Professionals Do It on Desks

Hello!

Normally, people in a professional line of work must keep their romantic inclinations in check at the office. However, sometimes, in the heat of the moment, UST simply must be resolved. They're at the office, so might as well just do it on the desk. This may or may not involve Necktie Leash kissing or the wanton shuffling of papers onto the floor to make way for some "pencil pushing". Can be used to show the otherwise-professional letting their hair down, or as an insult to the boss or someone else in a position of authority.

A subtrope of Making Love in All the Wrong Places. See also Sex at Work.

---

Examples:

Comic Books

• In Devil Due's Publishing's Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, Laura Jeffries and Martin Ransome have sex on the desk of the CEO of Cardwell Industries.
• This shows up fairly frequently in Red Ears. If the set-up to a sex gag takes place in the office, the desk will most definitely be used.

Fan Works

• For some reason, lots of Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfiction seems to involve the huge, impressive-looking desk in Commander Ikari's office being used for this. Not always by Gendo...
  • Advice and Trust: In chapter 8, Ritsuko is fed up with being ignored by Gendo, so that she storms inside his office, pounces on his desk and demands being taken right there. So Gendo did.
    She'd gone to his office, stormed inside like a force of nature, and all but pounced on him at his desk. He'd finally acquiesced to her very plain desire and taken her, right there in his office. Again.
  • Alluded to in Doing It Right This Time:
    Ritsuko: Doing it on a desk is overrated anyway. Believe me, I would know.
    Misato: [head desk] Can we talk about something else now, please?
  • In Nobody Dies, Asuka's parents are the ones who end up doing it while Pieter is in charge in Gendo's absence. It's quite likely the desk's owner and his wife (who as you may have gathered from the title isn't dead in this story) beat them to it.
  • In memorably weird Conan the Barbarian quasi-crossover The Riddle of Steel, it's Shinji and Rei of all people. (Don't Ask.)
• In Yet again, with a little extra help, it is revealed that it is a grand tradition among Hokages for the acting Hokage to, at least once, take his or her beloved in the Hokage's office, right there on the desk.
• In Vale's Underground, Mercury begins to have sex with Cinder by bending her over her own desk. They were interrupted by Emerald coming in and giving them some news. They successfully have sex on her desk later in the story.
• In Hetalia: Axis Powers one-shot fic Happiest Place on Earth, this happens...and qualifies in a sense because Nations can be classified as professionals in a way...

Films — Live-Action

• In Die Hard, two employees of Nakatomi are going at it on a desk when Hans Gruber's boys show up and drag them out with the rest of the hostages. This distracts the terrorists closest to our hero just long enough for him to escape.
• Used in Bound (2015) to both show how much sway Ryan holds over Michelle by getting her to have sex on her father's desk and also to symbolize his taking over her father's role in ordering her life.
• At the start of Tamara, Tamara has an Erotic Dream about her English teacher Mr. Natolly. He sweeps the papers off the desk in his classroom and lifts her on to the desk in preparation for doing her, and then the dream shifts.
• In Ms. 45, the women in Thana's workplace are treated to the spectacle of a boss and one of his employees having sex on the desk in his office across the street.

Literature

• Deception Point: Senator Sexton and his assistant, Gabrielle, have a desktop tryst in his office, photos of which are later used as blackmail.
• In one of The Millennium Trilogy books, part of the background on Blomkvist and Berger's relationship is that they had sex on the desk in her office shortly after they began working together, thus resuming a relationship that they had ended when each of them got married.

