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Office Affairs: A Love Story That Ended Exactly the Way HR Never Warned You

If you think an office affair is just harmless flirting with a payslip attached, allow me to disabuse you of that fantasy.

This is not a motivational article.
It is not relationship advice.
It is a post-mortem.

I am writing this as a journal entry because some lessons refuse to stay buried—especially the ones paid for with blood, careers, and silence.

Meet Njeri: Beauty, Comfort, and Quiet Sadness

I met Njeri in the late 1980s. She was from Nyeri County and had the kind of beauty that didn’t ask for permission. Fair chocolate-brown skin with a soft golden hue. Hazel eyes that sparkled even when her mouth refused to smile.

And that was the strange part—
For someone so blessed, she always looked slightly… elsewhere.

By her early forties, Njeri had aged like money. You could smell comfort on her. Her husband was a well-connected businessman with four pharmacies scattered across Nairobi’s CBD. Once in a while, he would pick her up from Kenya Airways headquarters, usually in a Mercedes 350 Coupe—each arrival announcing, “Yes, we are doing well.”

He was short, portly, and tightly held together by a belt that worked harder than most Kenyan men. Njeri, on the other hand, was tall, curvaceous, and effortlessly elegant.

A mismatch? Absolutely.
But money is a powerful adhesive. It glues together couples who share nothing but assets.

Still, she always seemed uneasy around him—as if comfort had come at a personal discount.

Corporate Life: Where Dreams Go to Queue

We sat next to each other in KQ’s Expenditure Division—a cramped office crammed with at least ten people and zero personal space. Everything was manual. Ledger papers everywhere. Creditors’ files fighting for oxygen.

Our job?
Pay suppliers.

Our reality?
The company was broke.

So instead of money, we paid with stories. Carefully constructed lies. Delayed promises. “Next week” became a lifestyle.

Salaries arrived when they felt like it. We lived hand-to-mouth, mouth-to-hope.

Lunch breaks were our rebellion.

We would cram into a matatu to Embakasi and descend on Njoro’s joint like escaped prisoners. Three kilos of nyama choma vanished daily. Fridays—members’ day—were washed down with heroic quantities of Tusker.

Then death knocked. Hard.

When the Office Learns Mortality

One Friday, Kiplangat—who loved his drink just a bit too faithfully—attempted to board a moving KBS bus while generously intoxicated.

Physics disagreed.

The rear tyre flattened his head in a scene that permanently edited our sense of humor.

He was in his early twenties. The only child of his mother. Scheduled to fly to the USA the following week for studies.

After that, nyama choma tasted like guilt.
The office felt haunted.

The Naivasha Party: Where Boundaries Died Drunk

By December 1989, grief and exhaustion pushed us to organize a Christmas weekend in Naivasha.

Office parties are treacherous affairs.

Alcohol removes professionalism.
Music erases hierarchy.
Attraction suddenly finds courage.

That’s when Masinde entered the picture.

Young. Bukusu. Mid-twenties. Tall, athletic, and eloquent. The kind of man whose confidence arrived five minutes before he did.

Njeri—deeply religious and previously restrained—drank that night. A lot. She and Masinde danced like gravity had resigned. Kenny Rogers played. They stuck together like bad decisions.

The next morning, they came for breakfast together.

For the first time since I had known her, Njeri smiled—properly. The kind of smile that says, “So this is what I’ve been missing.”

The Office Affair Goes Public

Early 1990, Njeri became unrecognizable.

Miniskirts. High heels.
She moved desks—from beside me to beside Masinde.

Discretion packed its bags.

Masinde enjoyed the attention initially. But reality is a cruel HR officer. Being young is fun. Being young with a married woman risking everything is exhausting.

He tried to pull away.
She doubled down.

They took days off. The affair intensified. He felt trapped but couldn’t see the exit.

The Hotel Incident That Ended the Fantasy

One afternoon, they booked a hotel in Ngara.

During intimacy, Njeri experienced her first real orgasm—something her comfortable marriage had never delivered.

Unfortunately, pleasure came with footnotes.

Njeri was epileptic. The intense excitement triggered a seizure. She collapsed, foaming at the mouth.

Masinde—naked, panicked, and convinced witchcraft had arrived early—ran screaming for help. By divine coincidence, a hotel guest who was a medic intervened and saved her life.

She survived.

But she was never the same.

Fallout: When Love Sends an Invoice

On Monday, Masinde came to work looking like a man who had aged ten years over a weekend. He confided in me.

He was done.

Njeri, however, had decided she was leaving her husband for him.

That conversation ended the affair more decisively than HR ever could.

A week later, Masinde stopped coming to work. Then his resignation appeared. No explanation. Just silence.

Njeri collapsed emotionally. Alcohol became her new companion. The glow disappeared. A year later, she died in a horrific accident on Thika Road.

She had everything society promises a woman—money, family, security.

She lost it all to an office affair.

Masinde?
Last I heard, he became a prosperous maize farmer in Kitale. Married. Settled. Life moving on efficiently.

Why Office Affairs Fail Spectacularly in African Corporates

African offices are small villages with emails.

Everyone knows.
No one talks.
Reputations never forget.

Office affairs don’t stay private. They bleed into performance, promotions, politics, and mental health.

Lessons (Because Someone Must Learn Something)

• Proximity is not destiny

• Silence is not safety

• Desire is a terrible project manager

• Office romance charges compound interest

If you must marry a colleague—resign first. Change environments. Protect dignity.

When Desire Clocks In, Disaster Usually Follows

Office affairs don’t begin as scandals.
They begin as jokes over tea, shared complaints about management, lingering glances during overtime, and “harmless” conversations that last too long.

But workplaces are not neutral ground. They are pressure cookers—of ambition, hierarchy, boredom, ego, and access. Mix desire into that, and you don’t get romance. You get fallout.

Careers derail quietly.
Families fracture slowly.
Reputations bleed invisibly—until they don’t.

If you must love a colleague, do it with courage and clarity:
leave the workplace first. Change the environment. Create distance. Protect everyone involved—including yourself.

Otherwise, you’re gambling with forces that do not negotiate.

Stories like Njeri’s are not rare. They are simply under reported—whispered about in corridors, archived in silence, and remembered long after the office lights go off.

For more unfiltered African stories on relationships, power, desire, and the consequences we pretend not to see, visit Erotic Africa—where uncomfortable truths are allowed to breathe.

Avoid office affairs like the plague—
or the Hague.

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