Just curious, why is it so bad to have emotional or sexual realtionships with your boss/managers?

Favoritism. Lets say a boss needs to fire someone. Two people are in the running for the axe. One of them is the person humping the person that makes the decision, and the other person is you. Who do you think is going to get fired? Hint: it is you.

I think its thought to be unprofessional. Sometimes emotions can be irrational, buissness is meant to be composed and straight to the point. Getting involved with a boss or manage might affect your job/career in the long run if emotion start running high on either side, therefore its probably not a good move. The other side of me is curious to how good it is, haha.

It can create havoc on office morale if there is a hint of emotional favoritism. And after the inevitable break-up, big trouble for the low person on the totem pole.

it’s not if you want another job

you know, i’ve also always wondered why teachers cant get involved with students, the legal ones that is

Suppose you receive a promotion or are singled out for good work. Who would believe that you earned it rather than that you paid for it with favors.

What if you are supervising other employees and having an affair with the boss? DO those employees feel comfortable telling you about problems or complaining about something the big boss did to them?

Whether the boss displays favoritism to you or not, there is the appearance of a conflict of interest to the other employees.

it is great for you, but bad for him…when he pisses you off you sue him and retire….all for it…

ethics and integrity

keep it professional.
Nothing good can come from a workplace hook up when it goes sour.

Can I shift the question also towards people that are not necessarily your boss/manager?

I will give you my example: we are a team of young professionals working for a financial advisory firm throughout europe. Me and my team became soon friends, because we spend 12 hours a day at the client offices, and the rest taking dinner outside, staying at the same hotel, or travelling with plane to reach our destination.
We are almost all of the same age (26–28yrs) and when I had to evaluate some of them (in some of our project I am the team leader, hurray!) I found it really difficult to keep apart the “personal” side from the “professional” one.

Can friendship between colleagues be seen as equally inappropriate? My manager said so, and even though I am not conviced yet, I still think he may be not that wrong.

@ qashqai ~ as Donald Trump has said, “Business is business.”

No matter how much you like someone, you have to keep focused on the business at hand.

@ mcbealer: that’s a great answer but I still find it quite difficult, at my age, to spend that amount of time with a person (or three/four person at the time) and keep the relationship on a merely professional level.

After an entire day talking about money (that’s what my job is all about) I think is extremely boring to keep doing it also at dinner time, isn’t it?

In addition to the fairness problem, there are important psychological reasons to avoid romantic involvement between people who are in any kind of superior/inferior relationship. Healthy romantic relationships are peer-to-peer relationships, and don’t involve power imbalances. That is almost impossible to pull off when, in another arena of life, those same two people are on different hierarchical levels.

Many professions—- teaching, medicine, psychology, clergy, among others—-that involve power imbalances have strict formal ethical standards prohibiting any romantic involvement between, say, a doctor and patient. Not only does the imbalance make for bad relationships, but those holding the power can too easily manipulate those under them, consciously or unconsciously, into forming a relationship. Banning dual relationships altogether is meant to remove that temptation.

Business and pleasure don’t mix well. Just as you should be careful with doing business with friends, lending money to family, you should be very careful about emotional ties in the workplace!
Not to mention your company may have an ethics policy that would define a relationship with your boss as a conflict of interest.

Nepotism. thank you, Wikipedia

friendship is good but a sexual/emotional relationship is a no no. Keep it professional and know the limits and boundaries.

Its good to know you have each others back in the workplace but I wouldn’t want to hit it from the back. Know the difference.

In general, if you like your boss, great but best to try and keep it professional for the sake of everyone else. I’ve been an objective third party, the flirt and the crush and it can be so difficult being in an office with weird emotional stuff going on. best thing to do is expand your social life outside of workmates and the office. Then work can be fun but not linked so heavily to social needs.

One of the bad things about having sex with your supervisor, is that co-workers don’t always knock, before entering your office.

August 22, 2008, 3:07 PM EDT

And if the relationship fails, then you won’t even want to go to work and you’ll have nowhere to run. You can’t go home, because your relationship just ended, which is sad. You can’t go to work because then you need to deal with your ex.

I was a supervisor in a fairly large corporation (in the 1970s), and during the course of my employment with them, I met a young/pretty woman to whom I was instantly attracted. Unfortunately, she was my subordinate, and to complicate matters further, she felt the same way about me, as I did, about her.

Reluctantly, we started dating, and eventually, we started making love with each other, further complicating our supervisor/subordinate relationship.

Finally, I called her into my office one day, and said, “We have to do something about this, because things just cannot continue, as they are.”

She nodded her head in agreement, and said, “Any suggestions?”

I leaned forward and said, “Yes. You’re fired.”

The shocked look she got on her face quickly disappeared when I said, “I don’t want my wife working in the same company with me.”

We were married a week later.

It can be so messy afterward, in all the ways you can probably think of and some you can’t.

It’s always potentially a minefield to sleep with ANYONE that you work with. When it comes to the boss, it’s all about power games. And that’s certainly problematic.