Dear Prudence: Help! One of My Employees Is Cheating On His Wife—While He’s on the Clock.

[ermingarden]

(Note: This is Slate senior editor Shannon Palus subbing for Jenée Desmond-Harris.)

I am a manager at a bar, and I recently found out two of my staff are having an affair; I caught them on camera hooking up in the storage room. I would normally not care about this at all.

But he is a married man and his wife used to work at the bar herself (this is how they met) and is friendly and socially enmeshed with many of the staff. They are all pretty young and really tight and all party together and hang out. If this comes out it will be a mess. I caught them only last week but another employee texted me privately and told me she had suspicions so I am afraid it’s coming out one way or another with or without me. I would not involve myself in this but it happened ON THE CLOCK AT WORK. I liked his wife but she is not my good friend or anything I’m just trying to run a business.

So, what do I do? Show them the tape and ask them to stop? Fire him? Fire her? I’m pretty sure I have grounds for it as they were clocked in and supposed to be working not sneaking off to hook up and this is an “at will” employment state. Let them both go for “stealing” time? Stop scheduling them together? Say nothing and ignore it? I’ve had staff date and break up but this is my first messy cheating scandal on the clock and I’m just trying to mitigate the fallout.

Don’t fire anyone. This is (mostly) none of your business. People are allowed to make questionable choices in their personal lives, like cheating on a spouse, and still hold down their jobs. You don’t even know that it was cheating! The married man could have cleared this hook-up with his wife.

If these employees are noticeably falling behind on their duties, you can bring up the fact that you expect them to get the dishes washed on their shift or that customers are being left to wait too long for their beer, in a conversation that does not mention why this might be the case. You could also say that you expect work breaks to be limited to a certain amount of time.

You don’t say that you were bothered by watching the footage specifically, but I think it’s totally reasonable that you wouldn’t want to stumble across employees hooking up in a storage room, whether on film or in real-time. I am also alarmed by the thought that your employees may not have known they were on camera. I would talk to your own boss, or the bar’s owner, about what to do next; creating good workplace conditions is not your responsibility alone. I think someone does need to make it extremely clear to your employee that they are being filmed in the storage room. Notification of filming at the workplace may or may not be the law in your state, but having a sign up or issuing a formal reminder seems like the right thing to do, and would also let these folks know that the storage room is not a great hook-up spot without you having to address them directly.

Now is also a great time to make sure everyone knows about the company’s sexual harassment policy, and any ground rules about employees dating. It doesn’t sound like anything nefarious is happening here, but it’s good to make sure everyone is on the same page about what’s allowed and what’s not.

Comments

[ermingarden]

This has to be one of the most baffling pieces of advice I've ever seen a columnist give. No reasonable person would respond to "Two of my employees have been having sex at work!" with "This is (mostly) none of your business." What?! This is very much LW's business! (Literally!) Leaving aside any question about the extramarital affair, if LW doesn't immediately fire the employees for having sex at work, they should at least be very firmly told that they'll be fired if they ever do something like that again.

Anyway, I think the columnist is coming at it wrong from the start in saying "People are allowed to make questionable choices in their personal lives, like cheating on a spouse, and still hold down their jobs." It's not about the employee's personal life, it's about his professional life – or, rather, it's about the portion of his personal life that he has unilaterally incorporated into his professional life by having sex at work!

Also, the columnist seems to think sex at work should be just fine from a manager's perspective as long as it doesn't negatively impact customer service, which feels like an Extremely Online Take – or maybe that's just me.

[minoanmiss]

I'm usually pretty pro-workers'rights and sex-positive, but I completely agree with you here because work is not the place (except for one industry). I wish the LW had asked AAM.

[p_cocincinus]

I was thinking this exact thing reading the reply. This is a level of unprofessionalism that would make me, as a manager, question both of the employees' abilities to make good decisions. Considering that the wrong decision by an employee at a bar could literally have life-or-death consequences, I could not fire both of these people fast enough.

[minoanmiss]

It’s funny. I am so reluctant to say anyone should be fired that I feel harsh to agree but I really can’t see how this isn’t a firing offense or at least a final warning.

Sent from my iPhone

[ermingarden]

It's almost exactly the reverse of this letter, from the new employee who walked in on the company owner having sex, in his office, with someone other than his wife. Oh, and this other letter about a boss having sex in the office and "leaving evidence"...and this one about the boss who had phone sex in his office with the door open...I'm sensing something of a theme!

Alison's response to the letter about the suspected office sex club – truly one of the most bonkers AAM letters of all time – has a passage that addresses this situation perfectly: "This is people having sex in the office while people around them are working. It’s not okay. It doesn’t matter if they were on a break or that the door was locked and you weren’t supposed to walk in. It’s totally, utterly unacceptable, and you absolutely cannot sweep it under the rug."

[jadelennox]

And in fact if anyone else had stumbled in on them, and found out the manager knew and let it keep happening (both on the clock and on the premises) they'd have a viable claim against the bar, probably, for an unsafe environment.

[cereta]

There are so many ways in which this is the manager's business!

1. Could other employees have walked in? If so, that's a big problem. If not, are they being kept from a storage room they might need access to?

2. The manager is now in possession of video of two supervisees having sex, and if they turn it over to the owner, the owner will have possession of said video, which raises a (sadly) important question of how much manager trusts the owner to destroy said video. One of the few good bits of this advice is the question of whether the employees know they're being filmed, but even if they do: LW, you have watched people you work with having sex. Do you really think that's not going to impact your working relationships?

2a. How sure is the LW that no other employees might have had access to that video?

