BrianInPhilly wrote:“Unwanted comments” is a pretty slippery slope. People are not entitled to want every comment people say to them. Just yesterday, my boss had some negative feedback to me. That was “unwanted comment”.
Basically it’s not specific at all. Any time someone speaks any words to any person, you are not sure if that person wants those words or not.
But anyway, the NBA has proven that they want to be the word police recently. So not surprising.
People just need to stop complaining now when guys tip toe over their words and sound fake as hell all the time, because that’s the environment the NBA is reinforcing.
Nah, the reality of the situation is that you don't look for relationships at work anymore. Not these days and definitely not when you are a boss. Most relationships fail; this is a fact. A failed relationship at work is likely to result in a "toxic environment," and "unwanted comments," for at least one of the individuals unless they each had a crystal clear understanding of what each other was expecting out of the relationship going in.
Maybe one of them thought it was a fling and the other thought it was serious and didn't realize those comments were no longer "wanted." Or maybe the one who thought it was serious wasn't happy to find out they were just a fling.
When these situations pop up in the workplace they often devolve into "he-said/she-said," type of confrontations where intent and context can be.. complicated (like most relationships) and trying to sort everything out can be messy and entirely reliant on hearsay and trust. When a third party is involved [as in, the relationship is an affair out of wedlock] it can get even uglier.
At some point, one of the two individuals will likely end up having to leave the company in order for the working environment to repair itself. It appears Boston is at that point right now where they have two choices:
1) Remove the woman from the situation. If they get rid of the woman it could ruin her life and the optics will look bad from the jump. Particularly, in the modern workplace where companies are still struggling to create fair and equal working/hiring practices. In this hypothetical situation, If actual evidence comes out later on which damns Ime, it could catch fire and set the organization back significantly in myriad different ways including creating a workplace where women are worried about harassment and fear of retaliation.
2) Remove Ime from the situation. If they get rid of Ime in this hypothetical situation, they could be tearing apart a potential championship level team. If evidence does come out that the relationship was in fact consensual and simply ran it's course and ended ugly, it could slander Ime's name for no good reason and end up in a lost season and possibly even shut the window on contention which would affect the entire team. Furthermore, this could also set the workplace back to a point where men in the organization are working scared, or simply don't wish to work there anymore; afraid that they could be the next and unsure of what is and isn't acceptable.
Neither of the above are great options for Boston, so they appear to be trying to split the difference and are riding things out to see if it will settle down naturally over time.
The bottom line is that pursuing a relationship at work has led to an impossible situation for the organization. Hence, if you're looking for romance you'd be best served to look outside of work.
