Colleagues having an affair. Awkward.

[Anonymous]

There is a troll on here who absolutely wants this to be a military thing.

Go away.

OP did not say this was the case. They said it was "relevant", which means nothing.

In any normal workplace, OP should ignore this.

If OP wants to come back and elaborate on their reporting duty, then they know where to find this thread.

[Anonymous]

If you could plausibly pretend you didn’t scroll all the way (all required info in first or second email before it gets weird), I’d answer the question and let them squirm. If that’s not possible and the policy is such you could be on the hook for not reporting, I would report.

[Anonymous]

Forward to his wife

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just pretend you didn't notice. No one will thank you for intervening. Whereas you may cause misery.

The unsuspecting wife might want to know.

[Anonymous]

Why cover for people who are abusing the code of personal conduct in ethical, legal and professional ways and lack morals and empathy.

[Anonymous]

You delete the racy part and respond to question then double delete original
email after you snap photo of it on your personal iPhone

[Anonymous]

I would only care if I thought the spouse would resort to workplace violence.

When I was an adjunct, our president outed her affair accidentally via reply all. It had zero impact on my role.

[Anonymous]

When I worked in a hospital a married MD fellows had an affair with a nurse who ended up pregnant. Both were fired from their positions after the aggrieved wife outed them.

[Anonymous]

Report to HR, obviously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Report to HR, obviously.

This is what I'd do because that is crazy behavior on their part, but ignoring is fine too unless there is a duty to report (I imagine there are relatively few situations where that is the case and if it was the case here, OP would know that). I'd just respond as normal on the exact same email chain; not sure why people are suggesting you have to pretend you didn't see it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Today I received a work-related email addressed to me and three other people. The chain made it very clear that two of those people are having an affair (the sender and another person).

It appears that the sender meant to grab a different email chain between the two paramours, and add me and other person with a question about the conversation (I.e: “I’m looping Jim and Kim in for their insights.”), but instead grabbed a relatively explicit email chain between them, planning a rendezvous-vous (it didn’t seem like the first time).

The two people added to the chain (me and the other person) are senior to the two original parties.

No one has responded to the email yet, but I do have an answer to the question at the top of the chain.

What should I do? Start a new email and answer the question? Tell HR? Ignore it?

For what it’s worth, we have a pretty strong anti-fraternization policy. He is married. She is single.

MYOB unless you want to get sued.

This isn't really relevant but I'm trying to imagine a scenario in which OP would get sued for not minding her own business. Even if OP did something insane like post the message on TikTok or circulate the message to the entire office, who has a legitimate lawsuit?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Today I received a work-related email addressed to me and three other people. The chain made it very clear that two of those people are having an affair (the sender and another person).

It appears that the sender meant to grab a different email chain between the two paramours, and add me and other person with a question about the conversation (I.e: “I’m looping Jim and Kim in for their insights.”), but instead grabbed a relatively explicit email chain between them, planning a rendezvous-vous (it didn’t seem like the first time).

The two people added to the chain (me and the other person) are senior to the two original parties.

No one has responded to the email yet, but I do have an answer to the question at the top of the chain.

What should I do? Start a new email and answer the question? Tell HR? Ignore it?

For what it’s worth, we have a pretty strong anti-fraternization policy. He is married. She is single.

MYOB unless you want to get sued.

This isn't really relevant but I'm trying to imagine a scenario in which OP would get sued for not minding her own business. Even if OP did something insane like post the message on TikTok or circulate the message to the entire office, who has a legitimate lawsuit?

Yeah, especially since these morons outed themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I'd just respond as normal on the exact same email chain; not sure why people are suggesting you have to pretend you didn't see it.

It wasn't clear to me if the newest email said "Jane/John, do you have any suggestions for when to submit the ABC report". And then buried below was the romantic talk.

Or if the newest email said "Jane/John, do you have any suggestions?" .

Because for the first, you could probably reply/all as normal and give your input (and pretend not to see the romantic talk). Or, pretend not to see the actual email because, well just because.

But if it's the 2nd, you would have to read below, so then the only option is to pretend you didn't see the actual email itself.

[Anonymous]

Even though you know he’s married, he may be separated or going through a divorce that you don’t know about.

[Anonymous]

If you have a pretty strong anti-fraternization policy do you also have a policy requiring employees to report bad behavior of any type? If you do then you need to report it especially if your job is at a more senior level. If you don’t have a reporting policy then I’d ignore it. Also, make sure the email is very clear that they are in a physical relationship rather than just suggestive banter.