Andrea Peyser: I don't regret my office romance and neither should you

I don't regret my office romance — and neither should you

I sing the praises of the office hookup. Where else but in the shadow of the copy machine can one meet a lover or a candidate for a drunken one-night stand who’s likely to have been drug-tested, vetted for a criminal record and checked for gnarly, communicable diseases?

As a public service to hard-up dudes and dudettes (or people of both or no genders), The Post published a story ahead of Saturday, Valentine’s Day — which I think of as the Super Bowl of sex. All you lonely folks who spend off-hours with your cats rather than practicing pickup lines or toning your abdominal muscles were warned to steer clear of potential playmates who work in adjacent cubicles.

Fifty-seven percent of American business professionals reported having engaged in workplace relationships at some point in their careers, according to a new survey by Vault.com. But Linley Taber wrote in this newspaper about some horrific instances of office coupling gone awry. These included the case of a female New York City financial-recruiting firm employee who got plastered at a company function and went home with her boss — parading her conquest right in front of the co-worker whom she’d recently started seeing. Awkward!

She must have wanted a promotion desperately.

I have to respectfully disagree with the naysayers. Whether one toils in construction or in fashion, in my humble opinion, office romance rocks.

Experts in the field of dating, and by that I mean my single and paired-off girlfriends, tell me that one’s place of work is a superior setting for meeting a lover. Company co-workers have each probably passed screenings for health- and substance-abuse issues, and likely have been cleared of psychological maladies that might turn that hot guy or gal into a hot ax murderer or bed-wetter.

And, rather than wasting time with the unemployed freaks and fatties who may lurk on Craigslist.com, you already know that your office-mate has a job, and there’s no mystery as to what he or she looks like after you sober up.

As Barbara of Brooklyn has learned from experience, that guy who describes himself as “rugged,’’ “well-dressed’’ and “sensitive’’ on Match.com might actually be tattooed, metrosexual and gay.

“I was dating a guy I met on OKCupid.com for a year and he met all my criteria — he was romantic, good-looking, straight, made good money on Wall Street and he wasn’t afraid of commitment,’’ my pal Kathy, who lives in Manhattan, told me.

Unfortunately, that lack of commitment-phobia did not extend to my friend. When Labor Day rolled around, the man of Kathy’s dreams suddenly had to go on a “business trip.’’ He disappeared for a week around Christmas, saying he had to attend his grandmother’s funeral in Arizona. This man sure seemed to have a lot of out-of-state relatives on their deathbeds.

Exasperated, Kathy looked up her man’s Facebook status.

Married.

Duh.

Then, there are bars replete with germs, ex-cons and losers who look good through whiskey glasses, but turn into belching, mama-loving frogs in the daylight.

I met my husband (pictured on our wedding day) at the newspaper in Florida for which we both worked, he as a photographer and I as a reporter. Though I’m a Type-A Queens native and he’s a laid-back fellow from Massachusetts, we were both journalistic nomads with similar ambitions and personality quirks. We also shared passions for world travel, eating liver and watching sappy movies. But I might never have given him a chance if I didn’t run into him constantly at work — because he was nice.

Six months after we started dating, on Valentine’s Day 1987, Mark Phillips asked me to marry him. We got hitched the following Jan. 2, and now live in Brooklyn with a daughter and a mortgage.

Twenty-seven years after saying “I do,’’ I still think that my husband is the cutest thing in pants.

I’ll never regret my workplace love affair. Give it a try.