Secretary (2002) is the type of film that convinces you that you truly are not a freak. You joke sometimes that you’re freaky and you say some crazy shit to your friends or to yourself about your horny thoughts but you are not a FREAK. This film is your comparison point (spoilers ahead, for a film made two decades ago.)
girl get up. Secretary, 2002, still with Maggie Gyllenhaal and a letter in her mouth
The film has Maggie’s character, Lee, leave her mental hospital and venture into the world of work. She decides to opt for the job as a secretary, where she ends up working below a lawyer (James Spader). The job starts out pretty normal, with her utilising her rapid fast typing skills to go through letters, until it becomes a sadist/masochistic work environment that violates every HR rule in the book. But it cannot be ignored that there is a sense of confidence for both characters created by the end of it. Both are sexually repressed and deal with it in different ways; Mr Grey works out like crazy and mostly keeps to himself to cope, Lee is fresh out of a mental hospital so some of her self harming coping mechanisms still reside in her. It is through this particularly odd sadist/masochistic relationship that they are healed and gain agency in their lives. It made me think about coworker relationships in general. There is something special about meeting a person who sees you at your worst, making code words to go through the long shift and a spontaneous pairing into the rota making things suddenly interesting between a person. I’ve never had the ‘Secretary’ Lee/Mr Grey relationship, but I do get the allure of a work relationship.
The first (and only) time I understood this was when I was in my first part-time job. For the first two months, I had a rota schedule that had me working 9-6 on Saturdays and 11-4 on Sundays. I also worked 8 hours per weekday, but that didn’t really feel like much. To be honest, it was a good break from my phone or wasting time doing something that would amount to nothing. I met A whilst doing my Saturday shift properly when it was time for lunch- one of my friends had recommended me the place when I said I needed a job and she wasn’t in. He smiled and beckoned me onto the table where him and his other friends sat, it became a thing where we all just sat together. I also started the exact same time as him, so whenever we messed up a bit on the job, we laughed at each other or looked out for each other’s mistakes. It was fun! One day, I found me and him the only ones on the Sunday rota. At the same time, we were both going through relationship issues; A’s girlfriend was complaining about him to her friends, I was juggling between dating two guys (they both knew about each other and I will nit be repeating that) and we were the only people that we could really talk to about it in the silence of our break, I guess. I learnt a lot about him and he learnt a lot about me. Eventually, it got to a point where the people we worked with asked if there was something going on between us. I didn’t even realise how deep it was until his girlfriend came to visit him during lunch and I felt this deep sense of guilt; we had spoken so much to each other, complimented each other, he had held me up in his arms once, I suddenly realised I was doing a disservice to her. I did not seek him out after. My views on him and a possible coworker dynamic beyond work started running away from me as quickly as it began.
From that experience, I know that there is something interesting about a relationship outside of the workplace, but it just isn’t practical. You don’t really know your coworkers outside of work, just like you don’t really know your friends in a work environment. The same person who introduced me to that part time job is no longer my friend because of the blurring between the two spaces of work and school. And with A, well, besides the obvious girlfriend issue, I can still say that I don’t really know him. I don’t understand his likes/dislikes, but I was introduced into his world and shown his experiences because we just so happened to have shared a lot of time together thanks to a rota. It is such a weird feeling, knowing that you would not be close to someone if a single factor was changed, and I prefer to avoid that feeling.
In summary, work is an interesting environment, but not one for romance. It just doesn’t really make sense to me and every American TV show that tries to promote workplace romance/viewing work areas as family is wrong + this is probably a venue for capitalism!