This Is Going To End Badly

I’ve got a work situation… and I need some advice on how to delicately handle it.  Any input is welcome in the comments section.

The gender balance in my office is highly skewed toward women.  The Linkedin profile for my company shows that 81% of people employed here are female.  This is background and not really relevant to the forthcoming story, but I knew you’d find it interesting.

The story begins… A little while back I landed an account.  At my firm, we have junior people who help people like me on accounts.  So, the girl/woman who sits outside my office is assigned to me and I have, ostensbily, half her time to work on this account.  She’s 27 years old, single.  She’s never mentioned a boyfriend, though she’s told me in passing she’s gone on various dates.  She is indeed cute and has a nice body. She has average build but has big cans.  Can’t miss ‘em.  She shows the cleavage often.

She started with the firm this past January and overtime I noticed she’s the type of girl who tends to stand a little too close.  The first time I noticed this, our firm was celebrating at a local bar and she ended up standing next to me.  Very closely.  Like, she would touch shoulders with me.  Except that she’s shorter than I am so her shoulder would touch my bicep.

Subsequently on occasions, before we officially worked together, she would come into my office to chit-chat or to get information from a system to which only I had access.    If, say, I were sitting in my office chair trying to extract information from my computer while she were waiting, she would stand by my side, her hip touching my shoulder.  Or if she would sit next to me, she would sit very close.

Fine.  I concluded that she’s just friendly.  She probably does this with everyone.  Her dad is from another country, so maybe it is a cultural thing.

Well, today may have changed my thinking.  I asked her to do some work on a presentation project.  She did part of it, but got stuck.  She needed help completing it.  We scheduled some time for the morning to jointly work on it on my machine.

My office door was closed when she knocked.  She came in, wearing a tight gray mini skirt and a tight red sweater.  It is a flattering outfit on her.  She started to close the door when I told her to leave it open.  She pulls the chair right next to mine.  We start working.  She leans in.  We continue working.  She inches closer.  Every move she made, pointing to the computer monitor or whatever,  she gained ground and did not retreat. Meanwhile, since my desk is “L” shaped, and I started in the corner, I couldn’t give her more room.

At about half way complete, our legs touched.  She pulled hers away briefly, then let it relax into mine.  She really let it lean.  Her face was right next to mine, and her upper body was leaning on mine.  I was stuck. As I strained to concentrate on the task at hand, I could see colleagues walking by and looking into my office.  I don’t know if they suspected anything, but I can’t imagine what it looked like to a passer-by.

As I was stuck on Floor 2, I could only see two strategies to survive this.  One is make some abrupt awkward movement to give me more space, the other is to pretend all this was innocent.  I chose the latter.  We finished the project in about an hour.  It probably only needed 30 minutes, but I couldn’t focus.  After not-so-subtly closing all the windows on my computer and saying, “well, it looks like we’re done.”  Hint hint. I finally told her that I needed to work on other clients.  She left my office.

Now, I know I may seem like the kind of guy who would relish this sort of attention, and I do.  But I’d rather not have it.  I mean, there’s no possible way this is going anywhere. No shitting where you eat, and all that.  And, I am not smooth, and my prior posts will attest.  If this were fantasy world where there’s no consequences, I would have thrown her on my desk and done very dirty things.  But alas, I’ve learned the hard way this is not fantasy world.  There would be serious repercussions to that course of action.

So, how the hell am I supposed to handle this?  I am not even sure what “this” is.  Is she for real?  Does she think I am going to make a move?  Is she just testing the waters?  As her boss, do I talk with her about “personal space”?

What’s the best course of action here?