Sex at Work

Mmmm... files.

Dwight: Michael, confession. I have done PDA in the office.
Michael: Thank you.
Dwight: I've had intercourse in the office.
Michael: Alright!
Dwight: As has Angela.
Angela: Dwight!
Dwight: As has Ryan, as has Kelly, as has Meredith, as has Phyllis, as has Darryl, as has Creed, as has Michael, and as has Holly!

— The Office (US)

There's nothing quite like paperclips and staplers to get the mood going.

Work Sex is a subtrope of Making Love in All the Wrong Places, when two characters decide that their site of employment (of all places) is where they want to do it. It may seem unprofessional, unhygienic and most of all uncomfortable, but there's no arguing with why characters enjoy it.

The trope can intersect with Professionals Do It on Desks, however Work Sex refers to any place in a working environment where characters have intercourse. The environments that the trope takes place in are usually storage rooms, private offices or bathrooms. Sometimes the characters are successful, other times they're interrupted, and they don't always get caught either. The trope is not applicable in workplaces that actually have beds, i.e. on-call rooms in hospitals. Nor does it apply to pornography sets, hotel rooms, or professions that require they go to someone's residence (i.e. Pizza Boy Special Delivery).

Compare with Business Trip Adultery, Desk Sweep of Passion, Office Romance, Sleeping with the Boss. Not to be confused with sex workers.

This is Truth in Television, so No Real Life Examples, Please!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Booty Royale: Never Go Down Without a Fight!: Done twice by Yajima and his girlfriend, Kurisu. The first time occurs in his office (chapter 23), the second happens in a bathroom stall in the Men's room (chapter 28). The latter incident being a marathon session that lasted several hours!
• In Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, Ohtori and the company chairman have sex at work in the middle of his office not far from Akira's desk.

Comic Books

• The Internship:
  • This is one of the main narrative devices of the comic's story, regarding the titular "internship". The comic's main protagonist, Andy, enters onto an ongoing sexual relationship with his older boss Emery. It's partially what pushes Andy to start facing his own accumulated baggage in life, including the nature of his relationship with Cooper, the comic's Deuteragonist.
  • River gives this in Volume 3 to a friend of theirs, Doug, who works as a cashier in a clothing store. In exchange for allowing them and Cooper to walk out of the store with costumes and equipment for a stage performance, River gives Doug a blowjob in a dressing room. The dialogue between the two of them implies that this isn't the first time that River has done this. Coop actually catches a glimpse of the two, River looking back while Doug's distracted and even winking at him. While the scene is sexy, River's technically committing a crime by doing this.
  • In Volume 4, Cooper gets in on it this too, with River. The day after the blowjob scene mentioned above, River and Cooper have a "dress rehearsal" in Fletcher's private filming spot. Which involves the two of them spending a lot of time rubbing up against each other naked. River actually apologizes for how Coop's being understandably "blue-balled". Then, after they're done and the two sit down to rest, Coop finally gives in and gives River's neck a lick. After Coop apologizes for it, River decides to reciprocate and gives Coop a handjob to help him relieve himself. After Coop is...relieved, River decides not to do the same for themselves, but doesn't say why, just saying that Coop gave them a good time and returning a surprise hug from him before he leaves.

Films — Live-Action

• The Assistant: Dealing as it does with a predatory studio boss (an unseen Expy of Harvey Weinstein), it's taken for granted that Jane's boss has sex with the young women he sees in his office and while they're at festivals in Cannes and elsewhere. It's never answered how many of these women (if any) consent.
• Clerks II: When both the Quick Stop and the video store are burnt down:
  Randal: Now where am I gonna bring girls to fuck when my mom's home?
• Liar Liar: Fletcher misses his son's birthday to have sex with his boss in her office.
• Road House (1989): Steve the bouncer gets fired when Dalton catches him having sex with a customer during working hours.
  Steve: But I'm on my break!
  Dalton: Stay on it.
• Secretary: A receptionist begins an S&M relationship with her boss, and many of their sexual acts take place in his office.
• The Secret of My Success: While hiding from his mailroom boss in a supply closet, Brantley stumbles upon two coworkers having extremely noisy sex (and who don't particularly care that he sees). Later, he ends up having sex with Christy in one of the office elevators.
• The Wolf of Wall Street: Employees use the bathrooms for sex so much that it becomes part of the work culture.

