Woman fired after donating kidney to boss

[Jasper]

WTF happened here?

[Hype]

WTF happened here?

I was pretty drunk...

[creep]

WTF happened here?

dali happened here.

at least he progressed from racist comments about blacks to racist comments about jews. who is next? asians?

[Artemis]

he better not saying anything about the macedonians!

if so, i will have to send my cousins Zvonko and Lubisha to pay him a visit.

[Pandemonium]

Look, I'd never take an extremist pro or con view on boss/employee relationships beyond the professional level, but the odds are it'll end in a less than pleasant way. Almost every instance I've seen, the employer/employee dynamic over-rules true interpersonal friendships. Either someone subconciously or overtly "expects" preference in the workplace to some degree or the employer always looks at his employee "friend" as a commodity that will eventually have to be discarded in some way. At any point ina relationship when one person feels they owe or are owed something, no matter how trivial it may seem, it eventually results in the disintegration of the relationship.

Now employee - employee relationships where you're both on fairly equal ground is a different thing. I still have good friends/former co-workers spread all over the country from my aerospace days going back 30 years. Hell, I worked with my future wife (she's sales - me, advertising manager) for 3 years after I met her at my best friend's employer and we both moved on together to the new company. Only after we got married did we both move on to separate employers.

On the other hand, one sour instance is a buddy who worked with me during one stint at a graphics/print business. We went to several shows together in the late 90's, had him over for parties, lent each other money, blah blah blah. Then during my last week before I was about to quit that job, I left him in charge of finishing a important project and he completely fucked up and dropped the ball. The next morning, I pretty much took the heat for his screwup and got fired the following day when he didn't take responsibility for what he (didn't) do. That killed the friendship.

It comes down to not only being a good judge of circumstances, but a good judge of character.

[Hype]

Look, I'd never take an extremist pro or con view on boss/employee relationships beyond the professional level, but the odds are it'll end in a less than pleasant way. Almost every instance I've seen, the employer/employee dynamic over-rules true interpersonal friendships. Either someone subconciously or overtly "expects" preference in the workplace to some degree or the employer always looks at his employee "friend" as a commodity that will eventually have to be discarded in some way. At any point ina relationship when one person feels they owe or are owed something, no matter how trivial it may seem, it eventually results in the disintegration of the relationship.

Now employee - employee relationships where you're both on fairly equal ground is a different thing. I still have good friends/former co-workers spread all over the country from my aerospace days going back 30 years. Hell, I worked with my future wife (she's sales - me, advertising manager) for 3 years after I met her at my best friend's employer and we both moved on together to the new company. Only after we got married did we both move on to separate employers.

On the other hand, one sour instance is a buddy who worked with me during one stint at a graphics/print business. We went to several shows together in the late 90's, had him over for parties, lent each other money, blah blah blah. Then during my last week before I was about to quit that job, I left him in charge of finishing a important project and he completely fucked up and dropped the ball. The next morning, I pretty much took the heat for his screwup and got fired the following day when he didn't take responsibility for what he (didn't) do. That killed the friendship.

It comes down to not only being a good judge of circumstances, but a good judge of character.

I agree with everything you say here, but I want to add that it can't just be good judging of circumstances and character. You need a little luck, too, because the limits of judgment are easy to surpass. The extreme maxim I asserted earlier, that employees shouldn't be friends with their boss was meant to be a layered point --- it's not just that bosses always have more power than their employees in the occupational context (this is, by the way, analogous to the reason why parent-child incest and teacher-student sex are wrong, not because it's gross, although it is, but because the power-differential is too great to be overridden.), it's also that even in cases where people were friends BEFORE entering into a boss-employee relation, obviously it CAN be successfully navigated, but because of the power the boss has, both parties need to be clear that in the work context, they cannot treat each other QUA those positions as friends.

People dislike cronyism for a similar good reason.

[Romeo]

I'm friends with my manager. In fact I have always been friends with all my bosses

However I wouldn't give them my kidney.