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Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

Couldn't a lot of problems be averted if companies were more aggressive in frowning upon romantic relationships in the workplace?

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As far as I can tell, this entire thing could've been avoided by a competent HR department.

Whoever at Kleiner decided to pay her $33,000/mo for 6 mos as severance was a genius.

she got 6 months of her salary just for behaving like a complete jerk impossible to work with (i've read pretty much whole Recode live stream). Most probably taking the money she even signed typical papers accompanying severance like waiving right to sue, etc...

Please explain?

not sure, but what jury is going to be sympathetic to someone getting paid a 500k salary (higher than her peers) and receiving such generous severance?

That sounds like a supreme court case waiting to happen.

Why should companies have the right to tell employees what they can and cannot do in their own time? What next, authorisation to have a child? Your employer signing off on where you live?

Companies can (and do) have the right to tell employees what they can and cannot do in their own time, especially if it has an effect on the company.

There are many examples of people being fired for inappropriate posts on social media, committing crimes (or just being accused of them), and even smoking cigarettes. There isn't a ton of precedent for the smoking thing, but it might very well be upheld by a high judge.

The legal basis is that, in many states, you can be fired for almost anything except your race, age, sex, or religion.

Right but the argument isn't that it happens, it's that it's morally reprehensible. How dare employees of a company act like human beings or have any time to themselves where they aren't wholly and completely owned and controlled by their bosses/companies? The nerve of that working class scum, it's unbelievable.

I agree, but there are counter arguments. Any employee (especially those featured in ads) can be perceived as representing the company or even acting on behalf of the company. If you behave badly, it can reflect badly on the company.

There definitely are many wrongful termination suits that test the boundaries of what companies can do here, so I think we have a pretty good balance at the moment.

> Companies can (and do) have the right to tell employees what they can and cannot do in their own time, especially if it has an effect on the company.

That should be made illegal IMO. A company should be forbidden to have any interest in employee outside of the strictly work related stuff.

In theory, yes. On the other hand, there are cases where a certain degree of interest on an employee's private life might be considered legitimate. Consider a hospital that employs a surgeon who is an alcoholic (or a meth head). Even if he/she only works when sober, alcoholism does impact both the fine motor skills and the judgment needed for such a high precision job, and many people would agree that the hospital in such a case pretty much has to either fire that surgeon or get him or her into rehab.

I agree with you that in general, what I do in my free time is none of the company's business, unless it affects my ability to perform my job. But if it does, I think a company has the right to tell me to either sober up or not bother coming back to work tomorrow.

Then again, this quickly becomes fuzzy and can be abused in all kinds of ways. What if a hospital, say, run by the Catholic church told a gay surgeon to remain abstinent because of the risk of contracting HIV or some other STD?

> Why should companies have the right to tell employees what they can and cannot do in their own time

Well that's the thing. If you work with an SO, doesn't personal time and issues inevitably bleed into working hours? I talk to my SO during work hours about non-work related stuff all the time (i.e. what to eat, vacation, "I love you", ...), though we don't work for the same organization.

Also I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted for asking a question.

> Why should companies have the right to tell employees what they can and cannot do in their own time?

Do salaried employees have well-defined "working" vs. "personal" time?

Relationships tend to happen. If you are too aggressive about "frowing upon" them (i.e. firing people), you can end up losing really good people who have done nothing disruptive.

Companies are often aggressive in frowning upon relationships. It's hard for two people attracted to each other to fast forward 12 months and say "What if I hate this person after a bad breakup? How will I feel coming to this place for 8 - 10 hours a day?" as that's usually the most negative outcome of workplace romance (vs discrimination or retribution)

I think this would do more harm than good. Office romance is inevitable.

I think the relationship was only a small part of this case. The real issue was whether she was denied promotion, which she claimed was given to her underperforming male colleagues.

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