Even on Valentine’s Day, dating the boss carries with it a sometimes uneasy connotation. Maybe its due to supervisors or bosses dating lower-ranked employees, and giving them (or appearing to give them) preferential treatment. The #MeToo era certainly hasn’t helped the image of people in positions of power dating those who work for them, and who therefore perhaps can’t as easily say “no thanks.” That said, it is a big old goofy world (as the great songwriter John Prine once sang), and surely this world is big and goofy enough to have seen more than its share of of employer–employee romances blossoming into happy lifetimes of loving bliss.
The below info comes from an ongoing study by Comparably. More than 1,000 respondents have replied to the query.
Over 15% of employees say they’ve dated a boss or a supervisor. In fact, 15% of male respondents and 17% of female respondents admitted to having dated their boss at one time or another. Unlike more common dating between co-workers, dating the boss carries with it an inevitable level of controversy as well as judgment from other employees who question the motives of the relationship. Women were slightly more quick to say they had dated a boss, which may have to do with the amount of male bosses in the workplace and their relative comfort levels in pursuing female employees.
African-Americans apparently date their bosses at a significantly higher number than average. When responses are separated by ethnic groups, we see that 24% of African-American workers report dating their boss at some point. Hispanic and Latino employees (12%), as well as Asian or Pacific Islander respondents (11%), both reported dating the boss slightly less often than the mainstream average.
Longtime employees are the most likely to have dated their boss among employee experience levels. 18% of those who have been with a company for six to ten years admit to having dated their boss or supervisor. That number starts at 10% for entry-level employees and rises with each experience grouping, implying that it’s a numbers game and eventually we may be willing to give the boss a chance at romance the longer we’re exposed to the hierarchy of office work. Numbers begin to dip again for the “over 10 years” segment.
Following a similar line of thinking, the 46-50 age group was the most likely to say they had dated a boss. Numbers generally stay between 10-15% until we hit that 46-50 spike, where numbers get closer to 20%. There may be a correlation here between the average age of a boss in the US correlating with the age of a potential dating partner among the office pool.
Those with a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree are very unlikely to say they’ve dated a boss or supervisor. Conversely, numbers are much higher than average for high school age respondents, and hover around the 20% range for those who report “some college” or an Associate’s degree. And then, a major drop for the more prestigious degrees. It may be that those who have more advanced educational degrees secure their places in life earlier than others, including marriage.
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