Part I. Case Development
Working in Human resources can make it very difficult to meet friends at work. Many Human resources professionals avoid being too friendly with employees outside of the department and there are employees who keep their distance from being too friendly with Human resources personnel.
I did break this rule several years ago when we hired a new employee. This employee and I hit it off immediately and we became very good friends and remain this way today. This friend was an excellent employee. Everyone loved working with her and her assistance was in great demand.
Several years after meeting this new employee the two of us decided to become roommates. We were both in the market to move and both of us were students working full-time, so we rented an apartment together. Soon after becoming roommates my friend broke-up with her boyfriend of several years and it wasn't long before that I noticed frequent phone calls to the apartment from a partner at our firm. The partner was her direct supervisor so I found it somewhat strange that he would call her at home so often and at such hours. At the time I chose not to say anything as I did not think it was any of my business.
As time went on the calls started to get more frequent and on several occasions my friend called the partner, in my presence, very late at night and left him what I believed to be a very personal message and not work-related. Even more interesting was the fact that the partner was married.
After some consideration I decided to bring up the subject of the calls with my friend. I was merely inquiring as to what was going on between her and this partner. My friend brushed it off and implied that nothing was going on between them. I accepted ...