I sure as hell do not want my boss asking me out. Ever. I do not want that kind of situation at work and I am totally fine with people being fired for "inappropriate relationships" as happened in my department per the company policy.
Policies are neat because they let you impose limits to human behavior in a very binary and arbitrary fashion. But humans are complex beings. People fall in and out of love all of the time. It needn't be exploitative.
To mandate whom I can or cannot fall in love with is something I will never accept. Nor should anyone.
Depending on the policy, you might have people having to leave the company or decline promotions.
The military treats certain situations similar to statutory rape because if you are being threatened or pressured in some way, the perp will expect you to swear it is consensual. They jail officers (or did at one time) found to be sleeping with the wives of lower ranking men in their unit, and her testimony is irrelevant.
This is considered a morale issue in the military. You don't want an officer to have to order a man to do a job that might kill him under circumstances where the motive might be "I want you dead so I can have your wife."
The stakes may be lower than that in most jobs, but I think the effect of wondering why Sally got promoted or wondering if Anna got fired because the boss asked her out and she said "no" is still incredibly corrosive to the environment. I don't see any good coming from it.
Whatever, staying on topic: if some people abuse a given freedom, it does not mean that the freedom itself need be banned. The abusers need be punished. In my mother tongue we have this expression: don't burn the quilt for the flea. The initiative for a relationship need not come from the superior, and in case it does, it need not be corrupt and exploitative. And then it's not that the lower-ranking one is always a Sally or an Anna, can also be a Joe or Tom. (edit:) At the end of the day, each case is different and should be taken in its own.
You say you don't see any good in it, but partners of such relationships that lead to happy families will beg to differ. Usually people get to meet each other in school, work or friend gatherings. It's not like you can stop people in the street and ask them out.
edit: grammar are hards
This applies to all sorts of things. It's why click-wrap eulas have limits on what they can do. It's why there are limits on what companies can put in employment contracts. It's why romantic/sexual relationships between adults and children are often illegal. It's why consumer protection laws exist.
it's disgusting to compare a romantic relationship to rape
Maybe, but it's also perfectly reasonable to ask how much of a power imbalance there is, and whether claims of consent can actually be trusted.
It was perfectly fine to date people from work at my old job. It was not fine to date someone whom you had power over. There were plenty of people there that were married to other employees or dating other employees. In some cases, they worked closely together.
Such a policy protects both the boss and their underlings. It means the boss doesn't have to worry if someone is asking them out in hopes of sleeping their way into a promotion. No one is allowed to ask their boss out either.
Edit: Since you say you are foreign, "Statutory rape" is a term that means you had sex with someone who was legally too young to consent. So even if that individual was totally enthusiastic about sleeping with you, due to their status as a legal minor, they are not deemed competent enough to fully consider the consequences of their actions and provide informed consent. It does not mean you dragged someone off down an alleyway and violently assaulted them.
This is pertinent in situations where one party is not in a position to freely say "no" because the other individual has power over them (or some other advantage that is allowing them take advantage of someone).
WRT statutory rape, I didn't know, sorry. WRT me being foreign, I din't know that HN was a US-centric forum.
There are other ways things could affect the business. There could be a risk of getting sued, there could be morale issues related to accusations of someone "sleeping their way to the top", there could be reputational problems making the company less attractive to potential new employees, etc.
>people being fired for "inappropriate relationships" as happened in my department per the company policy.
If this were to happen, I imagine HR would say, "You two are dating" and the two people involved would say, "No we're not, we don't meet outside of work."
How would it even come to the attention of HR absent any kind of complaint whatsoever? Clearly in such a consenting relationship it's not in their interest to bring it up - surely "but rumor has it" is not actionable. I can't imagine that they would kiss or physically touch in the workplace. They're not slaves. How can HR know about their private lives?