Live-Action TV

• Frasier finds himself at odds with his new female boss, which everyone except him thinks is Unresolved Sexual Tension. Finally, he goes in to argue with his boss about wages late at night, and the following exchange ensues:
  Kate Costas: There would've been raises if you hadn't taken all the money to pay for those Armani suits!
  Frasier: Oh, what about you? Let's not overlook that pricy little Fendi scarf you're wearing!
  Kate Costas: Well, what about this designer cologne on you?
  Frasier: Well, how about those pouty lips that must have cost you a fortune in collagen injections!
  Kate Costas: These lips are mine, you arrogant gasbag!
  Frasier: You intractable despot!
  Kate Costas: Blowhard!
  Frasier: Tyrant!
  Kate Costas: Ass!
  Frasier: Shrew!
  [passionate kiss]
• In Better Off Ted, a flashback/security footage of Ted's hookup with Veronica shows them having sex on top of a work desk. Veronica accidentally deleted an important e-mail with her foot during the act.
• Conviction: ADA's Alex Cabot and Jim Steele engage in after-hours sex on top of Jim's work desk.
• In the first episode of Crownies, Ben and Julie sneak into the office after the Christmas party to have sex on Ben's boss's desk.
• On Friends
  • When Phoebe dates David the Scientist Guy...
    Phoebe: Were you planning on kissing me ever?
    David: Uh, that's definitely a, uh, valid question. And, uh, the answer would be (Writes YES on the board) yes. Yes I was. But, see, I wanted it to be this phenomenal kiss that happened at this phenomenal moment, because, well, 'cause it's you.
    Phoebe: Sure.
    David: Right. But, see, the longer I waited, the more phenomenal the kiss had to be, and now we've reached a place where it's just gotta be one of those things where I just like... sweep everything off the table and throw you down on it. And, uh, I'm not really a, uh, sweeping sorta fella.
  • And when Rachel was dating her assistant Tag, she dramatically sweeps all the stuff off her desk:
    Tag: Oh my God. Are you serious?
    Rachel: No, I just always wanted to do that. Can you help me pick this stuff up?
• Herman's Head: Herman catches Heddy in a vulnerable moment, and they do this on their boss's desk. The boss figures it out, and isn't happy.
• The Office (US): At the end of "Goodbye Toby", Phyllis walks in on Dwight and Angela, er, "discussing finances" in the accounting section of the office.
• Seinfeld: George lost his job after having sex with one of the cleaning women on his desk. He said he didn't know that wasn't allowed.
  Mr. Lippman: It has come to my attention that you and the cleaning woman have engaged in sexual intercourse on the desk in your office. Is that correct?
  George: Who said that?
  Mr. Lippman: She did.
  George: (Beat) Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell ya, I've gotta plead ignorance on this, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing was frowned upon...'cause I've worked in a lot of offices and people do that all the time.
  • George certainly knew what the consequences were. Being George, this response seemed like the only possible escape.
  • In another episode, he deliberately avoids hiring an attractive secretary specifically to avoid this trope. It doesn't work, however.
  "I'M GIVING YOU A RAAAAAAAAAISE!"
• In the Zen episode "Ratking". Zen and his lover violate the new boss's rules and make love on the boss's desk. There's a laugh when the desk falls down while the boss is using it. Later, as the boss is leaving (and Zen is preparing to temporarily take the job), Zen tells him what they did.
• Lampshaded in an episode of General Hospital as a couple begins to make out in his office. The man turns and sweeps everything off of his desk.
  Woman: [confused] We have a perfectly good couch right here. [gestures]
  Man: I know. I've just always wanted to do that.
• Angel:
  • Played straight in "Carpe Noctem" when someone takes over Angel's body and starts hitting on evil lawyer Lilah Morgan; it doesn't take long for the two of them to start making out on the bosses' desk at Angel Investigations.
    Wesley: I do not believe it. On my desk?
    Gunn: Well, it did used to be his. Maybe he was just kinda... reclaiming it.
  • In "Destiny", Spike's first act on becoming corporeal again is to throw a lawyer out of his office so he can do it on the desk with Angel's Sexy Secretary.
• On the show Smallville, Lois Lane had an affair with her boss at the Daily Planet. Her cousin Chloë Sullivan referenced this trope when she urged Lois to break off the affair, telling her that she wanted people to think she had earned a promotion "at her desk, not on it."
• Happens between Charlene Cockburn (Kristin Chenoweth) and her husband in the pilot of GCB.
• Happens with Daisy and Sweets in Bones.
  Sweets: We have to stop having sex on my desk.
• Gwen walks in on Jack and Ianto in the Hub in the Torchwood episode "Adrift."
• In one priceless moment in The West Wing, President Bartlet tried to talk his wife into doing it in the Oval Office.
• On the first episode of That's My Bush!, Laura wants to have sex in every room of the White House. She suggests this while George is trying to have a romantic dinner with her and secretly hold an important meeting in another room. Guess which room she wants to try first.
• Star Trek: Voyager. In "Scientific Method", Lt. B'Elanna Torres has just started a relationship with Lt. Tom Paris and are making out at every opportunity. At one point they make use of an isolated work console in Engineering, which Torres has to turn off as it starts beeping. And then Tuvok walks in on them.
• In an episode of Alphas, Bill is implied to seduce his wife in his office when she comes to bring him lunch, after his Fight Clubbing experiences help him to get less uptight.
• The Barrier: Two characters having an affair tend to favor desks when beds aren't available.
• Arrow. At the start of Season 2, Thea Queen becomes the manager of the nightclub Verdant, which is first shown by her making out with Roy Harper on her desk. Until she sees the bruises from his latest vigilante escapade and starts arguing with him instead.

