As others have said, HR is never your friend, they are there to protect the company from you, the employees. This is true even of government HR, which is ever so slightly less enthusiastic about protecting the employer (government), but no less delighted to screw with the employees.
I have dealt with lots of legal cases where this sort of thing goes on. Some of my clients refuse to believe that HR isn’t their for the purpose of making their workplace experience enjoyable and in compliance with the law. No matter how many times I tell them, no matter how many times they are burned when they report something to HR.
Once you are hired, HR has no further use for you, and they expect the same in return.
Depends on your company and the culture. But you want to document it to the nines.
I work for a global 50. There is *low *tolerance for such behavior (don’t confuse it with zero tolerance and “knowing” something versus being able to prove it in a court of law are two different tings). And it’s much more likely that the manager would get whacked ostensibly policy violations like inappropriate expense reports and the like. But my company lives in paranoia that it would allow such a culture to exist and be open to a class action suit. I know of several really high level execs that got whacked because they couldn’t separate the work and private life.
When I worked at lehman brothers hong kong in 1996, I had exactly this experience. The woman who hired me to take over her position started banging her boss (my skip level) and then didn’t want to go back to NY and I was her underling instead of replacement manager. That was an ugly situation. He ended up quitting before he could be fired and it was more than just porking one of his direct reports. He was a train wreck finalizing his divorce around that time and some other weird stuff. He quit, she just didn’t show up and it was a hassle to terminate her after 6 weeks of being incommunicado. They ended up getting married and moving to San Diego a few years later, so I guess it’s kinda a Cinderella story. YMMV.
I also work for a Global 50 company. Our boss was banging one of the managers who reported to him. One day he was our boss; The next day his desk was cleaned out and we had a new boss. His lover, also married, was reassigned. (They ended up both getting divorced and then married each other.)
Rumor has it that not only did he violate the corporate policy re disclosing these sort of relationships, but he’d also used his travel card to pay for their hotel rooms. That was a bigger no-no. (And also cracks me up because he was earning over a half mil in salary and probably 2x that in benefits)
So, I’d say it depended on the company. Large, publicly traded corporations are far more likely to have written policies forbidding such behavior (or mandating disclosure), along with clear guidance on to whom and where to report violators. At our company, you can report just about any ethics violation anonymously.
Smaller or family owned companies? You’re probably best to shut up and suck it up, especially if the boss is well connected. If I did report it, it’d be anonymously.
Snitches get stitches. I would mind my own business, but begin leaving early from time to time. When boss asked about me leaving early I’d tell him I thought I could afford it with the big raise he was gonna arrange for me.
This. Exactly. Experienced it first hand. Both my boss and my co-worker were married with children. The favoritism was the worst. He kept nominating her for all sorts of corporate awards and campaigned for her to win them. It was nauseating. Their “lunch hours” became increasingly hard to cover for with our corporate customers. Our big boss just laughed and looked the other way. I think he was jealous.
I did find a comparable job in a subsidiary. I essentially left one company and was hired at the second, though they did connect my years of service for vacation, pension, etc. Since I was making a lateral move, HR asked for an exit interview and I waited til then to spill the beans. Nothing happened to either of the lovebirds, jobwise.
He did end up divorced, but she’s still married to her man. I have no idea if her husband ever found out. Don’t really care. It was just an awful work environment.
Just since it’s slightly ambiguous… ‘both of them’ here means the two in the affair, the woman and the boss’ boss? Were there any consequences for the lax boss? (I’m not sure if there should be, honestly.)
If it’s just 2 people having an affair, none of my business.
If I feel that the boss is screwing me over by favoring the person they’re screwing with, then I say something to the boss about that. The work allocation, not the affair.
If I think the company money is being misused then I have a decision to make about reporting or not.
[QUOTE]
This (yes, I snipped the last bit:p)
BTW, the situation as described is NOT sexual harrassment, it’s sex between two consenting parties. It 's probably not even a hostile workplace situatioin unless they are discussing the affair at work where you can hear. It is inappropriate workplace behavior and the first attempt to resolve should be person-to-person.
My position at our non-profit includes HR, so I would certainly need to sit my boss down and give him a come-to-Jesus. Whether my job is affected or not, morale would suffer and the company would in turn suffer. Nobody cares about a work affair in general, but we absolutely have a policy of not having someone with a family or dating relationship working for each other, so he would be in violation of company policy. And if I know, everyone in the office knows, and before long the Board of Directors and all kinds of donors know. I would not be doing my job if I did not attempt to get him to correct his situation, and if he did not I would be obliged to bring it to the Executive Committee to pursue. I have no fear of my job - the Board loves me and I am well-connected around town. My situation is pretty ideal.
