Lunch-hour lust becoming a workplace worry

Advertisement

Advertise with us

DEAR LONELYHEARTS: Two people from my business are having a noon-hour affair. I’m their supervisor and yesterday I got a phone call from the guy’s partner, who was all in a tizzy.

Read this article for free:


or

Already have an account? Log in here »

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Subscribe and receive a limited-edition Free Press branded hat or tote.

Digital Subscription

One year of digital access for only $205*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles

*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional

$1 for the first 4 weeks*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles
Start now

*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/11/2025 (260 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR LONELYHEARTS: Two people from my business are having a noon-hour affair. I’m their supervisor and yesterday I got a phone call from the guy’s partner, who was all in a tizzy.

Apparently these two go to the woman’s place near our office for “nooners.” Their personal relationships shouldn’t be my business, but their behaviour and the fallout from it is putting me in a difficult position.

What should I do? I have better things to do than worry about employees’ silly affairs.

— So Annoyed, The Maples

Dear Annoyed: Ask the two lust birds into your office and tell them about the distressed phone call you received from the guy’s mate.

Ask them what they think they should be doing as far as their affair impacting the workplace.

One or both might ask to speak to you alone — so be sure to take that offer.

It’s possible one might be less invested than the other in these noon-hour trysts and may be happy to volunteer a possible solution from their side.

No matter what, you don’t need to be part of any more distress calls on this from anybody, so tell your male employee to pass that important message along to his angry partner.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I never really feel sexually frustrated because I’m attracted to men, women and my own body. I also read about sex voraciously.

The problem is my interest in sex is overwhelming to most of my relationship partners so far, and more so when they know I’m planning to write a book and maybe talk about people’s performance and hang-ups — anonymously, of course.

They are either scared or titillated they might end up in my book, though I would never mention their names.

Now I’m feeling stuck after the first few chapters. I am a psychology student and I analyze everything to death.

My best friend says I should have kept the book a secret, as I’m scaring future sex partners away.

So, how do I live my life like a regular person when I’m totally fascinated with experimental sex and the extreme closeness it brings, and writing about it?

— Frustrated, Linden Woods

Dear Frustrated: Some people are so fascinated by the world of sexual possibilities that they make a study of it — and want to write books. That would be you.

But why continue to go it alone on this project?

Consider looking for a writing partner from the psychology world who is also interested in the topic and then possibly enlist willing participants in your studies, rather than tapping into your own sex partners’ behaviour and the hurt feelings that could ensue.

Just admit to people close to you that you’ve gotten stuck writing this book all by yourself. You need someone to add inspiration to your experiments, and help with documenting them.

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6.

Maureen Scurfield

Maureen Scurfield
Advice columnist

Maureen Scurfield writes the Miss Lonelyhearts advice column.

Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.

Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.

Report Error Submit a Tip

More Stories

Fusion pop-up coming to street food festival

Tiago Resko 3 minute read Preview

Fusion pop-up coming to street food festival

Tiago Resko 3 minute read 2:01 AM CDT

After surviving breast cancer and watching her husband live through a brain tumour, Marilyn Magtoto decided it was time to take a chance.

Magtoto left her corporate job as a mortgage specialist in July to start M3 Cravings, a pop-up restaurant that blends the traditional Filipino cuisine she grew up on with Mexican street food.

“To me it was like, how much longer do I want to put on hold this thing I’ve been wanting to do for a while now?” Magtoto says. “People may think I’m crazy for leaving behind a corporate professional career I’ve been doing for 22 years, but you know what — it’s worth it.”

Magtoto will now have the chance to share her food at the Streat Feast Festival at The Forks to Sunday; the event brings together people from a variety of backgrounds to share their culture through food, art and performances.

Read
2:01 AM CDT

ER wait times continue to rise, patients continue to give up

Carol Sanders 4 minute read Preview

ER wait times continue to rise, patients continue to give up

Carol Sanders 4 minute read Monday, Jul. 4, 2022

Emergency room average wait times in Winnipeg increased in May, while the number of patients who left HSC without receiving care in April nearly doubled its January 2021 sum.

According to Shared Health records, in April, 1,097 patients left the downtown Health Sciences Centre ER without being seen by a physician, compared to 862 who did so in January — and 591 in January 2021.

The longest wait times for nine out of 10 patients seeking medical care at Winnipeg hospitals in May was 7.92 hours — up from 7.62 in April, provincial government data show.

Median wait times increased to 2.97 hours in May, from 2.87 in April.

