What do you think of the corporations on Fortune’s Most Admired Companies list? Have you worked for any of these companies, or bought their products or services? What makes a company admirable – social responsibility, excellent talent, sharp marketing, smart managers, or just plain profits? What companies do you admire most? Tell us what you think. The best replies will be published here, and possibly in a future story on CNNMoney.com.

What do you think of the industry leaders on Fortune’s America’s Most Admired Companies list? Have you worked for any of these companies, or bought their products or services? What makes a company admirable – social responsibility, excellent talent, sharp marketing, smart managers, or just plain profits? What companies do you admire most? Tell us what you think. The best replies will be published here, and possibly in a future story on CNNMoney.com.

What do you think of the No. 1 company on Fortune’s America’s Most Admired Companies list? Should they be No. 1? Have you worked for the company, or bought its products or services? What makes a company admirable – social responsibility, excellent talent, sharp marketing, smart managers, or just plain profits? What companies do you admire most? Tell us what you think. The best replies will be published here, and possibly in a future story on CNNMoney.com.

What do you think of the corporations on Fortune’s top 20 Most Admired Companies list? Should they be in the top 20? Have you worked for any of the companies, or bought their products or services? What makes a company admirable – social responsibility, excellent talent, sharp marketing, smart managers, or just plain profits? What companies do you admire most? Tell us what you think. The best replies will be published here, and possibly in a future story on CNNMoney.com.

Yesterday a special master in a federal shareholders class-action suit against The Coca-Cola Company (KO) recommended that the law firm of Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins be barred from serving as class counsel because it had purchased “stolen” company documents from a disgruntled former Coke executive.

“Class Counsel engaged in extremely troubling conduct,” wrote Special Master Hunter R. Hughes, III, “by paying for documents stolen from Coke, and then exacerbated the [situation] by refusing to accept responsibility for that conduct and by continuing, to this day, to defend that conduct through the use of arguments that appear to be pretextual.” Hughes’s ruling is here. (The pertinent pages are 49-69.)

Hunter’s recommendation was submitted to U.S. District Judge Willis B. Hunt, Jr., of Atlanta, who will wait to receive comments from the parties before deciding what action to take.

Hunter acknowledged that Coughlin Stoia’s lawyers had “vigorously and skillfully prosecuted this case for now seven years,” and said that “had they addressed this issue head-on, recognizing the impropriety of the arrangement they made . . . that might well have served to mitigate the circumstances. But they did not. Instead, they turned a blind eye to the terms of the consulting agreement pursuant to which they paid for the company documents and continue even now to make unfounded arguments which only obfuscate the issue.”

Coughlin Stoia partners (on the West Coast) were not immediately available to respond to email inquiries sent early this morning (from the East Coast), but any comment received will be inserted when it arrives.

(Coughlin Stoia, formerly known as Lerach Coughlin, is the firm founded by William Lerach in 2004, when he split away from Milberg Weiss and took that firm’s West Coast office with him. Lerach began serving a two-year federal prison term earlier this month after pleading guilty to conspiring to obstruct justice in connection with an unrelated kickback scheme at Milberg Weiss. Milberg Weiss has pleaded not guilty to the same charges, and is scheduled to go to trial in August.)

The case against Coke, filed in October 2000, alleges that the company artificially inflated its revenues through “channel-stuffing.” (A company channel-stuffs when it cajoles distributors into buying more product than they really need, to make it look to shareholders like consumer sales are brisker than they are.)

About four months after the case was filed, two former Coke executives approached the class’s law firm (then still known as Milberg Weiss) to offer help on the case, according to Hughes’s report. One of the two former execs, Greg Petro, told class counsel that he’d taken about 3,000 Coke documents with him when he had been terminated. The law firm then signed a “consulting agreement” with the two former executives, agreeing to pay them $200 an hour but, in any event, no less than $75,000, if they would provide information to the firm “including . . . documentation in any form, written or electronic, concerning Coke.” Petro then turned over 3,023 company documents, including many marked “confidential.” Some were then used in connection with an amended complaint filed in the case.

When the consulting agreement came to light more than a year ago, Coughlin Stoia lawyers backed Petro’s claim that neither he nor they had thought he was taking Coke documents without authority because, among other things, Petro had been ordered, when terminated, to “clean out his office.” Special Master Hughes found that such a command could not “rationally be construed to authorize Petro to walk off with company documents, any more than it authorized him to take the company’s desk, chairs, and computer.”

