Gay Boss

Editor's Note: If you haven't read the context for these answers, please click here.

Your gay boss at the restaurant had a crush on you.  How did he let you know he had a crush on you?

I honestly don’t remember how it necessarily happened.  I think it was more of a gradual thing in which it started with some sort of flirting (that I didn’t notice cuz I’m a guy) that grew into full out hitting on me.  It’s funny, because when I first got the job, I didn’t even think he liked me at all, but that may have just been me being intimidated by the new job and my manager.  But as I grew more comfortable with the job, I became more comfortable with the people there.  And I really think that because I’ve done theatre stuff all my life, and we as a group tend to be pretty liberal and weird, nothing he ever said really caught me as being peculiar.  I remember we would all be in the kitchen (I work in a restaurant) talking and somehow something would come up that might cause him to say “Oh Alex, you’re so cute.”  Sometimes he would switch it up and say “hot” or some other form of the word.  But I really never thought much of it.  It wasn’t until one day when a few servers and I were talking about some of the managers, and one of them said, about this particular manager, “You know he’s like in love with you right?”  And that’s when I really learned that he was gay, and he had a crush on me.  But then I think about it, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I had no idea because I’m a guy, and as I’ve been told by several girls, guys aren’t very perceptive when it comes to reading flirting or crushes and the like.

How’d it make you feel when you found out he liked you? 

Honestly, I’m completely flattered.  It’s hard enough to get a girl to like me, so if I can get a guy to like me, I must be doing something right.  My view of him didn’t change at all, other than now I knew he was gay.  But he’s still a really nice guy and a good boss.  Our boss/employee relationship didn’t change, nor did our friendship change for that matter.  He still flirts with me every time we work together, and I take it.  I don’t care.  By now it’s gotten to be more of a game/joke between us.  He still likes me and tells me that one day he’ll “convert me,” and I tell him good luck.  The work environment hasn’t changed at all really.  If anything, it’s made the work environment, for me, much more fun and interesting than when there are other managers working.  We’ve become pretty good friends, and that’s probably to do with the fact that he has a crush on me and that we treat it as more of a joke now than anything else.  He learned this past winter that I had gotten a girlfriend, and now he tells me he’s jealous.  He swears still that he will convert me some day, but now he adds, “even if it’s for just an hour.”  So I just continue to be flattered by the fact that he thinks I’m attractive.  I’m not creeped out by it or anything, although sometimes some of his comments can be “creepy”.  But, it’s mostly a joke with us now and I’m flattered by it all.

In a conversation one time, you used the term "creepy" to describe some of his actions.  What did you mean by that? 

It’s not really creepy, not to me anyways.  But some of the things he says would definitely be considered creepy by many others.  I often think about how he’s kind of lucky that I’m very open and don’t care, because I’m sure I would be able to take legal action for sexual harassment.  I don’t know if creepy is necessarily the correct word I should have used, I guess.  But, some of the things he has said are very sexual and many people would probably be creeped out by it.  I think it’s a matter of our comfort around each other.  I’m not creeped out by it, because we have a pretty open relationship.  There isn’t any sort of intimidation or pressure from the things he says.  While I type all of this, I think about those sexual harassment videos that everyone is always familiar with from whatever job they’ve had in which they need to watch it during training.  I guess that’s where I came up with the word creepy.  In the situations that they present on these videos, the boss, or whomever, is always characterized as some sort of scum bag kind of guy.  He’ll always come across as a smarmy character that would most likely be defined as a “creep.”  I think with those situations, there’s always that relationship of power and intimidation between boss and employee.  However, with my boss and me, I don’t feel that sense of intimidation; some might, but I don’t.  With us, it’s just talk.  We both know it’s not going to go any further, as much as he may want it to, and he doesn’t try to take any further.  And sometimes, the things that he says, which I classified as creepy, catch me off guard, and I don’t know how to react.  And that’s not to say that it gets awkward; I don’t really get that phased by it, but it definitely wasn’t expected.  I’m really open with stuff that’s said, and I laugh it off, knowing that he doesn’t mean any offense by it, nor is he trying to take anything further.  We joke around about it a lot, so it’s just become part of our working relationship.

To read next question and answer, click here.