When you work in an office, there is a fragile environment that is created. You see your co-workers every day and whether you get along with them or not seems to come and go in waves. However, what do you do if you start noticing your boss and your boss' secretary getting a little close? Since it's the boss, there is no attempt to mask or hide the flirtation and pretty soon you notice the secretary coming in with more expensive clothes, appliances and goodies that you know could not be afforded on a secretary's salary. You also start to notice the secretary snubbing you and the other co-workers and getting away with missing hours, not coming in on time and overall just being a terrible worker. What's more, the secretarial duties that are being neglected are starting to make their way to you. You begin to come to work with a list of calls to make and meetings to schedule. What's going on?

Secretary Desks

This is an actual situation I found myself in several years ago. The secretary, however, was a male and the boss was a female, which is not usually how people imagine this situation. I literally found myself, after a while, doing my job and the secretary's job. I felt completely helpless because really, what do you do in this situation? I didn't want to rat anyone out (the boss's husband would frequently call during the day, so I certainly had the chance). I also, really didn't want to lose my job. Things got so bad, in fact, that the boss and secretary would leave in the morning and not return until the day was almost over. I used every excuse in the book on my boss's husband and was feeling completely overworked, underappreciated and increasingly angry about the whole situation.

Secretary Desks

One morning I arrived at work and reached my breaking point. I approached my desk just as the secretary was dumping a whole load of work on my chair. I saw him and he saw me. He walked away. There was work from months ago, unanswered messages, forms to fill out and just every odds-and-ends kind of work you could imagine. At that point, I had to go to human resources to report them because otherwise I was going to be run into the ground.

To my surprise (sarcastically) human resources told me that this was not the first time my boss had been infringing workplace rules. It seemed three years ago she was caught up in a similar situation that ended quite badly. Turns out she actually got that secretary fired for some unbelievably bogus reason, and because he never reported sexual harassment, human resources just figured it was his way of trying to get her fired for retaliation. Due to the fact that human resources couldn't simply fire the boss or the secretary, they did the next best thing: They reassigned the secretary to the oldest, meanest division boss we had...who was a man. I would encourage anyone in that situation to report the conduct because if you don't they will continue getting away with that awful behavior.

Did Your Boss Sleep With the Secretary?

Secretary Desks