As for your "I sure as hell do not want my boss asking me out. Ever." together with your second longer sentence, as a matter of policy your statement actually translates directly to "if I [meaning you, Mz] had a boss that I wanted to ask me out, I would like for us to have this choice only at the option of seriously risking both of our jobs for me to let them know this or for them to do so if they felt the same way." Because that is the rule you are suggesting. And what anyway is dating? Should employees not be allowed to meet after work, period? Are they allowed to meet, but the minute they touch even outside of work, even when keeping it a secret, and even if both of them really, really, want to, then they should both be fired? What if they secretly meet and talk about work things for months, but it's never a date, because they know they're living in a totalitarian regime that will fire them both if it judges that these meetings are anything but fully professional? What if they bring work materials with them, or perhaps the man in question tells everyone he is gay or if the woman tells everyone that she is a lesbian, just to throw HR off of the scent? Should there be a secret court -- how about a court-appointed psychiatrist and/or detective, so that anyone can file an anonymous complaint with HR against any man and woman who are in each other's chain of command, accusing them of being in a relationship, with no repercussions for the accuser but both of them being summarily fired if the detective says, "they seem to like each other, yes. Wouldn't surprise me." Will this atmosphere help enable women to join male teams -- where in many cases a staggering 100% of certain teams are male?
Also let's go farther than "did two employees in each other's chain of command ever touch each other." Your policy suggestion also implies that rather than start a foundation that they invested with $28 billion, after being married and living happily ever since, that Melinda Gates and Bill Gates should have been fired from Microsoft rather than being married. (Since in their position as a head on Encarta and Expedia, Bill Gates was their 'boss.')
Or does this not apply to the actual bosses, the CEO's (not a gendered term), who lead company cultures by example? Are you saying this was a bad outcome, that instead they should both have been ousted, fired? Because the minute they got married, the cat was out of the bag. It would be pretty hard to mount a defense that you're not actually in a relationship with someone, when your two Facebook statuses change to married to that person, don't you think?
How it works in normal, balanced workplaces is that employees don't harass each other, and nobody would ever ask you out unless you really, really wantd them to -- not only not your boss, not even the person sitting next to you. Don't you think that is a fairer policy?
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EDIT: downvoters (3 of them), could you kindly explain yourselves? I am open to the possibility that I am wrong, in this case please answer the rhetorical questions above literally or tell me why you disagree.
Please give the clarification you state below. I'm curious what happened in the scenario you mentioned.
if you need my retracted comments for some reason they're here - http://pastebin.com/EPXJTgEE
I did not say two consenting adults were fired. I have not said there is anything wrong with people dating colleagues at work and just a great many other things that you assert that I said.
If you would like to go back and reread my comments and rethink your concerns and rephrase them, I would be happy to discuss your concerns with you. But you are so wildly misinterpreting what I have said, I think it only deepens the misunderstanding here to try to "rebut" or "clarify" things in your statements.
EDIT:
This is my retracted comment. I am rather tired of the discussion and the degree to which people are wildly misinterpreting my remarks and "rebutting" policy suggestions I never made, amongst other things. Please read it carefully before responding further. Thank you.
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Mz said that two consenting people in their (Mz's) department were fired for an "inappropriate relationship" outside of work, so I asked this poster how, in fact, HR found out in that case.
That strikes me as insane. I am open to other alternatives however. In particular I'd like to hear the details of the case Mz. just reported to us.
This was not a dating situation. I don't know the exact details. It was handled discreetly, which I think is appropriate.
The man that was fired was a middle management type. He was married. The rumor mill suggested either that he was having an affair with a particular lower ranking female or that he had been found to be sexually harassing someone.
I discussed this with both a male friend who was rather high ranking in another department and with a female friend who had been an employee of the man who was fired. She and I had been teammates at one time.
The man in question was someone who had called me "doll" and "babe" at one time under circumstances where there was absolutely nothing wrong with that as I had no idea who he was. I only knew him socially as someone who worked in my department of about 500 people that I ran into sometimes in the cafeteria. And then, days after he began calling me "doll" and "babe," I learned that he was about to become my boss.
