The boss’s girlfriend, your problem

Q. My boss is newly divorced, he's promoted a very young intern into a responsible role and he's begun dating her. Now he's assigning considerable amounts of other employees' time to her projects, which the rest of us, in our professional opinions, don't think are worth it from a business perspective. What should we do?

A. How awkward for the whole office when people take unflattering stereotypes as a script. Your boss is free to run his private life as he wishes, but bringing this type of behaviour to work is, as you note, a poor choice on his part. (In fact, some companies prohibit senior-junior relationships, so it’s possible he’s breaking the rules and not just violating standards of ethics.)

Plenty of bosses sense great things in a young colleague and promote that person rapidly in a bid to help him or her develop important professional skills. When that happens, others on the team often grumble about how they’ve been passed over. That’s just complaining, unless what the boss sees in the young protégé  is something entirely separate from career promise.