Fortunately I work for a smart, ethical boss who would never put himself or the company in that kind of situation. I’ve had to deal with less ethical bosses and know how to protect myself. Certainly in a couple companies I have simply left because I had no faith in the system to do the right thing. I kind of like being the system myself.
A colleague of mine was working in an office where she suspected her (male) boss was sleeping with a (female) subordinate. Actually, everyone else suspected it too, probably because their flimsy attempts to cover it up only drew more attention to them. Neither of them were married, so nobody was particularly upset, and my colleague didn’t see any particular favoritism so she didn’t complain either. Eventually the subordinate left the office to take a job somewhere else. To nobody’s surprise, boss and former subordinate moved in together about a month later.
A little while later my colleague, who had also left the office, ran into the couple at the grocery store. The boss admitted, well yeah they’d been dating all that time. Well, weren’t you worried about getting caught? asked my colleague. Oh no, said the subordinate, we looked at HR policy and apparently there was no rule against bosses having relations with their employees! So they just, uh, kept on going.
So I guess if I suspected something like that was going on, and it was affecting my own job, I’d check HR policy. You’d think most companies would explicitly forbid it, but apparently not…
Many years ago, I worked at a place where the director of pharmacy had a one-night stand with a technician. (Neither were married at the time.) We all found out about it because she got pregnant from it, and yes, she had and kept the baby. He had very generously :mad: offered to pay for an abortion, WHICH SHE DID NOT WANT TO DO, and I was not the only person who was not afraid to say that he had probably done this quite a few times before.
The child from this relationship would now be in high school. It’s unlikely that he’s ever met his biodad, and in this case, that would be just as well. The company shut down shortly before the birth (long story) and I did later hear that she was receiving child support.
There was a small group of people at that facility who were well known to throw some very wild parties, and I’m talking about the type I’ve heard about but never attended that involved lots of cocaine. :eek: Had they been raided by the cops, this could have cost the participants their licenses.
What kind of company throws parties like that? I’ve NEVER worked at a place where people acted that way - not even the one I mentioned in my last post. :dubious:
You sure you’re not mistaking them for someone’s out of control bachelor party?
Up to the 1970s, consumption of alcohol was routine in white collar jobs during work hours. At actual parties it was insane. In the '70s and '80s cocaine was not unheard of at any business where people made large incomes.
He wasn’t disciplined, and was with the company a few more years before he quit, which was weird. He was on two weeks vacation and on the Monday he was supposed to come back they found his letter of resignation slid under his boss’ door. He cited a policy idea that had been floated in a meeting, but it was just an idea (managers would work weekends on a rotating basis, so once/quarter) and was never implemented.
I worked in a company where it was the HR director who was fooling around with both an SVP and the President. Went on a sales trip to Cancun with the SVP (who’s wife didn’t go, even though all the other managers’ wives went and it was specifically a trip for managers and their wives) and was seen going into a hotel with the President.
I don’t know if the SVP knew about the President or vice versa. If I were a bettin’ man, I’d say the President knew about the SVP and enjoyed that fact, but the SVP didn’t know about the President. After the HR director left and moved to Arizona, the SVP went down to visit her with his wife.
I have an idea which sounds irresistible, but only if you’ve been there a while and know your co-workers (and some higher-ups) rather well.
If I suspected such a thing, and decided it was worth checking out, I would gather some evidence and take it to the husband/boyfriend of the woman involved. (If there is no woman involved I wouldn’t bother.) Then I’d track down her husband/boyfriend and direct him to the other party and wait for the fireworks.
If.
Those parties still happen sometimes in the entertainment industry. The parties are often officially sanctioned, though the illegal drugs and sex aren’t. I’ll be going to a company party in two months with unlimited free beer and wine, on company property, advertised in company e-mail, for company employees only. In past years one guy has set up his still in the back room and the only reason he won’t this year is that when he does, lots of people don’t make it to work the next morning. The artistic director and the executive director will be there. There will be people who hook up away from the main party. At the introduction meet-and-greet at the beginning of the year, one employee revealed that she’d been conceived at such a party less than a hundred yards from that meeting. I will be offered illegal drugs, and lots of them will be consumed in back rooms (last year I was offered LSD and I’d have accepted if I didn’t have work the next morning).