Hughes also rejected arguments that the firm was not really buying the documents, just entering into a consulting agreement, and a public-policy style argument that Petro’s conduct should be condoned because he was a whistleblower trying to expose corporate wrongdoing.

In a footnote, Hughes found that public policy arguments weighed in the other direction: “On a very practical level, for the Court to give Plaintiffs’ counsel a pass on this conduct, would simply invite terminated employees, particularly of public companies, to on a wholesale basis remove company documents following their termination in hopes they can sell them should the company be sued.”

In the silver-lining department, Special Master Hughes did find that the mere past involvement of Bill Lerach in the case, and Lerach’s subsequent admission of unrelated criminal conduct, did not warrant barring Coughlin Stoia from serving as class counsel.

Correction: Earlier version of this story had wrong the wrong month for when Milberg Weiss is set to go to trial. Correct month is August. Regret the error.

Yesterday a special master in a federal shareholders class-action suit against The Coca-Cola Company (KO) recommended that the law firm of Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins be barred from serving as class counsel because it had purchased “stolen” company documents from a disgruntled former Coke executive.

“Class Counsel engaged in extremely troubling conduct,” wrote Special Master Hunter R. Hughes, III, “by paying for documents stolen from Coke, and then exacerbated the [situation] by refusing to accept responsibility for that conduct and by continuing, to this day, to defend that conduct through the use of arguments that appear to be pretextual.” Hughes’s ruling is here. (The pertinent pages are 49-69.)

Hunter’s recommendation was submitted to U.S. District Judge Willis B. Hunt, Jr., of Atlanta, who will wait to receive comments from the parties before deciding what action to take.

Hunter acknowledged that Coughlin Stoia’s lawyers had “vigorously and skillfully prosecuted this case for now seven years,” and said that “had they addressed this issue head-on, recognizing the impropriety of the arrangement they made . . . that might well have served to mitigate the circumstances. But they did not. Instead, they turned a blind eye to the terms of the consulting agreement pursuant to which they paid for the company documents and continue even now to make unfounded arguments which only obfuscate the issue.”

Coughlin Stoia partners (on the West Coast) were not immediately available to respond to email inquiries sent early this morning (from the East Coast), but any comment received will be inserted when it arrives.

(Coughlin Stoia, formerly known as Lerach Coughlin, is the firm founded by William Lerach in 2004, when he split away from Milberg Weiss and took that firm’s West Coast office with him. Lerach began serving a two-year federal prison term earlier this month after pleading guilty to conspiring to obstruct justice in connection with an unrelated kickback scheme at Milberg Weiss. Milberg Weiss has pleaded not guilty to the same charges, and is scheduled to go to trial in August.)

The case against Coke, filed in October 2000, alleges that the company artificially inflated its revenues through “channel-stuffing.” (A company channel-stuffs when it cajoles distributors into buying more product than they really need, to make it look to shareholders like consumer sales are brisker than they are.)

About four months after the case was filed, two former Coke executives approached the class’s law firm (then still known as Milberg Weiss) to offer help on the case, according to Hughes’s report. One of the two former execs, Greg Petro, told class counsel that he’d taken about 3,000 Coke documents with him when he had been terminated. The law firm then signed a “consulting agreement” with the two former executives, agreeing to pay them $200 an hour but, in any event, no less than $75,000, if they would provide information to the firm “including . . . documentation in any form, written or electronic, concerning Coke.” Petro then turned over 3,023 company documents, including many marked “confidential.” Some were then used in connection with an amended complaint filed in the case.

When the consulting agreement came to light more than a year ago, Coughlin Stoia lawyers backed Petro’s claim that neither he nor they had thought he was taking Coke documents without authority because, among other things, Petro had been ordered, when terminated, to “clean out his office.” Special Master Hughes found that such a command could not “rationally be construed to authorize Petro to walk off with company documents, any more than it authorized him to take the company’s desk, chairs, and computer.”

Hughes also rejected arguments that the firm was not really buying the documents, just entering into a consulting agreement, and a public-policy style argument that Petro’s conduct should be condoned because he was a whistleblower trying to expose corporate wrongdoing.