Read
Monday, Jul. 4, 2022

A timeline of key events in the SNC-Lavalin affair

The Canadian Press 7 minute read Preview

A timeline of key events in the SNC-Lavalin affair

The Canadian Press 7 minute read Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019

OTTAWA - A chronology of key developments in the SNC-Lavalin controversy, according to public documents, reports and testimony to the House of Commons justice committee:

Feb. 19, 2015 - The RCMP lays corruption and fraud charges against Montreal-based engineering and construction firm SNC-Lavalin over business dealings in Libya. SNC-Lavalin says the charges are without merit.

March 27, 2018 - The Liberals table a budget bill allowing for "remediation agreements," plea-bargain-like deals for corporations to avoid criminal proceedings by making reparations for bad behaviour. SNC-Lavalin lobbied for such a provision in Canadian law.

Sept. 4 - The Public Prosecution Service rejects SNC-Lavalin's request to negotiate a remediation agreement. Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould is informed of the decision.

Read
Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019

Democrats try to stamp out school closures as omicron surges

Nicholas Riccardi And Collin Binkley, The Associated Press 7 minute read Preview

Democrats try to stamp out school closures as omicron surges

Nicholas Riccardi And Collin Binkley, The Associated Press 7 minute read Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022

When Chicago teachers voted to work remotely last week to protest COVID-19 safety protections in the nation’s third-largest school district, Democratic Party officials leapt into action.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker pushed for a quick end to the job action and helped secure rapid tests to entice teachers back to the classroom. Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the teachers “abandoned their posts” in “an illegal walkout.” White House press secretary Jen Psaki stressed that students should be in school. The standoff ended with a tentative agreement late Monday.

Nearly two years into a pandemic that shows no signs of waning, Democrats are speaking out more forcefully against COVID-19 school closures, recognizing a rising anger among parents worried that their kids are falling behind. But in doing so, Democrats risk angering some teachers unions, which are advocating for more protections for educators as the omicron variant takes hold and whose support helped get Democrats elected.

The political peril for Democrats became clear after their candidate lost the Virginia governor’s race in November to a Republican who focused on education and slammed the prior year’s school closures. Now, in what already promises to be a tough midterm election year, with frustrations mounting among their base over stalled voting and spending legislation, they may face real trouble over an issue that directly affects Americans' lives.

Read
Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022

Vanderhaeghe ruminates on literary greats, writing, history and more in new non-fiction collection

Reviewed by Dave Williamson 4 minute read Preview

Vanderhaeghe ruminates on literary greats, writing, history and more in new non-fiction collection

Reviewed by Dave Williamson 4 minute read Saturday, Sep. 28, 2024

Veteran Saskatoon author Guy Vanderhaeghe has assembled 37 of his non-fiction pieces written over the last 40 years in a new book — mostly, to paraphrase the book’s title, because his fans have asked him to.

His work is collected into six sections: “Books and Writers 1,” “Recollections 1,” “The Writer and Writing 1: Thinking by Dreams,” “Books and Writers 2,” “Recollections 2,” and “The Writer and Writing 2: History and Literature.” There are insightful book reviews, lively articles, personal memories and a few speeches, such as the Margaret Laurence lecture he gave at the Writers’ Union’s annual general meeting in May 2014.

Vanderhaeghe made an auspicious debut on the Canadian literary scene in 1982 with a much-praised short-story collection called Man Descending. To his great surprise, it won the annual Governor General’s Award for fiction. Early in the Laurence lecture, he said he knew he had not deserved the award. “Self-doubt and embarrassment were making it impossible for me to get on with the next book,” he writes. It was Laurence herself who assured him that “nothing mattered besides getting on with the work and doing it as well as I could manage. Everything else, whether praise or criticism, was in the long run nothing but mere noise, clamour, distraction.”

Vanderhaeghe has since won the Governor General’s Award two more times — in 1996 for his novel The Englishman’s Boy and in 2015 for his collection Daddy Lenin and Other Stories.

Read
Saturday, Sep. 28, 2024

Dazed and confused stoner comedy hard to get right

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Dazed and confused stoner comedy hard to get right

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read 2:01 AM CDT

Stoner comedy has always been kind of a dude thing. Think of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Cheech & Chong, Ice Cube’s Friday franchise, Harold & Kumar, basically any movie with the young Seth Rogen.

Screenwriter Dylan Meyer (Moxie) provides a much-needed gender swap in her directorial debut, giving us Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat as ride-or-die roommates Frankie and Molly. Dipping in and out of the gig economy and perpetually broke, they share their Los Angeles bungalow with two cats, a life-size cardboard cutout of Celine Dion and an enormously complicated “bong-a-tron” that takes up most of the living room.

Finally, finally, it’s women who get to be messy, aimless and really high.

Unfortunately, stoner movies — no matter the gender — are surprisingly hard to get right. The Wrong Girls is sweet and shaggy and intermittently funny, but Meyer ends up struggling with the genre’s common buzzkills.

Read
2:01 AM CDT