To take a different direction, maybe the OP should reflect on exactly what has stuck in the former employer’s craw so badly. Why are they taking the nuclear option? Maybe they are just crazy and mean, but sometimes in situations like this it works better to resolve the conflict person-to-person than to keep throwing the rulebook at one another. If it were just about the rules, the expiration of the 6 months of the noncompete should have brought an end to it. If they are really so bitter, they can continue to subtly malign you and your GF in the industry for as long as they want. Is there someone you could bury the hatchet with once and for all with a heartfelt apology for their perceived wrong?
My WAG is that losing the GF’s firm’s contract would be a major loss to them. And they know that the competition is going to be tough. So they are trying to leverage this “ethics violation” to their advantage.
My advice: Have your GF recuse herself from the decision and go on about your merry way.
For the record, my former employers have no written or verbal contract with my GF’s company - they have merely been doing work for her on a project by project basis. This current pitch process is to award the first formal contract that has been issued for this service.
You are also mis-reading my ‘bend the rules’ comment. She didn’t bend the rules out of bias because of my personal relationship with her, she bent the rules (in agreement with her boss) because they were the incumbents and they wanted to give them a chance, knowing how important the work is to them.
I think this is exactly what they’re doing. They’ve been on a cushy number for the last six years, but in a head-to-head against some of the best agencies in London they don’t stand a chance and they must realise that. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this was their last ditch attempt to leverage personal favours from the managing partner. And if that fails, then they have the satisfaction of throwing a knife in my girlfriend’s back on their way out.
Going back to my OP, the question is how to contain their vindictiveness. My GF is going to speak to the managing partner today, but my ex employers still know many of the partners in my GF’s firm, and could still drop our ‘affair’ into casual conversation whenever they’re in the mood. Does my GF have any recourse? Can she warn them off in the future on the basis of invasion of privacy, malicious attempts to damage her career over a personal matter etc?
As it goes, my former boss has a bad reputation for malicious, bullying behaviour towards her staff within my industry - I was warned by three separate, well-respected people before I joined the company. But of course my GF’s firm isn’t part of my industry, and so don’t know about her reputation.
For the record, I call it an affair because, personally speaking, it was. We were both in relationships when we met, but neither of us was married. So whilst it WAS a personal affair, I don’t think that point is relevant to our professional circumstances.
And you’re correct about the slight difference in procedure - I can see that my ‘bend the rules’ comment was misleading.
Actually, from what you say she put it there BECAUSE of what had happened. Your former employer did not score high enough, therefore they shouldn’t have been in the short list. She put them there in order to avoid looking as if the reason they didn’t make the short list was, not the objective valuation, but the fact that they’re being twats.
In 8th grade, one of my teachers (who was teaching me for the second year) realized my second lastname matches his first. So, in order to “avoid looking as if he was favoring me” due to some relationship that may not even be by blood (the lastname has several origins, not everybody who has it is related to everybody else), he gave me lower grades than I deserved. How is that more ethical than giving me higher grades than I deserved? Your gf did the opposite of what my teacher did but her reasons to do it were the same as his.
I believe part of SanVito’s girlfriend’s problem is something that several of the previous posters don’t realize: SanVito is a girl too. In some environments that’s a worse sin that having sex with your boss’s wife in the bathroom during the company Christmas party.
Leveraging personal favours from managing partners has a bad history of not working out too well for the positive. The partners in your GF’s firm will know this, and will/should behave accordingly and ethically if your former boss tries to "leverage anything. If I were the managing partner and one of my subordinates was your GF, I would simply take that into account, I wouldn’t act on it unless there was something grossly unethical aside from having ana affair that forced my hand. Underhanded leveraging by your former boss would turn me off immediately.
Does sexual harassment exist in your industry? This may loosly fall under that veil if your ex-employer is talking about the personal lives of you and your GF…Plain and simply if your personal life cannot be linked to a “business” development in either firm then this entire issue has straw legs. And again, the GF’s partners should understand that any leveraging done by your company is out of vindictive behaviour and not business acumen and should be shrugged off.
Reputations are only as solid as the charactor of the person of whom you are speaking. Your reputation and your GF’s reputation have a long history before you two met. It sounds like you used to work for a monster-boss. And if you are being accurate in your portrayal of her - others in the industry know this and may not lend any credence to her antics about you and your GF. HOWEVER - if there is a business deal that has ANY link to you two then all bets are off and you two are subject to the recourse of your industry…I am in no way able to predict or speak to what that could be.
