The Pitfalls of Dating your Boss
Romantic fiction portrays relationships between secretaries, or workers, and bosses as sweetness and light and happy ever after. However, in reality, romantic entanglements between workers and bosses bring problems because of the workplace situation.
There is an inbuilt power imbalance between boss and worker and this is amplified, where, as is usual in these circumstances, the boss is male and the worker female. This can cause problems. In England, bosses and managers attempting to pressurize employees into an intimate relationship, by using the threat of dismissal, or harsh treatment or promising work favours, have been prosecuted for sexual harassment. The boss can use power force a worker to remain unwillingly in a relationship, especially when he is directly responsible for that worker’s salary, wage rises, employment terms and conditions. In English law, there are some notable cases where bosses, having tired of a relationship with a worker, were sued for constructive dismissal because they have made life so difficult for their former lover that she had to leave her job.
There are some unreconstructed cavemen who see their female staff as a personal harem. A worker needs to listen to the gossip before entering a relationship with the boss. It may be that he is a serial romancer and has had many such adventures with his workers. He may be a married man and uses his female workers as light entertainment from his marriage. Even where this is not so there are other problems that can dog a relationship between a boss and an employee.
You think your relationship is private. You both do everything possible keep it so, but, however discreet you are, someone in the workplace will find out and gossip will spread through the building like wildfire. This causes many problems and can sour the atmosphere in the workplace.
A worker might find promotion unattainable. How can a boss promote an employee, with whom he is romantically involved, without being accused of favouritism? Another disgruntled worker, passed over for the promotion, could even sue the company for unfair treatment, claiming that the romance was the sole reason the boss promoted his lover.
A romance between boss and worker could make workplace discipline very difficult. The boss’s lover may presume the relationship gives them the right to flout workplace rules. Even, if the boss treats all workers equally, there will be the unshakable suspicion, amongst staff that his lover gets special treatment.
A colleague, who is romantically involved with the boss, may make their workmates wary. They may believe their colleague is spying on them or carrying tales back to the boss. If the boss legitimately disciplines or dismisses workers, gossips may falsely accuse his lover of pouring poison in the boss’s ear, and the accusation, however unfounded, will stick.
The problems and difficulties implicit in a relationship between the boss and an employee are numerous. The couple could overcome these if one of the parties left their job or transferred to another department. A romance between worker and boss is rarely as easy in real life as is popularly portrayed in romantic fiction. The partners in such a relationship need to consider the implications of their relationship very carefully.
