Star-Crossed Cubicles

Once upon a time, at a mid-sized New York agency, a beautiful, 20-something planner fell in love with a handsome planner from a different department. They dated in secret for months—”I didn’t want anyone else to feel uncomfortable,” she says of the subterfuge—before the planner’s prince moved to a different firm. Their paths continued to cross professionally, and at home.

Stories like this are playing out every day in U.S. offices. But, as illustrated recently by Boeing president Harry Stonecipher, most of the time they’re not so much fairy tales as cautionary Aesop’s fables.