Codes of Conduct for the Land of the Big Mac
For Bill Gates the smart thing to do would have been to move Microsoft from Seattle to Stuttgart. If you don’t want a board of nosy directors to snoop around your love life, Germany is the place to be. The country’s constitution or Basic Law guarantees unyielding privacy protection. And yes, this can be a total pain, lets’s say during a pandemic, when due to widespread paranoia about data security local health authorities must communicate via phone or fax and are at a complete loss to find out who is eligible for a shot. But the Basic Law is your best friend when you need to tell your company to mind its own business. Which I bet is something Bill would like to do in response to Microsoft’s announcement that they are conducting a thorough investigation into his attempt to “initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000.”
The love soap that’s playing out at Microsoft right now looks like a rerun of a similar drama in the land of the Big Mac. A little while ago Steve Easterbrook, an Englishman in Chicago, had to learn the hard way that America is no longer the land of the free or, in his case, free love. The former McDonald’s CEO was fired for having a relationship with a company employee. The relationship was consensual, but, unfortunately, Steve had forgotten to run his plan d’amour by, and get permission from his human resources department before steaming ahead. You’d think that after growing up in the land of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, such a funny move would have come naturally to Easterbrook. The blow to his career was cushioned, however, by a sizable golden parachute that allowed him a very soft landing outside the premises of “Things that make you go MMMMMM!” (which, and I am not making this up, used to be McDonald’s slogan in the UK). Last year however, his ex-employer found out that, shockingly, Easterbrook had more than one relationship at work. Board members felt deeply betrayed, clutched their pearls and, after regaining consciousness, decided to sue Easterbrook for return of the parachute.
I keep being baffled at the deep dives that American businesses are taking into their employees’ private lives. Over the past years almost all enterprises, private or public, have given themselves codes of conduct that are telling their employees to lead a good life and report colleagues who don’t. Some are at the level of kindergarten pledges (be honest, don’t lie, don’t do harm) while others are dripping so heavily with righteousness that they sound like church catechisms. And, in tune with our current neo-Victorian zeitgeist, they all sound very matter-of-fact when it comes to regulating romance at the workplace. Here is what McDonald’s has on its business conduct website: “Employees who have a direct or indirect reporting relationship to each other are prohibited from dating or having a sexual relationship. If you are either in a relationship or plan to enter into a relationship that may violate Company policies, you must advise your Human Resources Representative or Director immediately.”
Why am I so baffled? Because all of this, as mentioned above, is illegal where I come from. That protection of privacy — not freedom of religion or the right to bear arms — ranks at the top of Germany’s bill of rights is a consequence of the country’s experience with privacy wrecking totalitarian regimes, both fascist and communist. Your private life, including relationships, is nobody’s business, certainly not your employer’s — at least as long as there is no proven damage to the company’s interests. A human resource department requesting to be informed about budding relationships between employees would be a laughing stock in any German court and the case immediately thrown out. It’s like arresting someone to prevent imaginary crimes from happening. Sound familiar? I bet it does to a lot of Japanese Americans.
Why are people in America willing to let companies control their love life but consider a government mandate to wear masks during a pandemic as something straight from the Nazi toolbox? Let’s discuss this over a Happy Meal.
An earlier version of this article was published by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