In a footnote, Hughes found that public policy arguments weighed in the other direction: “On a very practical level, for the Court to give Plaintiffs’ counsel a pass on this conduct, would simply invite terminated employees, particularly of public companies, to on a wholesale basis remove company documents following their termination in hopes they can sell them should the company be sued.”

In the silver-lining department, Special Master Hughes did find that the mere past involvement of Bill Lerach in the case, and Lerach’s subsequent admission of unrelated criminal conduct, did not warrant barring Coughlin Stoia from serving as class counsel.

Correction: Earlier version of this story had wrong the wrong month for when Milberg Weiss is set to go to trial. Correct month is August. Regret the error.

Attempting to ride a wave of corporate and judicial disenchantment with aspects of the current patent system, a new project was unveiled Thursday designed to, as its name bluntly indicates, End Software Patents. (Press release is here. The group’s “first yearly report” on the state of software patents is here.)

The group is intended to become a clearinghouse for information and a hub for those strategizing legal challenges, according to its executive director, Ben Klemens. Though End Software Patents will not initiate litigation of its own, it will be on the lookout for appropriate test cases to support as they arise, he says.

Though the project is being sponsored and funded by leaders of the Free and Open Source Software movement, it hopes to attract support from the wider community of businesses, financial institutions and universities that have all been blindsided in recent years by lawsuits over software patents and their close-cousins, business-method patents.

The End Software Patents Web site, here, highlights a long list of diverse businesses that have been sued for allegedly infringing software patents, including the Green Bay Packers, OfficeMax, Caterpillar, Kraft Foods , ADT Security Services, AutoNation, Wal-Mart , Walgreen , Barnes & Noble, Circuit City Stores , Ford Motor , E I du Pont de Nemours and Co. , and so on. In most cases, the companies have been sued because of certain basic, routine functions performed on their Web sites — the way images are displayed, the way data is gathered or transmitted — which are said to infringe software patents.

The group also hopes to attract support from the many financial institutions, including JP Morgan , Merrill Lynch , and NCR Corp. , that have been asked to pay patent holding company DataTreasury for permission to send check images over the Internet. (For a Washington Post story about remarkable proposed federal legislation directed specifically at the DataTreasury patent, click here.)

The point, explains Klemens, is this: “If you’re running a business of any sort, you have to care about the software and business method patents.” That’s because nearly every business today operates a Web site and employs a staff of in-house IT programmers who enable them to conduct business in the digital age. In that sense, every business is now a software business.

Klemens is a mathematician (a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution since 2003) who uses algorithms to analyze data. In a recent article, for instance, he and his co-authors use data analysis to link certain genes to bipolar disorder. “I often run into patents on statistical methods and mathematical algorithms of the type that I implement,” Klemens says. “I don’t think I violate the ones I’ve seen, but I could be wrong, and I don’t know what else is out there. . . . That’s the thing that really woke me up: by doing pure math, I face legal liability. As far as I know, that’s a first in human history.” Klemens’s personal Web site is here.

In a 2005 book, Mathematics You Can’t Use, Klemens criticizes software patents from an economic and legal perspective, and does so in unusually crystalline, easy-to-understand terms. (For chapter one, see here, and for chapter six, see here.)

The book attracted the attention of the Free Software Foundation, whose president, Richard Stallman, has been railing against software patents since at least 1991, for related, but narrower, reasons: they posed a potentially mortal threat to his brainchild, free software — i.e., software, like Linux, that programmers are able freely to examine, modify, and redistribute without fear that their work will ever be taken out of circulation, declared off-limits, or placed behind a toll-booth by private proprietors. (For a feature story on the tension between patents and free and open software, “Microsoft Takes On the Free World,” see here. Generally speaking, though, software patents present dangerous traps for any programmer. Unlike copyrights, which are difficult to infringe inadvertently, a programmer can easily write software that inadvertently infringes someone else’s patent. That happens whenever the programmer independently comes up with an innovation that, unbeknownst to him, someone else has already staked a claim to. While copyrights are relatively easy to write around — since they protect only particular sequences of words or code — patents present broader, vaguer, and more durable obstacles, since they purport to proprietize implementations of ideas.)

In Klemens, the Free Software Foundation saw a potential ally who, thanks to the breadth of his critique and clarity of his writing, could attract a broader audience than just free and open source programmers. “We came to him,” says Peter Brown, the foundation’s executive director, “and said, we really want to fund your work. And he said yes.”

