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Everyone knows the office romance is fraught with difficulties - but one woman's affair with a workmate ended extraordinarily badly, leaving her in hospital and eventually getting her sacked.
Last week, it got even worse for Auckland lecturer Kathleen Henderson, when she lost her case for unjustified dismissal.
Her brief romance with Unitec colleague David Nummy was no innocent swooning over the watercooler, however.
He was married, and his wife Pamela worked in the same building as the lovers. A spat between the women put Henderson in hospital in 2003 and triggered a two-way saga of alleged assaults, threats, letters and rumours that ended last week in the Auckland Employment Court.
Henderson was fired from her position as senior lecturer at Unitec in June 2005.
David Nummy is Associate Head of the university's construction school. His wife worked part-time in the same buildings. Judge Graeme Colgan agreed with Unitec that Henderson's "insidious campaign" against the Nummys constituted harassment and serious misconduct. Colgan noted a few procedural flaws in the way Unitec had fired Henderson but said that even if the investigation had been carried out properly, she would still have been sacked.
Henderson had admitted sending two "anonymous" letters to her ex-lover's wife - meant to convince her that it was David Nummy who had started the affair, not her. The first was a single-sheet print-out of an "intimate and amorous e-mail" that David Nummy had sent Henderson during their affair. A week later, Henderson sent another letter, this time a list of 300 emails between the pair.
Some were work-related, noted the judge, but the subject lines on others suggested they were "private and intimate exchanges between lovers".
The husband got to the letterbox first and hid the first letter from his wife. But after the second, he showed her, and the couple wrote separate letters to Unitec complaining about Henderson.
Pamela Nummy had not been entirely beyond blame. Henderson laid charges of assault against her and her son after a fight at a colleague's house, where the wife had discovered her husband with the other woman. Henderson was hospitalised but later dropped the assault charges. The affair ended, and Henderson applied for a restraining order against her former lover's wife.
However, the affair started again - this time lasting for three months between January and April 2004. And the two women continued to bump into one another at work. Unitec said late-2004 that the two women might be able to work in different buildings, but by January 2005, nothing had happened. Two months later, Henderson sent the letters.
