No, CEOs Shouldn’t Date Their Employees
McDonald’s fired its president and CEO, Steve Easterbook, the fast-food giant announced on Sunday, saying he “violated company policy and demonstrated poor judgment involving a recent consensual relationship with an employee.” Easterbrook, the top executive since 2015 who helped launch all-day breakfast and delivery, reportedly confirmed the reason in an internal email: “I engaged in [a] recent consensual relationship with an employee, which violated McDonald’s policy,” he wrote. “This was a mistake. Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on.”
No further details were given about the employee or the relationship, but the repetition of the word consensual is clearly key, especially as McDonald’s employees have made multiple misconduct allegations in recent years, including at least 23 sexual-harassment and gender-discrimination claims in 2019 alone, which were announced by the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the labor group Fight for $15. In May McDonald’s said it strengthened its sexual-harassment policy, including creating interactive training and an anonymous hotline.
And yet the fact that Easterbrook was let go over a consensual relationship is proving somehow unjust to some. “Considering they're pushing this as a consensual thing, you gotta wonder what the big deal is for McDonald’s brass,” an especially crass TMZ story editorialized on Sunday. “Ya can’t have your apple pie there and eat it too, apparently.” Various news outlets seemed to minimize the fact that Easterbrook admittedly broke a stated company rule: One U.K. radio headline said he was “forced out” over an “office romance”; as another headline framed it, he was “sacked after admitting relationship with fellow employee.”
That language, however, ignores the power dynamic at play: Yes, technically Easterbrook and the fry cook at your local franchise are both McDonald’s employees. But in terms of corporate hierarchy, they are hardly coworkers; Easterbrook, who made an estimated $15 million last year, is not just their boss but likely their boss’s boss’s boss. As CEO he had few if any equals at the company, which could make even a consensual relationship incredibly complicated. At the very least it’s messy and distracting. But at worst it could blur the confines of consent altogether: When the person you’re with has the power to fire you, you may consent to things that you otherwise would not.
This is what abuse of power in an “office romance” can look like, as high-profile examples have shown. Matt Lauer recently defended his relationship with former NBC producer Brooke Nevils, who accused him of rape, as consensual, noting that the two did not work together directly. But Lauer was the ostensible public face of the network, and Nevils says in Ronan Farrow’s book, Catch and Kill, that she feared the control Lauer had over her career. “It was completely transactional,” she said. “It was not a relationship.”
Two decades after what is widely called her affair with President Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky says the concept of consent was “very, very complicated” when it came to sex between her, a then White House intern, and the leader of the free world. “I now see how problematic it was that the two of us even got to a place where there was a question of consent,” Lewinsky wrote in Vanity Fair in 2018. “The road that led there was littered with inappropriate abuse of authority, station, and privilege.”
Just because Easterbrook’s relationship with a McDonald’s employee was consensual, according to him and the company, does not necessarily mean it was okay—based on his firing, both he and the fast-food giant know it. “By strengthening our overall policy...McDonald’s is sending a clear message that we are committed to creating and sustaining a culture of trust where employees feel safe, valued, and respected,” the company wrote in response to misconduct allegations earlier this year. The letter was signed by then CEO Steve Easterbrook.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
