Quote Originally Posted by RamesesII View Post
.....to tell a work colleague of the opposite gender that they look beautiful or handsome or would that be professionally out of line?
Beautiful is pretty vulgar word to be thrown around lightly for the purposes of scoring some points. If she falls for that maybe you deserve each other. I would stick to complimenting with a more casual tone. I think flirting at the office is okay but personally I avoid it because there's a good chance shit will go down and you don't want drama at the work-flow.

I used to work at an internet provider and there was this friend who was my peer who decided she wanted to step it up and take on a leadership role. We continued talking casually and one day I went up to her to BS about an account I was working on and before I could say anything she stares me down and instantly asked "who should I go out with; who's a good person I can date??".. all I did was put my palms up and say "I don't know..." and tried to empathize with her. That shit didn't fly well! .... short story shorter, after a few months she had me fired. Turned out she had been building stories about me after that event and when she got to deliver to news to me she portrayed herself in the exact tone and body language I had used when I turned her down. That was pretty whimsical I admit but the bottom line here is "if someone at work gets alil creepy and makes an aggressive advance towards you, get the f*** out and don't look back!!" If you got a good case I encourage all women to report it to the human resources department.
There weren't even steps of flirting leading up to fair warn me. So if you choose to do this at work, ..do it in steps at least to give them a running start.

Co-workers are a dangerous thing to fling. If you're in a shallow mood, go get slutty..
Best advice: steer away from dating at work.