News You Can't Use: Jealous of a "work spouse"? It's true.

It wasn't until several months into my first job that I heard the term "work spouse." Are you in the dark too? Do you know the co-worker (male or female) to whom you share your day-to-day gripes with? Spend your lunch date with, and discuss your kids? Yep, he or she is your "work spouse."

And it turns out that a new CareerBuilder.com survey finds that one in ten workers feel as if they have one, and among those workers who are married, 20% of spouses and significant others feel jealous. Seventeen percent even said they had to compromise something at the office to protect their work spouse.

Wow.

Now for some lighthearted info. The same 6,000 people surveyed were asked to identify their favorite platonic TV work couples. Here are their answers:

  1. Regis and Kelly

2. David Letterman and Paul Shaffer

3. Jay Leno and Kevin Eubanks

4. Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer

5. Howard Stern and Robin Quivers

6. Judge Judy and Petri Byrd

7. Conan O'Brien and Max Weinberg

8. The Ladies of The View

9. Diane Sawyer and Chris Cuomo

10. Jimmy Kimmel and Guillermo Diaz

11. Harry Smith and Julie Chen

12. Billy Bush and Nancy O'Dell


Survey Methodology

This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Interactive(R) on behalf of CareerBuilder.com among 6,194 employees (employed full-time; not self-employed) between August 21 and September 9, 2008. Percentages for some questions are based on a subset of responses to certain questions. With a pure probability sample of 6,194 one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 1.25 percentage points. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies.