my boss gives flowers to his assistants, but only if they’re married

A reader writes:

For many years, my boss has given flowers to all his assistants for Valentine’s Day.

But he has the same two assistants for several years. Both are retired professionals who decided to go back to work, and both originally were married. Now one of them is a widow and he was told by other members of the management team that he couldn’t give her flowers because she was single, but it was okay if he still sent the other assistant flowers.

This seems out of place and it made the widowed assistant feel awful. Is this okay?

No, it is not okay in any way. Your boss is being a bit of ass, but the people who gave him this guidance are the bigger problem.

First, their take on this is absurd — flowers aren’t an inherently romantic gesture (see all the people giving them to their moms). However, in our culture they are a gendered gesture, which is why I bet he wouldn’t give flowers to a male assistant.

Second, presumably the thinking is that it’s “safe” for him to give flowers to married women since clearly his intentions would just be platonic, but as soon as a potential flower recipient doesn’t have a living spouse, there’s too much risk of misinterpretation? If so, that’s a sign that this flower-giving never should happened in the workplace at all. If he’s worried that a gesture could read as romantic depending on the other person’s marital status, that’s a very good litmus test that it doesn’t belong at work at all.

If your boss suddenly felt uncomfortable with giving flowers to one of the assistants, he needed to stop giving them to all of the assistants — not leave out the woman who just lost her husband (what the hell?). The fact that the cruelty of this wasn’t immediately obvious to him and the rest of the management team is troubling.

Also, could we all just agree to leave Valentine’s Day completely out of our professional relationships? We really don’t need it intersecting with work at all. (Here’s a relevant SNL skit.)

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