Literature

• Hidden Bodies: Beck and Joe having sex at Mooney's gets a Call-Back when Joe and Amy Adam, who now work together on a more permanent basis, have sex in the storeroom. It turns out to have been a Honey Trap so Amy could steal the valuable books using Joe's key.
• Isaac Asimov's Caliban by Roger Mac Bride Allen: Early on, Sheriff Kresh notes that the laboratory where the initial crime took place has an office with a comfortable-looking bed, in case someone needs to stay overnight while supervising an experiment. This turns out to be Chekhov's Gun: One of the scientists at the lab is using it to have a clandestine affair.
• You (Kepnes): Beck and Joe have sex for the first time in Mooney's bookstore. They also have sex for the last time in the cage under the bookstore.

Live-Action TV

• The Affair: Noah gets himself in very hot water with the school board when they discover that he and one of his colleagues used his classroom for "inappropriate purposes". Even if it was outside of school hours, it's still a serious breach of etiquette.
• Arrested Development: Gob and Kitty have sex in the photocopy office at the Bluth Company.
• The Big Bang Theory: In "The Holographic Excitation", Penny visits Leonard while he's working in the laboratory. Leonard shows her a device that scans an object and creates a rotating hologram; Penny says "Sometimes, I forget how smart you are" and kisses him. She then closes and locks the door, and tells Leonard to take off his clothes.
• Bones:
  • Angela and Hodgins had a habit of sneaking off to a storage room that held an Egyptian artifact bed. Angela went down there with Wendell as well when they briefly dated.
  • Sweets and Daisy end up going at it in his office several times.
• The Brittas Empire: After discovering a pair of pants down the back of one of his couches in his main office, Brittas spends the majority of the episode "Temple of the Body" trying to gather evidence that a "love nest" existed in the leisure centre. Whilst doing so, he discovers that Carole has started living in the centre, having recently been kicked out of her flat. Whilst trying to comfort her, a group of reporters (there for a different reason) barges in and, believing it to be a love nest, captures a photo and makes it headline news in the newspapers. Ultimately Subverted when the pants are revealed to have eventually come from a one night stand that his unemployed wife Helen had with someone not from the centre.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy has sex with Spike in the alley behind the Doublemeat Palace when she's on her break in one episode.
• Desperate Housewives: In an episode, Tom and Lynette agree to have sex every day for a month. One day, Lynette has to stay at work very late, so Tom decides to come to her office and they have sex on her desk. Things get awkward when Lynette's boss Carlos calls her and hears lots of moans...
• ER: Mark Greene's then wife Jen arrives at County General to tell Mark the news that she passed the bar exam and the couple proceed to celebrate in one of the hospital's on-call room. One of them bumps an emergency alarm which leads to most of the ER staff rushing to the on-call room, thinking there was a full on medical emergency going on in that room. They open the door to find Mark and Jen together and manage to get the door closed before they all break down laughing over what they just saw.
• Feel Good: George sends Mae a text to come to her school and have sex with her while on her break. Mae rushes over (stopping by the house to get the strap-on first) and finds George. They go into the store room at first, but the school bell rings and students start coming into class. Mae is forced to sit in the store room for the rest of the afternoon.
• Forever: Implied to have taken place in the morgue between Henry and Molly when their date gets side-tracked by the murder investigation.
• Frasier: Frasier and his boss Kate have a tryst in the broadcasting studio. If you're familiar with the series you can guess what happens.
• Friends: Tag attempts to have sex with Rachel while they're at work, even performing a Desk Sweep of Passion so they can do it on the desk. Rachel is startled and unhappy with this, trying to take her job seriously and wanting to be professional with him while they're in the office. As such, it doesn't actually happen.
• The Guardian: Alvin catches Lulu and Nick having sex, and she has to make her relationship with him official for professional reasons.
• Kath & Kim: In one episode, Kath and Kel have sex in the walk-in fridge at the butchery. They're in there for so long that a line begins to form at the counter.
• Motherland: Amanda and Kevin have sex (twice) on the floor of her hipster store. Downplayed, though, in that she's actually in the process of closing it down when they do it.
• For most of her time on NCIS, Agent Lee's purpose on the show was a Running Gag about her sleeping with Palmer in various unusual places at the office, including one of the autopsy tables.
• The Office (US):
  • Dwight and Angela frequently copulate in the office. They're known for doing it practically everywhere, even Pam's desk (much to her horror).
  • In "PDA", Pam and Jim try to have sex somewhere in the office. Ryan comes across them scoping out his office/closet space and knows exactly what they want. He respectfully asks they clean up after themselves and don't take too long.
  • In "Crime Aid", Michael and Holly stay late at the office and have sex. Unfortunately, they forget to lock up and someone robs the building.
• Queer as Folk (UK): Stuart flirts with a co-worker and receives oral sex from him in one of the staff toilet cubicles.
• Roseanne: Subverted. After learning Stacy and her boyfriend had sex on a table at the Lunch Box, Jackie and Fred attempt it to help spice up their marriage. Fred's discomfort keeps them from going through with it, and it's actually the first sign their relationship is doomed (plus it turns out Leon and his boyfriend have already used all the good spots).
• Schitt's Creek:
  • Stevie arrives at Rose Apothecary to find neither Patrick nor David at the register or watching the store. Eventually, David emerges from the back, followed by Patrick, making it clear she interrupted something sexual.
  • While watching the store for David, Alexis is bored so has role play sex with Ted in the bathroom of Rose Apothecary. They break the sink.
• Seinfeld:
  • Elaine gets George hired at her office, Pendant Publishing, and almost immediately he has impulsive sex on his desk with the cleaning woman. It's his first and last mistake on the job.
  George: Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing was frowned upon, you know, cause I've worked in a lot of offices and I tell you people do that all the time.
  Mr. Lippmann: You're fired.
  • Years later, while working for the Yankees, George hires a personal secretary. He deliberately chooses someone frumpy he won't be attracted to in order to avoid temptation, but her efficiency is such a turn on that they end up having sex in his office during a late night meeting, and to make matters worse he impulsively shouts out during the act that he's giving her a raise. Since he's not actually authorized to do that, he tries to cover his ass by spinning a sob story to Mr. Steinbrenner that she's in dire financial straits, leading to her getting such a big raise she's now making more than George himself.
• Six Feet Under: An attractive plumber comes to fix the pipes at the business. He takes a liking to David and he gives him oral sex in the storage area.
• Suits: Michael and Rachel have sex against a wall of document boxes in one episode.
• Supergirl: When Mon-El starts working at CatCo during Season 2, Kara catches him having sex with Miss Teschmacher in a closet.
• Supernatural: In Season 4, Sam questions an attractive physician about the case they are working on, which involves a siren who transforms into the ideal person for its victims. She seduces Sam in her office, and they have sex without even closing the blinds. Dean is livid, assuming she's the siren, but she isn't. She just liked Sam.
• Workin' Moms: After her non-stop flirting, Marvin tries to make a move on Jenny in the storage room, but she plays-hard-to-get and leaves.