I arranged a private meeting with my boss and explained the situation. I told him the man was not guilty of doing anything wrong and his intentions were ambiguous and I did not even know if he was married or not. I was told he was married. My boss suggested trying to trap the man into a guilty reaction. I told him that seemed like a bad idea and I asked him to just go talk to the man. I told my boss "He has done nothing wrong. Worst case scenario: I get moved to a new team and do not work for him."
I was not told what happened in the meeting between my boss and the man who was about to take over the team. After the meeting, the man would not meet my eye for a month and I was quietly moved elsewhere when he took over the team.
Shortly after he took over the team, my female former teammate asked me why I was moved. I kind of shrugged and indicated "You go where you are told" and did not give her the back story. After he was fired, she told me he had been saying inappropriate things to her, loading her up with work and giving her so-so reviews/ratings. She was an extremely attractive, busty woman who dressed well.
I have no idea of the exact nature of the "inappropriate" activities he engaged in. It was company policy to not disclose such things. I am confident he was doing something wrong and finally got caught and I was thrilled to pieces when he was fired. He was very popular and the department had a funerary atmosphere and I was trying to hide my desire to dance in the aisles and hand out kazoos.
The Q&A talked about the fact that you cannot assume everyone is cis het monogamous. So if you allow "dating," no holds barred, then a married man can swear he is polyamorous and sleep with whomever he so desires and perhaps his wife goes along with the claim so he can keep his job because the family needs his income.
You need to make policies that protect the company from scandal and protect the other employees from potential predators. If you require everyone to prove "guilt" of something like rape, coercion or whatever, then the policy is broken. The line needs to be drawn at "dating." (for people with specific business relationships, such as boss-underling)
I am an older woman. There were a number of men at the company who were my age, plus or minus a few years, who seemed to like me. Some of them were married, some not. They tended to be men in positions of power due to the age bracket we are talking about. (I had been a homemaker for many years and this was my first full time paid job acquired at age 41.)
So, for a lot of different reasons, this is a problem space I contemplated a lot while at the company and I continue to contemplate.
You aren't required to agree with me, but I am expressing my support for what I understand to be a "best practice." The company in question has an excellent reputation for diversity, employee quality of life and for being ethical. I think people who are in a position to be making such policies should take that under advisement.
I do not know if you are familiar with my blog. I write sometimes about the types of things you are expressing concern about. I do not believe that saying that someone cannot date their boss makes the problem worse. This is a problem space I have put substantial thought into, fwiw.
Best.
This is the problem here, in your thoughts and in what you poster as a good policy on relationships among employees. There are mountains among a love affair and molestation. I firmly believe if a company takes action on employees for the former, it's a breach of privacy and human rights, whereas the former should be punished in different ways both by the company and by the state.
> You need to make policies that protect the company from scandal and protect the other employees from potential predators. If you require everyone to prove "guilt" of something like rape, coercion or whatever, then the policy is broken. The line needs to be drawn at "dating." (for people with specific business relationships, such as boss-underling)
This is pure prejudice at show. Rape and exploitation are criminal cases, not the company's business. After all, thinking the most banale way, the company can be sued for defamation and libel. And that's indeed it if there is no exploitation or molestation, that is if the "dating" is with mutual consent.
> This is a problem space I have put substantial thought into, fwiw.
This does not really mean anything, many people put substantial thought into developing ideas that later are proven to be wrong.
Not all people are that good in starting relationships, but not all such people are creepy molests. It's civil to make an offer and to refuse and offer, and for someone to declare that a particular way their interlocutor engages in communication is unpleasant to them. It's nice to not be too much unmerciful in these cases because sometimes it's you on the less courteous side.
Edge cases are edge cases for a reason. If two people are dating, it is usually obvious and everyone knows.
It is obvious, and out in the open, and if someone asks, the people dating will probably say "yes we are dating" or humm and haww like they have obviously been caught.
People in general are very bad at lying and keeping secrets, especially from people that they spend 40 hours a week with every week.