3. Depending on what's stored in that room and on what, erm, surfaces activity is taking place on, there are possible issues I ain't spelling out. This is a place where food is likely served.

I'm not sure what I'd advise, here, but good lord, "leave them (mostly) to it" sure isn't it.

[likeaduck]

I'm also mostly concerned that there are cameras the staff might not know about?

Like, I really, really, DO NOT CARE about people hooking up at work without a lot more information, and clearly neither does the LW! In a closed room? When from the letter we don't know what hooking up entails or if there was anyone else in the building at the time? The safety and judgement concerns raised elsewhere seem overexcited to me without more context, and the LW does not act like the context raised reg flags for judgement for them--just for potential infidelity.

If there's a camera in the storage room staff need to know.

If not, and the LW saw them enter the storage room and not what happened inside it, I'm pretty much on team not your business unless you would penalize them for sneaking off to have an argument or a nap too.

[sporky_rat]

I'm in no way surprised that there's a camera in the storage room if for no reason than to keep an eye on the stock for liquor law purposes? I don't know about where you are, but there's strict protocol about keeping track of alcohol here and we just kept a camera and a very thorough log for it.

(It was also a very good place for the diabetic to go because it was always quiet and she could be left alone to take her meds.)

[minoanmiss]

Of course people should know there's a camera in the storage room, but as sporky_rat pointed out, there are good reasons for one.

Heh, I have been yelled at at work for spending too long in the bathroom because they thought I was taking a nap. I'm pretty sure getting caught napping on the clock would actually be a firing offence for an office peon like me. Let alone having sex on the clock and where another coworker might have to see/know (people will be in and out of the storage room a lot).

[redbird]

This feels like the letter writer was over-reacting -- making the point that they can fire both those people because it's an "at will" state, and then "Let them both go for 'stealing' time?" and then the columnist went way too far in the other direction.

My answer here would have been either "give them one warning, that if they have sex on the premises with anyone they're fired, and also remind everyone about the cameras" or "tell your boss what happened, and ask them whether to fire these two employees or tell them that if they do it again, they're fired."

I would also have told LW that the idea of "time theft" is usually if not always anti-worker, and tends to go with management that illegally demands unpaid overtime. There's no suggestion that these employees are doing anything like falsifying their timesheets, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were in fact working more hours than they're being paid for, even subtracting the time they're spending in the storeroom together.

As a side note, I know from Ask a Manager that "this is an at-will state" literally means "we're not in Montana, I can fire them without a real reason and don't have to give notice." Even in Montana, without a formal contract (which few American workers have), the manager could fire them for cause (like sex in the storeroom during working hours). "At will" means the manager can also say "you're fired because your shirt is ugly, get out of here now" or "you're fired and I'm not telling you why."

[minoanmiss]

I would also have told LW that the idea of "time theft" is usually if not always anti-worker, and tends to go with management that illegally demands unpaid overtime.

Very true, that part was bullshit.

[conuly]

Look, I know that in fanfic people have sex in bars all the time, but from a food safety perspective it still seems like a fireable offense.

[lilysea]

My concerns would also include that sex next to / on top of fragile glass bottles

could lead to broken glass, and serious or even life threatening injuries.

[likeaduck]

Can you explain to me the food safety concern of having sex in a storage room? This is not the first time people have brought that idea up in this comm and I just...don't understand.

[conuly]

I suppose if this is just a storage room where they keep the extra printer paper it's not a food safety issue, but if that's a storage room where they keep food things, listen, I just don't want extra bodily fluids there.

[likeaduck]

How much fluid spray are we anticipating in a back room quickie? Are the kegs and bottles of Clamato really more tainted by someone getting a blowjob in the vicinity than by their entire supply chain journey?

[conuly]

You don't know my life. Maybe I'm very clumsy and also prolific.

On the flipside, maybe I won't even let my own sister share my fork because I don't like bodily fluids.

[minoanmiss]

If I know my coworker dripped semen on the Captain Morgan I really don't want to touch that -- it is not the same thing as "whatever landed on this that I don't know about, well I don't know about it, I'll just always wash my hands and wipe down the caps after handling the bottles and kegs."

[feast_of_regrets]

Don’t fire anyone.

WHAT?!? (Taking this response as further proof - as if any were needed - that I do not understand humanity.) I am all for employers not dictating how people live their lives, but taking a sex break at work with anyone very much is unsafe, unkind, and generally antisocial behavior. I don't know if firing them both is the right answer, but it should definitely stay on the table as a possible answer.

Slate should not have this editor sub in again. She's no good at this.

[melannen]

I know just enough about bar work culture to know that I wouldn't automatically transfer office work norms there (starting with: the expectations around drinking at work are *very different*.) So if it's the kind of workplace where getting tipsy and occasionally being consensually tactile with your coworkers is, like, part of the job, it might not be a firing offense if it wasn't interfering with work otherwise? I guess I don't really have a good idea here enough to judge on that.

Certainly the "on the clock" and "time theft" parts of this are not good management, if the work is getting done well people are allowed to go hide in the storeroom sometimes.

So I guess that's my advice: LW, it sounds like if this wasn't cheating that was likely to cause a lot of drama, you wouldn't do anything. So don't do anything until the drama starts interfering with work. They are adults making adult choices. Inform them about the security camera, because they need to know, and that will serve as the unsubtle hint which is really all you should probably do until it does interfere with work.

[firecat]

I'm not sure what's so hard about this.

Employees need to know (1) Sexual activity is not appropriate at this workplace (that should be obvious, but...). (2) They should be working when on the clock (see (1)). (3) The existence and locations of security cameras.

The fact sthat it's two employees having the sex at work and that some of them are in relationships with other people are entirely irrelevant.