home, the acting manager called me into "her" office for a lecture. She had started on the same day as me and was nominally the same grade, but saw herself as a cut above - she was only one letter out.

She told me that rumours of an affair were going around and how "mud sticks" and my future career could be jeopardised.

I think my reply was "oh, well". I'm still at the same company 18 years later, so perhaps it did adversely affect my career after all.

*With our respective partners we used to enter as a team in a local pub quiz, so it's not like our friendship was in any way surreptitious.
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Wed 16 Jun 2010, 19:44, Reply)