What is the hottest singles scene in Scranton today? Outside of apps and services, the best place to find a date might be the office. Employees are working longer hours and have less time for outside contacts. For that reason, relationships often develop at work—estimates suggest one-third to one-half of all romantic and/or sexual relationships start at work.

David Wallace (recently promoted from Dunder Mifflin CFO to CEO) is concerned about office relationships because of some recent reports of hookups and dating relationships happening in the Scranton branch.

While David has only heard rumors, everyone at the Scranton branch knows Michael and Jan hooked up. Jan is VP of Northeast Sales and Michael is a Regional Manager—so she is his supervisor—which makes the whole thing ethically questionable (and just plain weird… for a bunch of reasons).

Anyway, David is concerned about potential problems resulting from relationships at work. What happens if a relationship between a superior and subordinate results in favoritism? Or even the perception of favoritism?

Maybe worse, what happens if a relationship results in a nasty breakup? Will employees treat each other unfairly? unprofessionally? It’s a good thing David doesn’t know about Ryan and Kelly yet—that whole thing is a disaster waiting to happen.

David would like to simply ban all relationships among employees. But that’s not likely to work. He asks you—Toby Flenderson (Human Resources Representative, Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch)—to learn what guidelines could (and should) be established regarding office romances.

This is going to be tricky. Any message you (Toby) write is going to have to be CCed to Michael (your boss), Jan (your bosses boss), but written to David (your bosses bosses boss). With Michael and Jan’s recent hookup, it will be difficult to write in a way that doesn’t seem to call them out (but kinda calls them out… since rumors of Michael and Jan are what prompted David’s concern).