At the moment, the End Software Patents project is formally an offshoot of the Free Software Foundation. It also enjoys the “sponsorship” — though not monetary support — of the Software Freedom Law Center, which is led by Eben Moglen (an outside lawyer for the FSF and its former general counsel), and of the Public Patent Foundation, an organization led by the center’s legal director Dan Ravicher. The Software Freedom Law Center is itself funded largely by such Linux-supporting corporate patrons as IBM (IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Red Hat (RHT), Novell (NOVL), Oracle (ORCL), and Sun Microsystems (JAVA).

To be sure, the goal of abolishing software patents remains a radical position in the sense that very few corporations endorse it. (A surprising exception is pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly & Co. See here. Evidently Lilly recognizes that poor quality software patents are among the problems spurring the tech industry to seek patent reforms, and it hopes to find of way of placating the tech industry without weakening protections for the drug patents that are the lifeblood of the pharmaceutical industry.)

Though many information technology companies, like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Cisco, are publicly championing patent reform, they only favor improving the quality of software patents, not abolishing them. After all, there are estimated to be more than 200,000 active, issued software patents in the United States, and most major tech companies have acquired, at considerable expense, substantial portfolios of them. Companies like Philips Electronics also argue that drawing the line between hardware and software is no longer easy, and that many patents relate to processes that were once accomplished using hardware but are now accomplished using software. Why should the modernization of the medium deprive Philips of recognition for its inventions, its lawyers have argued (albeit, in a slightly different context). See here.

Still, Klemens expects his group to find much common ground with the more moderate IT industry reformers, as well as with those whose main bugaboo is business-methods patents. “Pretty much every argument we make, top to bottom, applies to business methods as well,” Klemens says. In addition, the group’s supporters hope that the major tech players are coming to conclude that the vast number of software patents they have accumulated is part of the problem. “There are so many rights in so many hands,” says Moglen, of the Software Freedom Law Center, “everybody is at risk all the time.”

In any case, even if End Software Patents’ goals are extreme, they are not far-fetched. The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on the patentability of software, and at one time the predominant assumption among lawyers was that it could not be, because it amounted to nothing more than mathematical algorithms, which, in turn, were considered nonpatentable “laws of nature.”

That assumption was gradually turned upside down through a series of decisions rendered in the 1990s by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized court that had been set up to handle patent appeals, among other things, in 1984. Those decisions suggested that even if pure software itself was not patentable, software when loaded onto a general-purpose computer created, in effect, a new physical device that could then be patented. Some of the same rulings that opened the door to software patents effectively opened the door to “business method” patents, too.

In the past two years, however, it has become clear to all that the U.S. Supreme Court is extremely unhappy with the patent environment that the Federal Circuit has fostered in the two decades since its creation. In eBay v. MercExchange (May 2006), the Court unanimously junked one longstanding rule of that court, and last term, in KSR International v. Teleflex (April 2007), it unceremoniously dispatched another. (In eBay, the Supreme Court ruled that judges need not always enjoin defendants from infringing, even after a patent-holder has proven its case, and in KSR it made it much easier for judges and patent examiners to invalidate patents due to obviousness.)

For Klemens, however, the most encouraging ruling for his agenda was one that, technically, wasn’t. In LabCorp v. Metabolite Laboratories (June 2006), the Supreme Court had been asked to review the Federal Circuit’s precedents on patentability – the issue that ultimately also determines whether software patents and business-method patents are permissible. After hearing oral argument, the Court punted, deciding that, for technical reasons, it never should have heard the case in the first place. But three justices dissented, writing that they would have overturned the Federal Circuit and invalidated the patent in question, because it clearly amounted to an attempt to patent a nonpatentable “natural phenomenon,” though the phenomenon had been recast in the patent application as a patentable “process.” For that opinion, see here. Klemens contends that software patents amount to much the same thing.

Though only three justices signed the dissent, it does appear that it, in combination with the Supreme Court’s back-of-the-hand treatment of other key Federal Circuit precedents, has led the patent appeals court to engage in some soul-searching. Just two weeks ago, it announced, without having been spurred to do so by the parties, that it would rehear an important patentability case, In re Bilski. (See generally here.) It even asked the parties to brief whether a key ruling it rendered in 1998, State Street Bank & Trust v. Financial Signature Group – one of the pivotal ones greenlighting software and business-method patents — was correctly decided.

