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A Weekly Work Sleepover?
I really need advice, other than that which ChatGPT has already provided.
My supervisor’s husband recently got a job at a university a two-hour drive from ours. They are moving to be close to his job and she has asked and received approval to be hybrid in her position. She informed me that she will come to work a couple of days per week and plans to stay with me overnight so she doesn’t have to commute.
I felt compelled to agree at the moment, because SHE IS MY BOSS. But the more I think about this, the more uncomfortable I feel. She even demanded a key to my place shortly after she told me that she would be staying with me. This feels like a gross abuse of power and invasion of privacy. She also thinks that we are best friends and says this frequently during the workweek. I just smile in return. I DO NOT think we are best friends. She is my boss, and, honestly, not someone I would like to host in my home during the workweek. I consider this a form of bringing my work home. She is a very loud person and I am introverted. I need my time at home alone to decompress and re-energize after the workday, which tends to be loud and chaotic, largely because she is constantly talking very loudly in our shared office space.
She and her husband are moving this weekend, and she plans to start staying at my place as soon as next week at least two nights per week. I am deeply uncomfortable with this and feel coerced into it, but am worried about hurting her feelings or inviting professional repercussions if I say no, especially since she repeatedly emphasizes our friendship over our supervisor/employee relationship. She also has not offered to compensate me in any way to stay at my place, even though that would make no difference in my feelings about this. I don’t know how to tell her this in a way that won’t feel like a rejection of the way she views our relationship.
— Anonymous
Oh my god, what? When your question arrived in my inbox, I immediately sent it to my editor and we agreed that it had to make it into this week’s Work Friend column.
But where do I begin? There’s so much wrong here.
There’s the “informing” you that this is something that is going to happen, and the “demanding” of a key.
The expectation that you go along with all this.
The assumption that the two of you are best friends.
It “feels” like a gross abuse of power? It IS a gross abuse of power! But it doesn’t have to be an invasion of privacy. You can say “absolutely not.” Or, at the very least, “no.”
“I don’t know how to tell her this in a way that won’t feel like a rejection of the way she views our relationship,” you write.