When you think of TV’s most famous romantic duos — Jim and Pam, McDreamy and Meredith, Turk and Carla, Sam and Diane, Mr. Burns and Smithers – they all have one thing in common: They met on the job.

But when it comes to finding love, it’s not just reserved for primetime. Regardless of the economy, one thing remains the same: The workplace fuels romance.

“Employees are working longer hours and under increased pressure, creating an environment that could cause relationships to bloom,” says Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder.

CareerBuilder’s annual office romance survey of more than 5,200 workers found that nearly four-in-ten (37 percent) workers said they have dated a co-worker at some time during their careers. That’s in line with the 40 percent who said the same in both 2009 and 2008. Almost one-third said they went on to marry the person they dated at work.

And what about the office crush? While eight percent of workers currently work with someone who they would like to date, with more men (11 percent) than women (4 percent) reporting they would like to do so.

Twelve percent of workers reported that their relationships started when they ran into each other outside of work. Some other situations where Cupid’s arrow flew between co-workers:

• Happy hour
• Lunch
• Working late at the office
• Company holiday party
• Business trip

The question remains: Once the relationship is established, should workers keep it a secret?

“Workplace relationships are more accepted these days, with 67 percent of workers saying they aren’t keeping their romance a secret. However, it is the responsibility of the individuals to understand company policy and make sure they adhere to it,” said Haefner.

The survey also showed the repercussions of workplace romance, with 5 percent of workers saying they have left a job due to an office romance. To be on the safe side, Haefner offers these tips if you want to spark a workplace romance:

• Know your company’s office relationship policy: While some companies are completely open to office romances, others may have stricter policies. Make sure both parties in the relationship are aware of potential rules or consequences.
• Beware of social media: Before you start posting pictures and status updates about your newfound coupledom, it may be better to inform your co-workers or boss in person. That way, there is less chance for gossip or speculation.
• Always take the high road: If your relationship should end, do your best to maintain professionalism and not let the issues affect your performance on the job.

So tell us your office romance story. Was it a success or did it fizzle?

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Do you hear something? It’s the sound of proud citizens around the globe puffing their chests as athletes from their nation head to the Olympics. *hums national anthem*

Every two years, either the summer or winter games dominate our TV viewing for two weeks. Events we wouldn’t normally give two hoots about suddenly must be DVR-ed. I admit, I only think about the biathlon every 206 weeks. Still, billions of people tune into the games every time they air. You don’t go out as much. You ignore the ringing phone. You pretend a foil-covered Ring Ding is a silver medal in bobsledding. (No? Just me?)

Host cities pour unbelievable amounts of money and energy into readying venues and lodging for the games. As a result, each city—this year Vancouver—experiences a temporary boost of jobs to construct and staff new stadiums and housing. London’s already seeing this happen for its 2012 games. And other existing jobs are put into overdrive as the city becomes the momentary center of the athletic world. For example, Ron Cameron is the general manager of BC Dome, the stadium hosting the opening ceremonies. Read about his job here.

Because I have the games on my mind, I did a little digging to see how some past Olympians are earning paychecks now that they don’t have to devote 80 percent of their waking hours to training. As expected, many finish their educations and start families—especially when you remember that many Olympians are teenagers during competition. So here are a few medalists and where they are today.

Beth Barr
Event: 4×100m Medley Relay
Year: 1988
Medal: Silver
Current occupation: Owner of a training center for swimmers and triathletes
Source: NPR

Carly Patterson
Event: Women’s Individual All-Around gymnastics
Year: 2004
Medal: Gold
Current occupation: Singer
Source: Her own site

Dan O’Brien
Event: Decathlon
Year: 1996
Medal: Gold
Current occupation: Motivational speaker
Source: Forbes

Jair Lynch
Event: Parallel bars
Year: 1996
Medal: Silver
Current occupation: Heads an organization that, according to the site, “in the responsible transformation of urban markets.”
Source: NPR

Peggy Fleming
Event: Women’s figure skating
Year: 1968
Medal: Gold
Current occupation: Breast cancer activist and co-owner of a vineyard and winery
Source: WKYC

As always, good luck to all the Olympians (who are probably too busy to read this blog, but still) and have fun watching!

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You might have read fellow Work Buzzer Kate Lorenz’s article on strange things written in cover letters and résumés. As expected, hiring managers and employers have seen some pretty bizarre things. A couple of examples:

• “One of the weirdest résumés I ever received was from someone who had a statement at the top about how dependable he was and then a doodle of him on a skateboard.” – Heather R. Huhman, founder and president of Come Recommended
• “Hobbies: Sleeping, etc., etc.” – Carrie Rocha, www.pocketyourdollars.com

Over on our sister blog, The Hiring Site, employers are encouraged to share their unorthodox experiences reading cover letters and résumés. (I admit, I’m eager to see what other  bizarre information job seekers have felt compelled to share with their potential employers.) If you’ve ever been in the hiring seat, feel free to head over and share your story.