“There are test cases all over the place,” observes Klemens. Plainly, his timing is propitious.

Correction:  As a commenter points out, in an earlier version I misused the legal term of art “reads on.” Then I did it again in a comment. Regret both errors.

As promised, here’s some practical advice to follow last week’s musings on finding romance at the office. Watching the Oscars Sunday, I got another little impromptu reminder of the relationship between work and love: In his acceptance speech, 98-year-old production design legend Robert Boyle remembered “Hitch” (as in, Alfred Hitchcock) for giving him his first big film and, yes, introducing him to his wife and lifelong companion. It’s just one more example of how romantic work can be, something that Stephanie Losee and Helaine Olen, the authors of Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding — and Managing — Romance on the Job, know a little about.

The book opens with a note from each woman on how she found her perfect mate at the office. But don’t get the wrong idea: These aren’t your average chickliteers. Both are, as the book’s site jokingly puts it, “otherwise dignified journalists” who felt passionately that office romances were getting a bad rap when they might actually be the best way to find love. So the two decided to apply their journalistic verve to the topic and share the results in this witty guide to everything from “How to Indicate Interest — Without Indicating Yourself Right Out of a Job” to “When He’s Out of Your Life But Not Out of the Office Next Door.”

It’s help many of us can use. Research cited in the book indicates that half of all office workers have dated an office mate. But then, you probably could have guessed that. As Olen says, “This has been going on since men and women have worked together, since they were sowing crops in the field.” And just because work has gone high-rise and hi-tech, doesn’t mean much has changed in the romantic arena: “The physical community of yore didn’t relocate to the Internet, it relocated to the workplace,” says Losee. “That’s so much more heartening than the possibility that we’re all just sitting in our rooms, plugged in, but completely disconnected from each other.”

So if you’re thinking of making some romantic work history of your own, a few words of encouragement and strategery from our Office Mate experts…

1. Take your time.

Taking it slow is important in any relationship, but it’s crucial when considering a coworker who as could easily be your wonderful future spouse as your insane future ex. And this goes triple for we Yers, who, to put it gently, are perhaps most likely to fall prey to that disaster-waiting-to-happen otherwise known as the happy-hour hookup. (Seriously. Remember “How much is too much at happy hour?”)

“If you jump into an office relationship and turn it into a hookup, you’re not taking advantage of the one thing that meeting someone at the office offers you — the advantage of time,” says Losee. “That’s silly, and it’s just going to lead to drama.” Instead of letting Cupid catch you unawares (or, um, un-sober) at the local watering hole, take the opportunity to get to know your potential office mate as well as possible before pursuing a relationship.

2. Get out of the office.

“Just because it’s an office romance doesn’t mean it’s conducted in the office,” says Olen, who cautions against mooning over your honey in his or her cubicle, or otherwise making yourself insufferable and/or an obvious target for downsizing. This extends to technology, too: Your office romance does not count as office work, so don’t use company tools to carry it out. Because you could find yourself in any number of unpleasant situations, like one Office Mate source, who found herself facing a less-than-sympathetic boss armed with printouts of her instant messenger pillow talk. So try to avoid that.

But doom and gloom aside, knowing your office mate outside of work is ultimately good for the relationship. “You don’t want to be two soldiers in a foxhole, thrown together because you work together,” says Olen. “You want to make sure you have more to talk about than work. And if you don’t, then you should take a strong look at your relationship, because you don’t want to change jobs and realize that you need to change boyfriends.”

3. It’s all about the rules.

The biggest potential pitfall in an office romance is, of course, an office breakup. Any relationship split can be messy, but things can get especially awkward when coworkers part ways. Handle it wrong, and not only can a bad breakup ruin your reputation at work, it can end your job altogether. So our experts say, do yourself a favor and lay down some ground rules at the very start. “It’s much easier to do when you’re first dating, when you’re in love and it’s all very theoretical, than when you’re at each others’ throats,” says Olen.

And even if your partner doesn’t respect the parameters when things go awry, the key is to remain professional and above it all — even if he or she is determined to bring the drama to work and risk taking you both off a professional cliff. But chances are, Olen says, it won’t come to that: “The office romance is the last bastion of old-fashioned courting. Because you were friends, you can remain friends. And you have a different history, because you weren’t always a couple.”