ETA:
In the corporate world that is as taboo a subject as pinching a hot secretaries butt. This entire scenerio has sexual harassment written all over it as the story moves on. I did not know Sanvito was a woman as well. That being said - everything in my post still stands…The corporate world - at least here in the states - is privy to people’s private lives but decisions must be business oriented to avoid ANY, ANY, ANY discrimination.
I think that your GF really needs to speak to an attorney. These issues are incredibly jurisdiction specific and what will hold true for where I am will not necessarily hold true for you, especially since you are in the UK.
I think you’re overstating the case here w/r/t the US, but I’d be willing to hear your position. Homosexuality is not a federally protected class for employment discrimination. State/local legal protection on the issue is not that common. Behavior such as dating clients is not protected. A convoluted case could be made for sex discrimination if a man having the same “affair” would be OK, but the OP being a woman was discriminated against. IMHO that would not be a very strong case, though.
I’m very happy to say that discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation IS illegal in the UK. Having said that, I don’t think in this case sexuality is the issue – My GF works for a firm that takes its equal opps duties seriously, and I have not sensed that any of the malice coming from my ex employers is based on my sexuality.
We are both ‘out’ in our professional lives, so there isn’t any shock factor to either of us dating a woman.
I doesn’t really matter if there is a shock factor as much as if there is ANY factor that may influence business. Your former boss being snarky towards you 6 months after you have worked there is a red flag. Even if she is the queen bitch of the universe, why is she targeting you and your SO? Because you left her employ?
There’s a few reasons, I believe.
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My ex boss had a sociable relationship with my GF - after work drinks, business lunches kind of thing. She regarded her as a friend (my GF didn’t regard their relationship in quite such friendship terms, but there you go, my boss didn’t seem to have any friendships that weren’t based on client entertainment). She felt my relationship muscled in on her relationship with my GF. It’s laughable really, my boss had what seemed like almost a straight girl crush on my GF and felt ‘personally’ betrayed. I remember having a conversation with her not long before I left where she said she ‘didn’t think their relationship would ever be the same’, which was daft, and I told her so. Would she have felt the same if I’d been a man?
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She was pissed off that I left. I was very good at my job.
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She and her business partner were pretty nasty to me both before and after I left which I’m sure they realised would get back to my GF, so perhaps they felt that would tar their standing in my GF’s eyes. She wasn’t happy on a personal level, for sure, but never changed her business attitude towards them as a result. She has been trying to be the bigger person.
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They have always been afraid that I would take my GF’s business away from them. Something I have ‘repeatedly’ said I wasn’t going to do - it would defeat the object of me leaving. They’ve never believed me.
Underlinging mine - there you have it. Case closed. She [your ex-boss] made it personal. That is not something you do in the corporate world. Or at least not something you ought to do. IMHO of course. Stay on your current tack of remaining above the bar and you should be fine. Hopefully, your Ex-Boss will find something else to divert her energies towards…
And didn’t all this malice start long before this bid process even commenced? If I read the OP right, all this pissyiness from the former employer started before SanVito even left the company, over fears about something that MIGHT happen, not any complaints about something that WAS happening.
Ah…now I see a post that wasn’t up before I posted (that what happens when you take a nap in the middle of a response) that makes it much clearer…it is a PERSONAL conflict…someone’s feelings got hurt. Is former employer blonde, by any chance? Because that would fit in so well with my own workplace experiences…
Ha! No she’s not blonde, but she does wear low cut tops and flirt with her male clients if that’s any help…
(I know I know, I’m not one to talk. But believe me, I’m NEVER doing it again)
Now, in hindsight, don’t you think it would have helped to have told us this part way back at the beginning? This information makes it all so clear! And it certainly makes a solution easier to figure out, once the motivations are easier to understand.
But too bad she’s not blonde… I try to avoid short blonde women as bosses in general…only the former president of our company managed to be one without being, well, mean. I’ve had four supervisors who fit the pattern too, too well.
Don’t say never… 
I said I would never meet the woman I would marry in a bar. And guess what???
However, we were both waiting tables and in grad school at the time and not there socially…