However, I thought this would be a good place for job seekers to share the strangest things they’ve seen on job postings or heard during the interview process. I can attest from my experience as a job seeker that some employers try to get too funny with their postings, so I spend 10 minutes reading a description but have absolutely no idea what the actually job is. Or after I read a paragraph that begins, “Do you like to…” I come to the final sentence that says, “If this sounds like you–don’t apply for this job.” Clever, but you just wasted my time!

So, dear job seekers of past and present, what are the strangest things you’ve read or heard from employers in the hiring process? Share below.

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At a glance, you can quickly see that our culture is fixated on tests. From tests for children whose overachieving parents want them into exclusive day cares to students playing the college admissions game, people are filling in bubbles left and right these days. And I guarantee that most of us have had the sniffles in the past decade, only to immediately search for our symptoms online and take a quick self-test. Turns out, we might have the seasonal flu, a flesh-eating virus or a rare case of malaria that has been dormant for a century. We know it’s probably the flu, but the tests are so easy, how can we not take them?

So the concept of assessing your best career choices by clicking on colors seems fun but, well, too simplistic, doesn’t it? I think it’s fair to say the average person (if I might call myself average) is skeptical of the process. The whole idea of CareerPath’s Career Color Counselor sounds odd: You go to the site and follow the instructions to click on colors that you find most and least appealing. Then after a five minutes of clicking, you get an assessment of yourself and what careers are best for you.

Some of my co-workers and I took the test. Our results were fairly similar, and under normal circumstances that would be problematic, but we all have creative backgrounds so they should be similar. And although I don’t understand how color preference is indicative of career options, it seems to hold true for everyone. CEOs who took the test showed similar traits. It wasn’t as if they all chose the boring, primary colors of power ties as their favorites. Says USA Today:

[When] 877 members of USA Today’s CEO panel took an online personality color test, they were three times more likely to favor magenta than the public at large, three times less likely to select red, and 3½ times less likely to choose yellow.

And, as USA Today points out, the test might highlight some qualities of CEOs that we don’t consider.

[The] color test shows that the typical CEO is more sensitive and private than the typical person and is less likely to be a perfectionist or to be dominant and more likely to be emotionally unstable.

You can take the test here to see if the results reflect your current occupation or if they suggest a career you’ve always wanted to try but have been unable to. The fun of the test is that it takes five minutes and might remind you of untapped talents that you’ve forgotten about over the years. Or it might suggest careers you hadn’t considered. When you’re looking to change careers or find a job, you need all the inspiration you can get, and this is one more tool to get you there. (Or, at the very least, the next time you’re standing in front of a wall of paint chips, trying to choose a color for your living room, you’ll have even more reason to doubt yourself!)

Try out the Career Color Counselor and let us know what your results are.

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Oprah, Letterman, Leno, Chelsea (and Conan, once upon a time)—they all earn pretty paychecks talking. Sure, Oprah oversees a multimedia empire and Leno has his comedy career, but their primary jobs are hosting talking shows and gabbing with guests. They all have the same career — basically chitchatting in front of the world. That’s the entertainment world, though, and most of us aren’t paid to be that verbal.

I’ve known office workers whose draconian bosses actually reprimanded them for talking too much. Not for job performance problems or deadline issues. No, they were good workers—they just got in trouble for talking … as if they were first-graders during a schoolassembly. Oy.

Not everyone likes to gab, so a quiet workplace doesn’t bother some people. But for workers who can’t keep their lips sealed, silence is torturous. To help those of us who thrive on jibber jabber, here are six careers you might want to consider. These jobs require more skills and education than just the ability to gab, but talking plays an important role that will make your day that much better:

Nurses
You can’t possibly list every responsibility nurses have. Whether in an emergency room, physician’s office or a number of other settings, nurses are working one-on-one with patients, ensuring tests are ordered, updating charts and staying calm. Patients who are sick or about to undergo surgeryare often temperamental, nervous or just having a good old-fashioned freakout. The best nurses stay on task while talking to patients, whether finding out more information about their malady or just trying to keep everyone calm. Here, the gift of gab can be a patient’s dream.

Emergency dispatchers
Dispatchers obviously rely on their speaking skills to find out information about the emergency, so that’s a no-brainer. Among their multitasking skills, a knack for conversation is just as important as the ability to extract and report information. In emergency situations, people (e.g., witnesses, victims) get unnerved and often frantic. Dispatchers maintain conversations with the callers until help arrives, and that’s no easy task as they have to be calm and think quickly under stress.