Music

• "Love in an Elevator" by Aerosmith. The titular elevator is in their office building.

Video Games

• Summertime Saga: Numerous examples. It's possible for the MC to have sexual encounters with several women at their place of work, including Tina at the bank, a nurse and secretary Roz at the hospital, and Josephine at the car dealership. All the teachers will also have sex with MC in their respective offices.

Visual Novels

• Used liberally in Daughter for Dessert:
  • The protagonist has chances to get down with Amanda, Kathy, and Lily inside the diner at different points in the story.
  • If the protagonist succeeds in making all drinks to order when running Heidi’s Bar, then Heidi will have some after-hours fun with him.
  • The protagonist has the option of having sex with Olivia in her repair shop.
• A good number of examples in Double Homework, despite it being about school rather than work:
  • All of the protagonist’s sexual encounters with Ms. Walsh take place on school property, and most during school hours.
  • Early in the story, Tamara, who is working in the registrar’s office at the time, invites the protagonist to her office to “entertain” her. When Dr. Mosely comes into the office, he licks Tamara out under the desk.
  • Twice in different situations with Lauren:
    • When the protagonist meets Lauren at a festival where she is working, the two of them have sex in a stairwell at the hotel hosting the event - and nearly get caught.
    • In Lauren’s epilogue, the protagonist proposes to Lauren after the two of them successfully planned Lauren’s sister’s wedding, and they have sex right at the venue after she accepts.
  • The protagonist can have sex multiple times with Amy in the studio from which she streams her video games.
• Three times in Melody:
  • The protagonist and Melody (on her romantic path) do this once when they have sex on top of a studio sound board at Sharp Records.
  • Amy (on her romantic path) seduces the protagonist in the the back of her dress shop.
  • Sophia pays Xianne a visit at the club where she works, and the two of them have some fun in one of the private rooms.

Web Series

• In the Precious Plum episode "A Good Sword", Mama has sex with a pawn shop worker on his counter.

Western Animation

• Family Guy: In "Whistle While Your Wife Works", Peter's hand is injured after an incident with a firework, so Lois helps him with his workload. Peter immediately starts urging Lois that they do it in his office. Lois, while annoyed at first, ultimately gives in.
• The Simpsons: In "Grade School Confidential", Edna and Seymour are caught making out in one of the janitorial closets at school. The event undergoes quite a bit of Gossip Evolution before it finally causes Ralph Wiggum to utter this immortal line:
  Ralph: Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies and the baby looked at me!

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