The head coach was suspended for violating team policy by having an affair with a woman on his staff.
Either he didn't read his contract, or he didn't read the employee handbook. Plus, there's a basic lack of common sense there.
Apparently when the team interviewed both parties, the relationship was described as consensual. But the woman also accused him of making "unwanted comments." So, who knows?
Dave the Atheist Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > "Udoka had a consensual relationship with a female > member of the team's staff." > > ==================================== > I'm not seeing the problem ?
I actually see two problems here. The one that would be of most note to this forum is the staff member being a Mormon. One wonders if her temple recommend (assuming she had one) went out the window with the disclosure of this affair.
The bigger problem (and this is the one I think you're not seeing) is how that relationship, even if it was consensual, may have affected the workplace, specifically the coach's office and staff. What happens is when affairs like this are rumored about, whether or not they are exposed, charges start flying about favoritism towards the love interest, even if those charges aren't true, and that can make for a not-too-friendly work environment. Also, you have to keep in mind the power dynamic here--one of the relationship's members is directly dependent upon the other for her job, and there are many cases involving bosses who tried to sleep with their employees.
Probably the best example I can think of showing how this kind of thing can go off the tracks is Motown Records during the 1960s and 1970s and the relationship between company founder and CEO Berry Gordy and singer Diana Ross who was in a contract with the Motown label. Berry admired Diana's feistiness and that admiration soon became a sexual one. Eventually, that relationship was blown up (Berry was married at the time, and Diana married a white record producer--a controversial relationship even in 1971). It wouldn't be until 20 some-odd years later that Diana Ross went public with the information that her oldest child's father was, in fact, Berry Gordy.
What also became public was that many of Diana Ross's co-stars knew about and resented the relationship. You have to remember that throughout most of the 1960s, the singers and musicians on Gordy's labels toured together (it was called the Motown Revue), and gossip was flying everywhere. Berry Gordy was on these trips, and, according to now-deceased members of the Temptations, both Berry and Diana always came out last to board the bus going to the next stop from the hotel, and some said that they saw her slipping in to Gordy's room when neither thought anybody was looking. And yes, a lot of other Motown stars at the time said that they believed that Berry was favoring Diana, whether the charges were true or not.
So no. Having a romantic relationship with one's boss is something that should really be avoided, if at all possible.
As blindguy said, a relationship between a manager and an employee can be problematic -- so problematic that the Celtics organization had a written policy against it. By his own admission, the coach went against the written policy. That's straightforward enough.
But more than that, the CBS News article that I linked above stated that there were other issues including, "unwanted comments" to the woman from the coach. The implication is that these other issues made the situation untenable, thus the suspension. I doubt that anyone wants to go into any great detail about it.
Unless the woman wants to confess to her bishop. Then all bets are off the table as to whether the full story gets out. ;)
Dave, the state of the present law--and most corporations' internal policies--is that when there is a superior-inferior power relationship in an employment situation, there can be no "consensuality" in a relationship. It's like a consensual relationship between a professor and his adult college student or a coach and a player.
The proper way to pursue a relationship is for one or the other employee to leave the company and then move forward. This is the same thing that cost Jeff Zucker his position as CEO of CNN.
Remember the the early days of the sexual revolution, when we were told that "a meaningful relationship" was the only thing needed for sexual intercourse? And we were free of the complicated rigmarole of Puritanism and courtship protocols?