(FORTUNE Magazine) – Those who grew up anytime between the 1950s, when martinis and spouse swapping were the rage (or so I'm told), and the 1970s, when clean young people were still rutting about like drunken farm animals, may be excused if they find the current sexual landscape in society at large, and certainly in the workplace, confusing and dispiriting.

What's the norm? Who's on first? Where's the social yardstick? Is sex, ipso facto, bad, per se? Of course, we know it's bad, but if it's so bad, why are some people out there still engaging in it with such abandon that they can't stay off the front pages of our most august newspapers? One thing is clear: Those who can't negotiate the subtle psycho-social-sexual matrix now being constructed for working people are doomed to fail, and quite painfully too, probably ending up standing in the middle of a public square with their pants down around their ankles.

To see how versed in the vagaries of our current situation you might be, take the following quiz.

1. True or false: It is bad to have sex with a civilian.

True--if you are in the Army and have to sneak around and lie to get the job done, and become insubordinate when people want to know more about what you're up to. So that's wrong, definitely.

2. True or false: It is okay to have sex with a civilian and then get a $5 million advance on a book that someone else will write for you.

The correct answer is: True! Anything that produces more than $100,000 in revenue is a good thing.

3. True or false: The person who entrapped beloved sports and media icon Frank Gifford by luring him up to a hotel room to have sex with her is a bad person.

True. Unless all reports are in error, the woman in question was paid under the crucial threshold of $100,000 and so far has not been offered a lucrative contract to provide a line extension on the project. I, for one, find the small scale of this person's ambition reprehensible, and I'm sure you do too.

4. Remember the military guy who was up for the big job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? He withdrew from the running because he reportedly had a liaison more than a decade ago with someone other than the wife from whom he was very shortly thereafter divorced. The reason he lost out on the job was (a) he was unqualified for it; (b) he had the stupidity to admit to this moral lapse, which is something no person in the world of business would engage in (the admitting part, I mean); (c) people who have sex with other people and are caught at it are very funny, and nobody funny should be head of anything; (d) all of the above.

The answer, as you all must know by now, is (d). First of all, there are select circumstances when people may have sex without getting into some kind of disgraceful trouble, but they are very few at this stage of the game. The bottom line is, anyone who's out there having sex with somebody is probably unqualified for anything important. If they were capable of something important, why would they be having sex? In this case, how could a guy run the military bureaucracy of the U.S. when we know he was having sex with somebody at some point in the past? How do we know he wouldn't be doing it in the future? We don't, and that's that.

5. Having sex with other people is very, very bad if you are (a) caught at it; (b) caught at it, and people don't like you; (c) caught at it, and found to have done silly things while engaged in this unseemly behavior, like wearing funny hats, or singing, or making grotesque statements that were taped and later played for an international audience; (d) unattractive.

The answer, as you all must know, is (d). We'll forgive anything but the mental image of somebody ugly doing nasty stuff. I'm sorry I had to bring it up. I won't do it again.

6. True or false: It is wrong to have sex with a subordinate.

True. No matter what anybody tells you, it is always wrong to utilize a power relationship to impose intimate relations on another person. It is particularly abhorrent if he or she gets mad about it and sues you afterward. History, not to mention your office, is full of people who abused their position. We only hear about the ones who get in trouble for it.

7. True or false: It is, however, perfectly fine to have sex with a subordinate if it turns out to be a long, steamy affair that people find out about later, when you marry the person after divorcing your current spouse.

True. People love that. They call it "office romance" and view it as a confirmation of the emotional culture of the corporation.

8. True or false: It is bad to bite somebody this year, so I'm not going to.

Answer: Both! This was a trick question, unless you're allegedly Marv Albert. Biting other people is certainly not a good thing if they haven't specifically requested it. But some people do seem interested in a small bite on occasion, and if they're not a subordinate you don't intend to marry, or are in your room after midnight, and/or you've both been drinking quite heavily, it is possible that, under some circumstances, a quick bite may be permissible if nobody ever finds out about it. That's the key consideration. In fact, why don't we just take that as a given. Nobody should find out about anything you do, ever, particularly if you're not very good-looking.

9. True or false: Above all else, it is bad to bite somebody and then not have a press conference about it.

Now, that's true. In fact, if you intend to be accused of anything and then not have a press conference about it, you may go to the back of the class. This is why public relations is one of the fastest-growing professions today. I happen to know that public-relations people often have sex with other people and never get in trouble about it because they can manage things if it becomes necessary. It's a very sexy profession, come to think of it. They position. They spin. They get paid for it. It's the Kamasutra occupation of the Nineties, baby.

Score yourself a couple of points for every right answer. Kick yourself out the window from a very high floor for every wrong one. But congratulations for playing. These days it's a major achievement to have scored at all.

By day, STANLEY BING is a real executive at a real FORTUNE 500 company he'd rather not name.