Video Games

• Dragon Age:
  • Heavily Implied to have occurred between Aveline and Donnic in Dragon Age II; Hawke leans against the door of Aveline's office with a knowing smirk, and we hear muffled giggling and moaning from behind the door.
  • A confirmed case in Dragon Age: Inquisition with Cullen and the female Inquisitor. If you participate in Sera's side quest to prank the others after this scene she'll say something about how hard it is to move the desk and the Inquisitor will awkwardly mention that it's "sturdy". And in Tresspasser DLC in which the two aforementioned couple get married, Sera makes a hilarious Lampshade Hanging about this trope in her journal entry. It seems that she knows why the Inquisitor replied awkwardly two years ago.

Visual Novels

• In Double Homework, Ms. Walsh goes out for a date, expecting to meet a Brazilian actor, and finds the protagonist instead. Since she’s so horny, she suggests that the two of them go somewhere private to have sex. Her idea? The classroom. Over the teacher’s desk.
• Hisao and his potential girlfriend Shizune from Katawa Shoujo aren't exactly professionals, but they are members of the school council (with Shizune as the president and the class representative), and their second sex scene takes place in the council room itself the night before they step down. Shizune explicitly tells Hisao (though sign language since she's deafmute) that she's always intended to spend her last night as Student Council President in the room, and having sex with her boyfriend is one really nice plus, so they end up having sex under the council table (mostly because Hisao fell off) and then on it.

Webcomics

• In the Ménage à 3 universe...okay, it's actually a workplace table rather than a desk, but the principle still holds. One piece of furniture suffers this fate in two different comics.
  • In Ménage à 3 itself, Zii makes use of the backroom in the comics shop where she works while on a break to engage in some research with Amber. Fortunately for her, Jung, her manager, is merely snarky about this, rather than shocked...
  • ...Which is only fair, as it later turns out in Sticky Dilly Buns that he and Ramona have been making use of the same table for the same purpose, and a few strips later, when Ruby tries to proposition Andy, they’d probably have to use it too.

Western Animation

• A subversion in Rocko's Modern Life: Ed is working, and Bev comes to see him at work. He rudely dismisses the knock on the door, but then when Bev comes in anyway, and he realizes who she is, he knocks everything off the top of his desk excitedly. They don't do anything as perhaps planned because Bev now has a nose, and is put off by Ed's B.O.
• On The Simpsons, Bart was once hiding in the classroom coat closet and overheard Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner having sex on Martin's desk. ("It is usually the cleanest.")
• In the South Park episode "Black Friday," the head of Sony is introduced having sex with a woman on top of his desk. Played With in "A Song of Ass and Fire," though: he has sex with the reporter, Niles Lawson in his office, but apparently has a bed in there.
• Nebbish accountant Cyril Figgis of Archer seems to have more sex on office desks than anywhere else, and when caught frequently just gives out a meek "... hello."

---