Boss dates secretary and fast-tracks her promotion into power, sidelining his longest-serving worker’s career: ‘My career has stagnated while she gets all the good projects’

Call me old-fashioned, or archaic, but I need to keep the people in my life firmly within their respective categories. Call me a categorizer.
So this story makes me uncomfortable on about four different levels. Office romance is already messy, but this one comes wrapped in a power imbalance, workplace favoritism, and a side of unpaid emotional labor.

Boss hires a secretary, starts acting like the office is a bar with fluorescent lighting, and before long, the whole place is watching late-night drinks, visible love bites, and affection-showing sessions in the same space where people sort orders. When staff raise concerns, the response is not to clean things up, it is to quietly fire half the team and promote the secretary to running operations.

The newly promoted favorite starts shifting attention to a coworker who has already been told there is nothing going on between her and the boss. Lines blur, a few more affection-showing sessions happen, feelings get tangled, and then the ladder suddenly looks a lot steeper. Raises only come after threats to quit. Extra responsibilities come with no real training. Meanwhile, the woman who walked in as support staff now gets overtime to sit and chat with leadership, first pick of good projects, and zero pressure to help when things fall behind.

Author image for Etai Eshet Etai Eshet
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management terrible coworkers workplace discussion employment issues boss workplace-stories hr manager bosses work coworkers colleague PTO managers supervisor workplace Horrible Bosses work-life balance
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