|
|
Love at work? Time for caution!
Affair with a colleague may land
you in unexpected trouble
BY A CORRESPONDENT
 14th October
2005: Many of today's teenagers
grew up with the Lewinsky-Clinton
scandal when they were probably in
pre-school. So, the deeper meanings
would have been lost on them.
Essentially, White House intern Monica
Lewinsky and US President Bill Clinton
had an illicit affair for an year and
a half, till
it became news and she moved out. In
the Kenneth Starr report on the
X-rated episode, Clinton was found to
have lied about the relationship. But
the President got away with his charms
sans a federal impeachment. Books by
the Clinton duo, both highly
accomplished lawyers before their
political plunge, gloss over the murky
Lewinsky episode. Hillary Clinton's
Living History and Bill Clinton's My
Life skim over the shady sides
(including Bill's encounters with
Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Kathleen
Willey, Juanita Broderick and Paula
Jones) and throw no light over the
muck around Clinton's on-job
peccadilloes.
It may not always be that simple to
leave the mess of on-job affairs.
Careers, reputations and family lives
are irretrievably lost, and few manage
to leave the mess without broken
hearts. Passion and foolishness
usually go hand in hand at the
workplace, and the net result is egg
on the face, lost jobs, strained
relationships and broken hearts - may
be even prison terms.
 Harry
Stonecipher is another case in point.
The high-profile CEO of US aircraft
giant Boeing was asked to resign in
2005, following news of his
relationship with a female employee.
Stonecipher had done nothing wrong at
work, and his actions had brought no
harm to Boeing, but the company's
directors decided that what he did was
against the code of conduct laid down
by the Boeing. It was not a public
affair that hit him: it was an
anonymous letter by an insider that
did Stonecipher in. Hardly a year
after taking over as CEO of Boeing, he
was asked to leave the company,
despite his earnest and hard work to
put Boeing on high steam.
When the pink slip came, Stonecipher
had a base pay of $1.5 million as CEO,
and incentives equalling up to 120
percent of base pay, or an additional
$1.8 million.
Sacking Stonecipher, Boeing chairman
Lew Platt said: "This was a very
difficult decision for the board given
Harry's strong performance. The board
felt this was a right and necessary
decision, given the circumstances. We
have fought hard to restore our
reputation." High designations,
high-flying jobs, sterling performance
and fat pay packets were no immunity
to the toll extracted by scandal at
the workplace.
 In 1994 movie
Disclosure, Michael Douglas appears as
Tom Sanders, a successful executive
with Digicom Corporation. His
professional rise stalls when his
ex-girl friend Meredith (Demi Moore)
becomes his boss. Tom is a
happily-married man now, while
Meredith wants to resume the
relationship where they left off. A
story of sex and power, the movie
chronicles Meredith hunting down Tom
when he rejects her advances and later
files a harassment suit against her.
However, the company sides with
Meredith and believes it was Tom who
hounded his ex-girlfriend turned
current boss. Tom has his career,
reputation and family at stake - she
has none. The movie ends when Tom
successfully disproves the lies
against him and gets his beloved
family back - not something I would
love to go through!
More recently, the Abu Ghraib prisoner
abuse scandal was in the news, where
several naked Iraqi prisoners were
photographed at the Abu Ghraib prison
in Iraq, US private Lynndie England
leaning over a pile of them. In some
of the more gruesome pictures, the
prisoners are forced to masturbate and
the young private makes fun of them,
whereas in some others, she holds a
prisoner by the leash. At the time of
the prison abuses, she was having a
steamy relationship with her senior
Charles Graner, one of the notorious
orchestrators of the Abu Ghraib
prisoner abuse. Graner who was 14
years older to Lynndie was later
sentenced to ten years in prison on
several counts of prisoner abuse.
While he was in prison, the unwed
Lynndie England gave birth to his son.
By then, Charles Graner had already
married another woman and had a child
by her too.
 When the
case came up or hearing, the 22-year
old Lynndie's lawyers insisted that
she was not completely aware of the
seriousness of the crime and did it
only because she was blindly in love
with Graner. Her lawyers argued that
she felt completely lost in the alien
world of Iraq and found Charles
reassuring. "The only place she felt
safe was with him. She was happiest
with him," said the lawyers’
statement. The arguments failed to cut
ice with the judges, who sentenced her
to three years in prison besides a
dishonourable discharge from the
military.
If her lawyers are to be believed,
Lynndie did not imagine in her wildest
dreams that her knight in shining
armour would do something that would
put her in trouble. He did. Blind love
got her the criminal's son and a few
years behind bars.
The moral of the story is simple: Go
into the mess at the workplace only if
you are clear about all consequences.
Don't be tempted to do anything
illegal or unethical, since you may be
in court later for that. You may be
senior or sexy, you may even be the
head of the company or even the head
of state, but none of that will insure
you once the stuff hits the fan. Go
into love@workplace by all means, but
be prepared, be very prepared!
BY A CORRESPONDENT
|
