A wealthy business owner wants to hire an executive assistant. The job typically pays 60k. The boss is willing to pay 75k and the job includes a 5k clothing allowance a year. Full health, dental, and retirement benefits. That’s with the understanding that discrete sex is part of the job. The boss does not expect a personal relationship or any demands of the employee’s personal time outside work hours. It’s a legitimate job that includes keeping the daily appointment schedule, writing correspondence, organizing meetings, basically all the typical duties of a personal assistant. Boning the boss is an additional job duty.
The boss is a hard driving type A personality. Doesn’t have the time to pursue a relationship. Highly successful and this person’s assistant will be in a very high status position. He or she is expected to dress well and accompany their boss to important business meetings. He or she is also expected to provide sexual services.
Is there anything wrong with that? Would you even consider taking the job? Are you male or female?
I’ve heard European executives sometimes have these types of arrangements. I don’t know if its true or not.
So the boss is too lazy to hire an actual prostitute, but rather wishes to make someone into one? If it weren’t already illegal, it would need to be. This has a red flag parade all over it.
I thought it was an interesting hypothetical. The executive assistant is a common movie trope. It originally started with a male boss and female assistant. Later movies switched it up with a hard driving female boss and male assistant. It might not be shown on screen but sex between the boss and assistant was often implied.
I think it might be ok if the arrangement was spelled out from the beginning. Adults can make their own informed decision. Don’t take the job if they aren’t comfortable with the requirements.
There are potential issues. What happens if the situation changes? Does the assistant move into another job within the company? Same pay? It could get quite complicated.
This situation is different from sexual harassment. Hiring somebody and later making sexual demands is definitely wrong.
Yeah, it is an interesting hypothetical, once you’ve established that both participants are willing. But there’s also the question of how the arrangement gets established in the first place. The boss is interviewing candidates, and he finds someone who is perfect; he has to bring up the subject that sex is an expected part of the job. How does he do that without risking an expensive lawsuit or scandal?
I don’t want to do an extensive search on this while at work, but isn’t the setup described in the OP kind of the definition of sexual harassment? Whether it’s that way from the get-go, or somewhere down the line, it’s still job-dependent sex.
Mona makes the offer, and Leo, being young and single, takes the job.
A month later, Leo falls in love with Lisa. Lisa wants a monogamous relationship, so Leo goes to Mona and tells her the deal’s off. Are you cool with Mona firing Leo?
Isn’t one of the key phrases wrt sexual harassment that the employee is experiencing a hostile work environment? If so, as long as everyone’s happy with the deal, I don’t see how it qualifies.
Really stupid idea (not to mention creepy) for a bunch of different reasons.
First, your hypothetical boss (i.e., you!) is a fucking cheapskate. An extra fifteen grand a year for high-class, on-tap sexual services? Hell, even the streetwalkers in your Arkansas backalleys probably charge more than that.
If you think that someone who is smart and organized and presentable enough to provide proper executive assistance, accompany the boss on business trips and to important client meetings, and generally run a busy corporate office, is also going to be willing to hump your wrinkled executive ass for an extra grand a month after taxes, you’re living in cloud cuckoo land, my friend.
Just as dumb is the idea that this wouldn’t rebound in all sorts of ways on the boss. For this arrangement to work, he has a couple of choices. He can formalize it as part of the work contract, which would mean (in most places) putting on paper a confirmation of an illegal prostitution arrangement. Or he could leave it as a verbal agreement, with nothing in writing, which means that the assistant can, at any stage in the future, sue his wrinkled executive ass for sexual harassment and come away with far more than the shitty bonus he’s offering.
I know movies aren’t real. Guys like Dominique Strauss, Bill Clinton, Silvio Berlusconi and other powerful and wealthy figures are real. Sex with employees happens.
I simply wondered if it could be arranged in a way that didn’t victimize anybody. Mutually making a deal before taking the job might be one possibility.
I knew a guy who hired what he called “mistresses”. In effect she was paid to be his housemate and bedmate. He was a business owner, but she very definitely had zero role at his business. Each woman lasted between about 2 months and about 3 years before one or the other got tired of the deal. This was in Las Vegas, where there’s not a lot of sympathy for blue-nosed attitudes, and there are a lot of relatively skanky / kinky / world-weary chicks.
It all worked OK for him, but still it was 100% illegal. Whether that deal *ought *to be illegal is a separate discussion.
One thing about mistresses is they aren’t cheap. They got the run of his snazzy house, a nice car, and about $5K/mo (2015 equivalent dollars) in spending money. Spending much of it on nice clothes and other accessories for their appearance was not optional.
So I think the least realistic part of the OP’s scenario is how little he expects the exec to pay the assistant for the extra services desired.
I’ve heard that situations like this happen in eastern European countries with poor economies. Ads for secretaries will be something like ‘Basic filing and phone support. Must have no hangups and be easy going’. The implication is that the boss will expect some sort of sex. I don’t know if this is true or just urban legend, but it sounds plausible in economically depressed areas where there may be limited job opportunities for women.
It would be difficult to get away with it in the US. If it was part of the employment contract, it would be illegal prostitution. If it wasn’t in the contract, the underling could easily sue for sexual harassment.