Salespersons
If you’re going to sell anything — a pair of jeans, a car, a business plan — words are your best friends. Anyone who works in sales has to know when being aggressive is appropriate and when toning it down is better. Not every technique works every time, so understanding how to most effectively talk to the customer is a skill not everyone is blessed with.

Dentists
I know I’m not the only person who has been at a dental appointment, wearing the fashionable paper bib and protective glasses, while the dentist chips away at my teeth and asks how my job is. Luckily, most dentists have the good sense to time their questions when I’m about to get a break from all the oral construction going on so I can respond. Good dentists know how to fill the silence of a dental visit without peppering the patient with questions he or she can’t answer. At the same time, they understand that we don’t want to hear 30 minutes of personal ramblings while we’re a captive audience (with a numb mouth).  

Hairstylists
For many people, hairstylists are the human equivalent of a Leatherman knife — you know the kind that is basically a pocket-size MacGyver. Hairstylists serve as some clients’ stylists (of course), as well as confidantes and therapists. While they’re clipping hair and mixing dyes, stylists are forming bonds with their clients as they discuss their lives and jobs. Anyone who’s experienced an awkwardly silent haircut knows how strange it is to be inches from the person holding the scissors and looking at you in the mirror, and yet you have nothing to say to each other for the full hour.

Perhaps most important for the stylist is the ability to communicate what he or she will be doing to the client. If the client asks for a trim and the stylist says, “Sure, we can do that,” then proceeds to chop off six inches … well, that’s not good. Effective communication benefits them both (and probably leads to a better tip).

News reporters
News reporters, as far as the public is concerned, are just talking heads, but they do more than just stand in a hurricane and tell you that, yep, it’s wet and windy. Reportersare interviewing people, both in taped segments and on air, and you don’t want a mumbling, incoherent mess doing that job. Amazing news goes unnoticed if the reporter’s speaking abilities are subpar, so their talking prowess needs to be as outstanding as their investigative skills. You want someone who can talk on camera as if he or she is talking to you one-on-one, and that’s not easy.

If you’re a talker and have found a way to earn a paycheck, let us know. We know there are more jobs out there that other chatty readers would love to know about.

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The standard workplace looks very different than it did a few generations ago. Technology alone has revolutionized the way most organizations function. Look beyond the contemporary furniture and laptops to see another difference: your boss. Gone is the image of your manager or boss as a curmudgeon with an ill-fitting short-sleeved, button-up, yellowing shirt with an askew tie. Today’s bosses look very different, and not just because they can wear jeans on casual Fridays.

According to a new CareerBuilder survey, 43 percent of workers 35 and older currently work for someone younger than them. For workers 45 and older, the figure climbs to 53 percent. And for the 55 and up group, the number leaps to 69 percent. While you can still think of many complaints to lob at your boss, the old standbys of “he should’ve retired 10 years ago” or “she’s been in the industry so long she’s lost her edge” are passé. Today’s bosses are young and far from retirement.

When asked if reporting to a younger boss was difficult, young workers expressed the most trouble. Here is the breakdown of workers who find taking orders from a younger boss difficult:

• 16 percent of workers 25-34
• 13 percent of workers 35-44
• 7 percent of workers 45-54
• 5 percent of workers 55 and older

What’s the problem and what can you do about it?
Are you one of these workers whose boss has fewer candles on the cake? If so, these complaints might sound familiar to you.

• “They act like they know more than me when they don’t”
• “They act like they’re entitled and didn’t earn their position”
•  “They play favorites with younger workers”

Experts over at PrimeCB, a site dedicated to career opportunities and guidance for mature workers, stress the importance of working together. We are talking about your career, after all, so ignoring your troubles won’t make life easier. Here are some of PrimeCB’s tips:

Understand others’ point of view: You and your boss are coming from different points of views. You don’t necessarily share experience, education or work history. Neither of you is wrong—just different. So try to be open to the other person’s approach.

Adapt your communication: Whether you’re interacting with your boss, co-worker or direct report, you should always be mindful of what communication style is most effective. Many (though not all) younger workers favor new technology to communicate, such as IM and e-mail. Some older workers (though, again, not all) prefer to talk face-to-face or at least pick up the phone. Both parties should work to make communication go as smoothly as possible.

Keep an open mind:Neither you nor your boss is inherently right (or wrong) because of your age and work history, or lack thereof. Approach each other as two professionals and base all judgments on performance. Making assumptions about your boss because he looks like a high schooler or she’s the same age as your daughter doesn’t do you any favors.

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