Revealing ‘Sex at Work’ Study by Business Insider

LOS ANGELES—Henry Blodget was inspired by a Business Insider colleague’s blog post about Sex at Work to do a survey of readers about… sex at work. At a time when the issue of watching porn at work increasingly raises its pretty little head, the subject of actual sex with co-workers, sometimes literally at work, piqued our interest. We found the results of the survey very interesting, and thought the 2,300 or so people who responded represent a viable if unscientific test group. If the results are to be believed then, we are generally very permissive when it comes to the idea of having sex with co-workers, with almost 85 percent believing that colleagues at the same company should be free to copulate. The sexual openness stops though at the idea of managers having sex with underlings, though a number of respondents owned up (albeit anonymously) to having done just that. We also thought it was especially interesting how much sex people thought their colleagues were having with other colleagues. Out of 2,239 replies to that question, almost 40 percent thought that 21-40 percent of their coworkers were doing the dirty. Another 24.5 percent thought 41-60 percent were sexually involved. We don’t know if they are right, of course, but that seems like a lot of imagined sex to us. As far as real sex goes, 1,267 respondents said they had had sex with a colleague, and 516 said they have done it at the office, just like in the movies! So now we are wondering if watching porn at work plays a factor in any of this work-related obsession with actual sex or if to the extent it is being watched at work, it is just another reflection of a general interest in sex that we can’t seem to shake during daytime hours. Maybe an exploration of that will be included in the next BI survey.