4. Think normal.

Many office romantics suffer from serious anxiety. Can you tell? And if so, whom? And how much? “The first impulse when you start dating someone at the office is to drop out of the office gang,” says Losee, “because that’s the best way you can think of not to divulge anything. But you’re just alienating yourself from your network.” It’s possible, she says, to behave with dignity and intelligence, still be part of the group, and be respected for it. “Besides, they don’t want to know all the details!”

And speaking of details, avoid PDAs. Married couples don’t neck at company dinners, and neither should you. But you shouldn’t stay in hiding forever, either. “Why does etiquette exist?” Losee asks. “To make people feel comfortable. Early on, discretion makes people comfortable. And as a relationship progresses, and everyone’s aware, openness makes them comfortable.”

5. Don’t worry; no one really minds.

Somewhere, somehow, many of us got the notion that office romances were right up there with embezzlement and miniskirts on the list of corporate crimes. Not so, say the Office Mate experts. “Contrary to myth,” says Olen, “most people don’t disapprove. Well over two-thirds are happy for you or don’t care.” It’s a good idea, if you’re considering an office romance, to check if your company has an official policy on dating at work, but the truth is that many companies don’t, and those that do tend to focus on dating subordinates and other potential harassment issues.

That doesn’t mean you should keep your boss out of the loop — after all, you don’t want him or her finding out about your love affair third-hand — but you should go in as a courtesy, not cowering in fear. And believe it or not, many HR professionals are actually supportive of office romances, since nothing builds company loyalty like being in love with a coworker. There’s even evidence that after falling in love, your productivity can increase 20 percent. “It stands to reason,” explains Losee, “you’ve got that buzz on, you’re excited to come to work, you want to impress your honey. You’re committed, and you’re going to produce.”

*****

And there you have it. As it says on my wall, “Work is love made visible.” And despite all the fun that’s been made of my Kahlil Gibran optimism, I’ve found it to be true in more ways than one: I, too, have an office mate, from a previous gig (in the spirit of full, if delayed, disclosure). So what about you? I bet you guys have some office romance opinions to share. Can they work? Are they trouble? Or are we too young to even worry about it, seeing as how many of us still have to find success at work, never mind love? Tell us your thoughts, and your own office mate stories, be they fairy tales or horror stories…

As promised, here’s some practical advice to follow last week’s musings on finding romance at the office. Watching the Oscars Sunday, I got another little impromptu reminder of the relationship between work and love: In his acceptance speech, 98-year-old production design legend Robert Boyle remembered “Hitch” (as in, Alfred Hitchcock) for giving him his first big film and, yes, introducing him to his wife and lifelong companion. It’s just one more example of how romantic work can be, something that Stephanie Losee and Helaine Olen, the authors of Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding — and Managing — Romance on the Job, know a little about.

The book opens with a note from each woman on how she found her perfect mate at the office. But don’t get the wrong idea: These aren’t your average chickliteers. Both are, as the book’s site jokingly puts it, “otherwise dignified journalists” who felt passionately that office romances were getting a bad rap when they might actually be the best way to find love. So the two decided to apply their journalistic verve to the topic and share the results in this witty guide to everything from “How to Indicate Interest — Without Indicating Yourself Right Out of a Job” to “When He’s Out of Your Life But Not Out of the Office Next Door.”

It’s help many of us can use. Research cited in the book indicates that half of all office workers have dated an office mate. But then, you probably could have guessed that. As Olen says, “This has been going on since men and women have worked together, since they were sowing crops in the field.” And just because work has gone high-rise and hi-tech, doesn’t mean much has changed in the romantic arena: “The physical community of yore didn’t relocate to the Internet, it relocated to the workplace,” says Losee. “That’s so much more heartening than the possibility that we’re all just sitting in our rooms, plugged in, but completely disconnected from each other.”

So if you’re thinking of making some romantic work history of your own, a few words of encouragement and strategery from our Office Mate experts…

1. Take your time.

Taking it slow is important in any relationship, but it’s crucial when considering a coworker who as could easily be your wonderful future spouse as your insane future ex. And this goes triple for we Yers, who, to put it gently, are perhaps most likely to fall prey to that disaster-waiting-to-happen otherwise known as the happy-hour hookup. (Seriously. Remember “How much is too much at happy hour?”)

