By Admin
What happens when office romance comes your way at work, especially with your boss? How do you keep the boundary? How do you ensure your other relationships with colleagues are not affected?
Here is Jane’s story:
There are about five other individuals in my division that report to the same manager. This manager is several years younger than me (I’m in my mid-30s), and he is about 20 years younger than my colleagues. My colleagues have, and continue to, question his authority due to his age and relative inexperience in the industry.
I assume that a lot of this has to do with our age, in that we’re going through similar life experiences – we’re both newly married and have young children. I realize that he’s my manager, and I keep him at a friendly distance, but I fear that more and more frequently he’s coming to me as a friend to chat, almost on a daily basis.
It’s not my intention to be his friend, but I feel that keeping an open, warm relationship with my manager and colleagues is essential to my happiness at work, due to the collaborative nature of my job.
I worry that if they see me and my manager being friendly, that they will start talking about me behind my back as well. What troubles me is that they’ve already started teasing me that our manager is “in love with me,” simply because we are friendly-ish and are of opposite genders. I don’t want that to get out of hand or make it up the tree to HR or to someone who doesn’t see it as a joke.
Or should I just continue to maintain my friendly distance with my manager and ignore my colleagues’ comments? Thanks for any insight, I appreciate it.”
What advice would you give to Jane? Leave your comments below.