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Businessman:
This is very sound advice for business ventures. To be sure, there
really is no place in business for lust or love, save perhaps in the
pornography industry, and then only superficially. In order to avoid
unnecessary and often career-limiting or lawsuit-inducing
complications such as allegations of sexual harassment, favoritism,
nepotism, or creating a hostile workplace we all need to separate our
work life from our everyday life.
Under state and federal laws, many employers are required to
establish and maintain anti-discrimination policies that protect their
employees. Even when not specifically mandated by force of law, it
is a good idea to put rules in place that prescribe appropriate
conduct in the workplace. This generally means assuring that there
will be no discrimination in recruitment, employment, working
conditions, compensation, advancement, or termination based on a
person’s race, creed, color, national origin, gender, past or present
military service, or sexual orientation. Further, policies should
safeguard against harassment of any kind based on any of the
aforementioned personal characteristics as well as ban stalking,
unwelcome physical contact, or solicitation of sexual favors for
continued employment or preferential treatment.
Offensive remarks, obscene gestures, and inappropriate jokes may
be proscribed as well, though we must be clear and unambiguous
about definitions in such policies or the unintended consequences
may create more harm than good. For instance, human resources
policies at more than one large corporation stipulate that an
employee can be fired for complementing someone on their
appearance or attire. That may be well-intended, but it’s probably a
little over the top… Nevertheless, there must also be a process for
reporting, investigating, and adjudicating all allegations of
inappropriate behaviors in a fair, objective, and timely manner.
Many corporations, colleges, and government institutions go a step
farther and put special rules in place to keep people who are related
to or seeing one another romantically from working within the same
reporting relationship (e.g., work group, division, or other
arrangement where one party has direct or indirect control over what
happens to the other in terms of work assignments, advancement
opportunities, or pay and benefits). This is not to say that we can
never work alongside a parent, child, spouse, or significant other, in
some circumstances such as a family-owned business that might be
perfectly appropriate, but rather that an ethical firewall should exist
between the personal and professional aspects of our lives and due
diligence should be undertaken to avoid any appearance of or actual
improprieties.
As you can see, the workplace can be fraught with perils if we do not
establish and maintain clear expectations around acceptable and
unacceptable behaviors. The job, however, often extends beyond
our office walls. For example, anyone who has ever attended a
tradeshow or symposium will undoubtedly recognize the term “booth
babe,” a slang that has grown up around the widespread tendency of
vendors to highlight their wares by sending beautiful, often scantily-
clad, young women to represent them to the public. Gorgeous
spokesmodels of both the male and female variety may be fun to
look at, but anyone foolish enough to commit millions of dollars of
their company’s resources simply because a hot chick (or dude)
flirted with them for a while on a showroom floor is downright stupid.
The same thing goes for accepting kickbacks or bribes, they may be
a necessary evil in certain regions of the world, but they’re evil
nonetheless. Purchasing decisions should always be made based on
the merits of the product or service that we are evaluating, and then
only after a thorough technical, financial, and contractual review. In
other words, it’s a business decision. Lust or love should play no part
in making it.
On or off the job, anything that impairs our judgment around those
we find attractive should be treated cautiously. Dangers can include
things like going out for drinks with coworkers and imbibing too
much, but certain less obvious behaviors like having an “office
spouse” can easily become problematic wife is a co-worker with whom we share a special bond. Since many
of us spend more time at the office than we do at home, we can
become very close to our coworkers. That’s not a bad thing per se,
but the danger is that creating deep emotional connections similar to
those found in intimate physical relationships can often lead to an
intimate physical relationship, even when we aren’t actively trying to
create one.
We may temporarily be caught up in the emotions of the moment,
but to the extent possible the prudent businessman or woman must
make decisions based on objective evaluations of relevant facts and
data. We have a fiduciary responsibility to our employers, our
employees, and ourselves, one that must be carried out with all
appropriate diligence. In that vein, we categorically must not allow
ourselves to be guided by the feelings of lust or love in our decision-
making while on the job.
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