“If you jump into an office relationship and turn it into a hookup, you’re not taking advantage of the one thing that meeting someone at the office offers you — the advantage of time,” says Losee. “That’s silly, and it’s just going to lead to drama.” Instead of letting Cupid catch you unawares (or, um, un-sober) at the local watering hole, take the opportunity to get to know your potential office mate as well as possible before pursuing a relationship.

2. Get out of the office.

“Just because it’s an office romance doesn’t mean it’s conducted in the office,” says Olen, who cautions against mooning over your honey in his or her cubicle, or otherwise making yourself insufferable and/or an obvious target for downsizing. This extends to technology, too: Your office romance does not count as office work, so don’t use company tools to carry it out. Because you could find yourself in any number of unpleasant situations, like one Office Mate source, who found herself facing a less-than-sympathetic boss armed with printouts of her instant messenger pillow talk. So try to avoid that.

But doom and gloom aside, knowing your office mate outside of work is ultimately good for the relationship. “You don’t want to be two soldiers in a foxhole, thrown together because you work together,” says Olen. “You want to make sure you have more to talk about than work. And if you don’t, then you should take a strong look at your relationship, because you don’t want to change jobs and realize that you need to change boyfriends.”

3. It’s all about the rules.

The biggest potential pitfall in an office romance is, of course, an office breakup. Any relationship split can be messy, but things can get especially awkward when coworkers part ways. Handle it wrong, and not only can a bad breakup ruin your reputation at work, it can end your job altogether. So our experts say, do yourself a favor and lay down some ground rules at the very start. “It’s much easier to do when you’re first dating, when you’re in love and it’s all very theoretical, than when you’re at each others’ throats,” says Olen.

And even if your partner doesn’t respect the parameters when things go awry, the key is to remain professional and above it all — even if he or she is determined to bring the drama to work and risk taking you both off a professional cliff. But chances are, Olen says, it won’t come to that: “The office romance is the last bastion of old-fashioned courting. Because you were friends, you can remain friends. And you have a different history, because you weren’t always a couple.”

4. Think normal.

Many office romantics suffer from serious anxiety. Can you tell? And if so, whom? And how much? “The first impulse when you start dating someone at the office is to drop out of the office gang,” says Losee, “because that’s the best way you can think of not to divulge anything. But you’re just alienating yourself from your network.” It’s possible, she says, to behave with dignity and intelligence, still be part of the group, and be respected for it. “Besides, they don’t want to know all the details!”

And speaking of details, avoid PDAs. Married couples don’t neck at company dinners, and neither should you. But you shouldn’t stay in hiding forever, either. “Why does etiquette exist?” Losee asks. “To make people feel comfortable. Early on, discretion makes people comfortable. And as a relationship progresses, and everyone’s aware, openness makes them comfortable.”

5. Don’t worry; no one really minds.

Somewhere, somehow, many of us got the notion that office romances were right up there with embezzlement and miniskirts on the list of corporate crimes. Not so, say the Office Mate experts. “Contrary to myth,” says Olen, “most people don’t disapprove. Well over two-thirds are happy for you or don’t care.” It’s a good idea, if you’re considering an office romance, to check if your company has an official policy on dating at work, but the truth is that many companies don’t, and those that do tend to focus on dating subordinates and other potential harassment issues.

That doesn’t mean you should keep your boss out of the loop — after all, you don’t want him or her finding out about your love affair third-hand — but you should go in as a courtesy, not cowering in fear. And believe it or not, many HR professionals are actually supportive of office romances, since nothing builds company loyalty like being in love with a coworker. There’s even evidence that after falling in love, your productivity can increase 20 percent. “It stands to reason,” explains Losee, “you’ve got that buzz on, you’re excited to come to work, you want to impress your honey. You’re committed, and you’re going to produce.”

*****

And there you have it. As it says on my wall, “Work is love made visible.” And despite all the fun that’s been made of my Kahlil Gibran optimism, I’ve found it to be true in more ways than one: I, too, have an office mate, from a previous gig (in the spirit of full, if delayed, disclosure). So what about you? I bet you guys have some office romance opinions to share. Can they work? Are they trouble? Or are we too young to even worry about it, seeing as how many of us still have to find success at work, never mind love? Tell us your thoughts, and your own office mate stories, be they fairy tales or horror stories…

You’re wondering why, if you understand this headline correctly, this post didn’t run last week, on everyone’s favorite love-to-hate holiday, the feast of St. Valentine. Well, not to worry; it’s not you, it’s me.

