"Are you married?"

At my job, I am still meeting and getting to know a lot of the people who work there, and I have noticed that one question that comes up a lot, and early, is "Are you married?"

I have also noticed that it kind of drives me nuts when this happens, but I don't want to scare anyone off, since we are all still sniffing each others' butts, trying to weed out the friends from the foes. And announcing, "I'm Husband-Free!" might start a follow-up conversation that is longer than I have time for in a lot of these brief encounters.

What to do? I came up with an answer that works equally well with men and women: when asked, "Are you married?" respond with a smile, feign a blush, look coy and say, "My goodness, are you asking me out? I'm so flattered! Let me think about it..." It gets a lot of laughs and seems to gently yet succinctly, point out the stupidity of the question, unless someone actually DOES want to go out with you...