> If the situation is avoided, then there's no need to differentiate. That's the best part about the "don't" policy. There are plenty of people out there.

It’s not my company's business as to who I am allowed to date or engage in a consensual relationship with. It literally has nothing to do with them.

Sorry, but that is a very simplistic way of seeing it.

For example:

If you date someone who works for you, and you have multiple subordinates (as most managers do), and you rate / evaluate those subordinates (as most managers do), and you rate your partner higher than another subordinate, you are opening the company up to legal action that you discriminated against the other subordinate due to your relationship. That costs the company money to defend and more more if they lose, so they have every "business" to tell you not to.

There are many more examples.

Alright, so in the first place, this is attacking the problems in American work (and work the world over) from the wrong vantage point. What if you merely like one of your workers more than the others and you rate them higher than the others? That should be just as insidious but because it doesn't involve sex, somehow that's not as bad, it's just "life". Almost everyone in HN has experienced this sort of toxic manager at some point in our careers and we've for some reason normalized it just like the rampant sexual harassment.

If I could have my way, we'd ask ourselves why do managers have so much sway and power over our lives in the first place, that their bad moods and habits can literally kill us? If people cannot be trusted to be managers when normal human emotions and interactions occur, then why are they managers in the first place and why do they have so much power over us?

Two reasons mainly. First and less charitably, managers and executives are a self-perpetuating phenomenon. They’d have to be the ones to slit their own throats, and they won’t. The second and more depressing reason is at the core of much human misery from politics to business: it’s better than the known and proven alternatives in most cases. Like what passes for democracy these days, it’s a lamentable mess, but still preferable to the proven alternatives on offer.

This is just plain wrong. A romantic relationship between a subordinate and superior is definitely the employer's business. If you want to date a subordinate one of you needs to quit or hide it and accept the consequences if it is ever discovered.

It's not the company making the decision; it's oneself. Of course, you're free to make your own decisions, but I personally use the "don't" policy.