So in advance of, and by way of explanation for, the office romance tips that are coming your way in a day or so, a true story:

It’s Valentine’s Day. I’ve decided, in my infinite and oversensitive wisdom, not to acknowledge the event with the office romance post I’ve been planning for weeks. Better to wait for spring, or some other equally innocuous time, than add to the Valentine’s noise that, at least anecdotally, seems to make so many people — from the kindergartner who gets the fewest cartoon Valentines in her cubby to the single, successful twentysomething with no Valentine’s date — feel so incredibly bad.

I’m on the subway, on my way home. Sheryl Crow’s “My Favorite Mistake” comes on my iPod, and as I watch the teenaged couple snuggling against the doors — she’s cradling her flowers and he’s got a big red Mylar heart balloon tied to his backpack — another young duo catches my eye. They’re chatting like they know each other, but what seemed at first glance to be a V-Day date quickly takes on another quality. She’s prattling on, laughing and gesticulating, clearly telling some serious story, and though the furrow in his brow says he’s listening, the look in his eyes is something else altogether. The smile is just spilling out of them, and he’s so nervous, he can’t keep still, scuffing his loafers every few seconds and compulsively trying to stuff his heavily gloved hands into the slim pockets of his overcoat.

He’s smitten.

Not wanting to jinx him with my cynical music (and yes, wanting to eavesdrop a bit), I pause Sheryl. “I couldn’t believe he said that,” she’s saying, “but I guess it went all right, for my first presentation.” He mumbles something only vaguely coherent about his first day and their less than likable boss, and she giggles. “Well, I’m glad it’s not just me,” she says, but they don’t touch.

And everything, from her sensible little red leather ballet flats to her pretty daytime pea coat, says long day at the office, not hot night on the town. These are, as they say, work friends. But he so wishes they were more.

And as I watch them leave the train together, I realize, I hope they are, too. Because it isn’t every day a guy looks at a girl that way. And it isn’t every girl that feels free to just be who she is around any member of the opposite sex, let alone one who might be interested. That really could be love.

So when the doorman at the hotel on our corner steps chivalrously out of the way for me, and calls “Happy Valentine’s Day!” as I walk by, I smile. Maybe there’s something about this holiday that — especially in a city like New York, where we so often ignore if not antagonize each other — brings out the very sweetest side of people. It isn’t religious, it isn’t about family, and sure, it’s commercial, but hey, this is America. What isn’t?

And maybe someday, when those two are telling their grandchildren how they fell in love, she’ll say it was Valentine’s Day, and there was something heady in the air. But he’ll know it started well before that, in the office where he first noticed her endearing insecurity and became her friend. A tad optimistic? Of course. But impossible? Far from it.

So obviously, I revised my V-Day position, and for all the people who’ve been too busy being down on love to see it blossoming in their very own offices, on Valentine’s Day and every day, we’ve brought in the experts — Stephanie Losee and Helaine Olen, authors of Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding — and Managing — Romance on the Job. Next post, we’ll get their advice on starting your own office romance (and more importantly, steering clear of any drama). And in the meantime, ponder these “Famous ‘Dates’ in Office Mate History,” courtesy of our authors, and find out just what you might be missing.

• 1669 The eventual Marquise de Maintenon, then called Mme. Scarron, was appointed governess to French King Louis XIV’s illegitimate children. The secrecy shrouding their eventual affair and marriage was so successful that historians not only still debate if the couple’s liaison began in 1673, 1678, or 1680, but also what year they finally married and what, if any, influence the Marquise had in French political life. This amount of secrecy is remarkable given the way they lived: French royalty was considered so exalted, the King could not even go to the bathroom with complete privacy.

• 1762-1796 Reign of Russia’s Catherine the Great. The empress appoints many of her lovers to official government positions, including longtime partner Grigory Potemkin. His attempts to impress her by supposedly erecting hollow facades of villages on the lands that his military campaign had won give the world the term “Potemkin Village.”

• 1990 Husband and wife New York Times reporters Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn share a Pulitzer Prize for their joint coverage of China’s Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They are the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism.

Have your own favorite date or Valentine’s story? As always, we’d love to hear them…