It’s more of a recent thing in the US too[1]. It started aggressively declining in the early 2000s (along with almost every other way except for online and bars). Though I think there is a general stigma in the US these days for “meeting at work” unless under certain circumstances, like 2 new hires hooking up, or 2 people at the same company but they don’t work together. Anything else and people are gonna start questioning the power dynamics and a bunch of things that make it not worth the hassle. Maybe it was the Lewinsky case, maybe it was the popularization of workplace abuse, maybe it is the bipartisan increase in judgement casting and virtue signaling.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/18h7k9g/ho...

[2] https://data.stanford.edu/hcmst