It seems to be a staple of old sitcoms to invite the boss to dinner, and pandemonium ensues. My dad was an up-and-coming executive when I was a kid (60s/70s timeframe), and I don’t recall him ever inviting his boss to our place, nor do I recall him being invited when he became a VP.
Before I retired, my boss had an open house around Christmas and a bunch of us went, but that’s not the same as sitting down to a meal around the dining room table. And I never had a boss I liked enough to want have in my home. Plus I never had aspirations of being in management, so there was no reason to schmooze like that.
My husband’s boss invited us to dinner (this was his boss in the late 90s, so not recently) but my husband was also a manager - they were practically equals, so there wasn’t a big power differential.
So have you ever invited your boss to your home for dinner? If you’re a boss, have you been invited to dine with one of your underlings?
There have been a few occasions over the years. We were invited to one boss’s house for dinner more as friends than as boss-employee. His wife and I had become close pals, bonding over opera and theatre, and he had previously worked with my husband and liked him. We also had this same couple over to our home for dinner.
One boss invited my family over for a bbq with his family. It was very informal and low pressure. I would have happily returned the favor but he was transferred less than a month later.
We invited one of my husband’s bosses (a single man) to dinner on Thanksgiving one year. He was very eccentric and odd and didn’t fit in at all, so that was bit weird and we didn’t ask again.
At one early job there was a lot of socializing among employees at all levels, my manager and I were at each other’s homes for dinner often. I was friend’s with the presidents son-in-law and daughter there and had dinner with him at their house and at restaurants several times. He came to dinner at my house at least once after I worked there, don’t recall if he ever came over while I still worked there. As the boss I’ve been to dinners at employees houses and they’ve been to my house also. I imagine this is fairly common in small businesses.
It was certainly a entertainment trope of the 50s and 60s. Sitcoms, novels and the like often referred to having the boss to dinner as if it were some rite of passage or some social must-do. Had something to do with brown-nosing your way up the ladder. I can vaguely remember my dad’s boss coming to dinner in the mid-60s.
Ye-es, technically, though it was at a tech startup, the boss was younger than me, and I’d helped his wife convince him to put on his shoes and go home once or twice before when he was too drunk to know where he was …
So not exactly a 1950s having The Boss over for dinner.
Not dinner, but I had a great boss who was well-liked by all of my coworkers. I invited him to a pool party that I was throwing for the crew and he happily accepted. He later reciprocated by inviting us to his place for a backyard BBQ and almost everyone showed up. At the BBQ he showed off his stereo system and impressed us with a extensive record collection. His favorite artist was BB King…a couple of weeks later BB played a local gig and we all chipped in and bought tickets for him and his wife and most of us went to the show with them.
Stretching back 30 years, had my boss and his wife over. We were cooking lasagna and called the guests up to dinner. The lasagna was in a glass baking dish, resting on top of the stove. I grabbed the potholders and was going to swoosh the lasagna baking from the stovetop to the table. You know - one hand on either end of the dish, and just a fluid flourish from the stove to the table.
Well - you know those little loop things on some potholders? And you know those black iron things around a gas stovetop’s burners?
As I swooshed the dish, the loop on my rear hand hooked onto the burner thing on top of the stove - taking my rear hand off of the dish. Well, the end result was that with one hand I grabbed the baking dish full of hot lasagna and essentially flung it against the wall.
Quite impressive. We told the company that dinner would be a minute…
Had my boss over for dinner last year. He was the Veep of my division (since stepped down). Aside from me having to make polite conversation while hurriedly making dinner, there were no sitcom moments.
My wife consults for the same company so she knew enough about him to assist in the polite conversation department.
Overall a nice, relaxed night that ended with a glass of wine and hair-down type chatting.
One memorable Thanksgiving long ago we invited Mrs. J.'s supervisor. The evening went swimmingly until our aged spaniel suddenly started to bark at her.
We figured that since the two women were of roughly similar size and conformation, the beast (whose eyesight was failing) figured both of them were Mrs. J. and only realized her error after a couple of hours.
Yes. A salesman came around and pitched us what he called “waterless cooking” and said he would cook a meal for us to demonstrate his wares. So I accepted, and invited my boss over for dinner – it was one of those ‘nothing to lose’ situations. Nothing could go wrong – at least, nothing he could blame me or my wife for.
