That dude will be alone whether he technically has girlfriend or not. By your own description, he spends all the time in work, lets assume working. So they get maybe cofee break together anyway. If he is not working majority of the time he is in work, then maybe he should go socialize elsewhere so that he does not slow other people's work with socialising. There is nothing more irritating than having late meeting or having to work weekend, because basically dude who was supposed to do code review socialize instead of working.

This dude wants it both ways. He wants to be seen as super hard worker, hero who is all the time working - and at the same time he wants to have non work life experiences. So he wants workplace to become like a bar or playground. Then the workplace becomes ineffective but we all get to pretend we are hard workers.

> In a situation like that, I can understand how they'd be strongly inclined towards interpreting "some other time" as an opportunity rather than a rejection.

But then she gets blamed for "not being direct enough" - including here on hacker news. Altrough the issue is not that he did not get it, issue is that he really really does not want to hear the no.

I mean, I get the wishful thinking and dont mind relationship between people, but don't then chalk the persistent dude behavior on girls not being clear or direct enought.