However, the novelty seems to have worn off, as occasionally the girls seem definitely hostile towards me. In fact, once a month they positively turn on me.
My friend reckons that if you put a group of women together, eventually they will "sync" their mood swings and that once a month I am going to be subjected to a form of "bullying" and should complain to my HR department and ask to be moved. Is he right?
A: At one newspaper I worked at, I was surprised to discover the classified sales department had someone in charge of the departments "PMT".
At the time, I thought this was pretty progressive stuff and the first time they informed me that "PMT" was up month on month I said well done and was intrigued to know how they had managed this.
Finding out subsequently that PMT was an abbreviation for Property, Motors and Travel, and not pre-menstrual tension as I had at first thought, went some way to explaining the communication issues I had with some of my team members.
Please don't take your friend's advice and complain to HR. Over the past 30 years, there has been much research into the possibility that women who spend time together can synchronise their menstrual cycles.
In 1971, a psychologist called Dr Martha McClintock first published a paper reporting this phenomenon. However, since then not one study has managed to find any link that supports her findings or a physiological reason why the phenomenon could happen.
The most likely explanation, based on statistical analysis, is that it is just sheer coincidence and timing.
That said, once a month my wife seems to get irritated with me because I don't put my socks in the wash basket, put the toilet seat down or put my coffee cup in the dishwasher instead of the sink.
My analysis of this is that for most of the month she can put up with my irritating habits, but every fourth week she has had enough.
My guess is that if you stopped boring your team with your weekend anecdotes, managed to come back from lunch sober and on time, and paid a little more attention to your work, you may find your working environment less hostile and realise the problem is not your colleagues, but you.
David Emin is director of advertising at Mirror Group Newspapers.
Send your dilemmas to david.emin@haymarket.com