Last week we talked about office romance and the fact that I was not surprised by a recent CareerBuilder.com survey, which found that three of 10 people married a co-worker.
I asked for some e-mails on office romance and got replies from Mike and Kim, who have been married to people they met on the job for 19 and 14 years, respectively, so it sounds like they did something right.
Mike said he met his bride-to-be at the plant when he worked in production and she worked as the secretary for the general manager.
“She was probably the most professional person I had ever run into so we did not talk about work away from work,” Mike wrote in his e-mail. “There were a lot of things she worked on that I did not need to know so I never asked her about rumors or, ‘Hey, did you hear?’ because I did not want to put her in a bad position and she would not have told me anyway.”
Smart move, Mike.
Mike said his wife’s retired now and he’s still working and most of their friends are people from work. It just shows how keeping your work life and your home life separate is often a good idea.
Kim said her office romance is still going on.
She said she met her husband on swing shift at a sawmill and he was so shy that she thought he would never ask her out. But eventually he did. They’re now married with two children.
“He’s a bit more talkative now, good thing, and my family loves him,” she said. “So yes, office romances can work out.”
Nice to hear.
Reading a newspaper
I also got a better sense last Friday of what it’s like to be a teacher when I talked to five classes in a row at Snohomish High School about journalism and why it’s important to keep up with the news, either online or by reading a printed newspaper. (Answer: It makes you more informed and a better citizen.)
In December 2008, a study declared that a majority of people were getting their news from sources other than a printed paper, so I wasn’t shocked when I asked the students whether they read a paper and only a few hands came up.
Certainly more people were getting their news online or from television.
I left the classes with a new appreciation of teaching, which is not an easy job, and with an appreciation for today’s students.
I begged the students to make my life easier by asking questions and they obliged with some good ones about everything from how does the competition to be first with news online affect the quality of stories (A: It lowers quality) to how can newspapers afford to give stories away free on the Internet when it drives people away from buying the newspaper (A: They can’t do it forever, but they do it now anyway because everyone else is doing it to gather online readers).
They were a smart group of students. I sure hope they figure out how newspapers can make money online, because that seems to be the biggest challenge facing news organizations these days.
Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459, benbow@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
