The former top editor and his wife had barely made it into our flat when my husband blurted out that our bathroom door was broken. I was mortified. The titan of British journalism hadn’t even been offered a drink. But then I remembered it could have been worse. Earlier in the day, when I had floated the idea of cancelling the dinner after the sliding door came off its rail, my partner suggested we nail up a bedsheet as a makeshift entranceway to the only toilet in our home. Thankfully, he had been persuaded against this plan and by the evening, the door, although barely functioning, could be dragged along the floor far enough to conserve some modesty. I figured things could only get better from there.
It was a surreal time. Our baby was three months old and we were hardly sleeping. I hadn’t intended to host a dinner party in our two-bedroom flat during maternity leave, and the question of how the invitation came about, or why I had decided it was a good idea, is all a blur. I just remember a panicked call to my saint of a mother, who not only brought the starter course (pea and potato puff pastry masala pinwheels with her zesty coriander and mango chilli chutneys) but bathed the baby and managed to put him to bed while we were trying to be good hosts downstairs.
When I told colleagues about the evening, months later, they were all aghast — not just at the door but at the fact that we had agreed to host the evening in the first place. Why had I put myself in a situation with such vast potential downfalls?
The best explanation I have is that I thought it was a nice thing to do for someone who gave me my start in journalism. At the same time, television had taught me that having the boss to dinner was a rite of passage for striving white-collar employees — or at least a good set-up for jokes. In Mad Men, secretary Joan cooks up a storm to impress the boss of her doctor husband, who, it turns out, isn’t quite the stellar surgeon she believed him to be. In The Simpsons, Principal Skinner invites Superintendent Chalmers home for a roast, but burns it so badly he has to pass off fast food from Krusty Burger as his own.
But as I started asking around, I was hard-pressed to find real people who embodied the TV trope. A recently retired investment banker in London told me he had never heard of the practice. A veteran oil executive — someone I’ve known for years, who has made it to the top of publicly listed companies — said he would be hosted at the homes of his country managers on overseas trips, but never by employees when he was back at headquarters.
Of my likely contacts, only Atul Sood, the chief executive of Kitchen United, a ghost kitchen company in California, came through. “Throughout my career, I’ve had both bosses and employees to my house for meals, drinks or coffee . . . This has helped me build lasting relationships and deep friendships,” he messaged me on LinkedIn. “I’m happy and proud that I’ve taken what some [consider] to be a risk and hope more people — at every level of a company — do so.”
Jacqueline Whitmore, a business etiquette specialist based in Palm Beach, Florida, was among the experts who told me that having the boss to dinner probably dated back to a particular place and time: small-town America, especially in the south, during the decades when — to paint in broad strokes — men spent their entire professional lives at the same company, wives tended to stay at home and houses were larger. Even then, said Whitmore, “it was usually a C-suite executive that would invite the boss . . . a lower-level executive or staffer wouldn’t invite the chief executive”.
It would be more usual to meet in a public place, she added. And certain personalities were more suited to it than others. “Entertaining can be expensive, intimidating and you need the right space.” This remains the case today, from the US to Japan, where it is common for the most senior employee to host social events at restaurants or izakayas.
I called my mother-in-law, who has lived at the other end of Florida, in Tallahassee, for 40 years. She told me that every boss she has had throughout her career has been over for dinner multiple times. One even convalesced at her home after surgery, as his house was not appropriate. “He was there for five days,” she told me. “But nothing about it seemed strange.”
Such occurrences, which she told me were still common among her cohort (although without the convalescence part) appear to be largely driven by community connections rather than a desire to get ahead at work. In fact, if I look at the idea of having the boss to dinner through the lens of my role as the FT’s management editor, it’s no wonder the trend has fallen by the wayside. Younger workers, already missing out on the perks previous generations have enjoyed, such as job security and bountiful pension pots, think differently about how much time to hand over to their employers.
Office workers in particular view loyalty differently these days and are in search of a better work-life balance. Hosting the boss is, quite simply, more work. It is also expensive and increasingly impractical: the rise in city living, where costs are high, has led to smaller homes that are often shared. Inviting your manager over to a grimy one-bedroom flat, or a house shared with three degenerate friends, surely has more potential for downside than upside.
“Younger generations, Gen Zers and even millennials don’t socialise with their co-workers like the baby boomers or Gen Xers. They are much more interested in going out with their good friends,” said Whitmore. The pandemic has altered these intergenerational workplace relationships still further. “Many younger folks don’t want to come back to the office. They like the flexibility of going to yoga at 3pm and walking the dog at 9am,” she explained, adding that far from inviting over managers for dinner, companies are hiring her to teach junior employees the basics of “how to interact with the boss”.
Even as HR functions are trying to make some aspects of work life less formal — ties are unnecessary, there are ping-pong tables in the basement and dogs are permitted in the office — there is a parallel shift to draw boundaries and prevent encroachments on personal time after decades of promoting workaholism and lauding hustle culture.
Boundaries are also being carefully monitored for other reasons. The presence of more women in the workforce and in leadership positions has changed the nature of employee-manager relationships and shifted workplace culture. Questions of how relationships are nurtured and what socialising with colleagues looks like are considered more carefully. Is it OK to seal a deal over drinks on a Thursday night? Can you follow your employee on Instagram? Can you take out a junior staffer for lunch? Should one accept a dinner invitation at the home of an underling?
Studies have shown that having social ties to an organisation improves salary negotiation outcomes, so the fact that more formal processes are involved in how careers are advanced is a good thing, particularly for women who tend to miss out on networking opportunities.
I rang Thomas Roulet, associate professor in organisation theory at the University of Cambridge, who told me that dining at an employee’s house would previously have made sense to bosses seeking to “generate engagement and foster motivation”. But, Roulet said, managers need to be able to keep enough distance to be able to provide feedback and guidance, especially when work is not going well. “Many bosses and their employees end up in a ‘friendship trap’,” he explained. “Bosses become afraid to lead and constrain because it could jeopardise the friendship, while employees are more likely to take it personally if they receive negative feedback.”
Is there any reason to mourn a social institution that is so stressful for the host and potentially inequitable? I can think of one. The rise of multinational corporations, larger workforces and remote working have meant cultivating personal relationships is tougher. One American friend who has worked in US politics said, “If you’re inviting your boss over for dinner, you are likely to be friends with them. If you come to my house, it means I like you and want to hang out with you.” She told me there were very few times in her career when that had happened.
If you would consider having your boss for dinner, it probably means you work in a place where face-to-face interactions still hold sway — and that is something to be desired. After speaking to my mother-in-law in Tallahassee, I rang her local library on a whim, reasoning that my quest for answers might just about fall under the job description of whoever picked up. Twenty-one-year-old Sarah Crandall, who took my call, told me she had invited her father’s boss around for dinner recently, after Hurricane Idalia tore through the state. He had advised them on how to move a collapsed tree, she said, and her mother had hosted dinner (despite the power still being out) because they “just wanted to say thank you”.
At my home, as we tucked into a butternut squash Goan cafreal, a north Indian paneer makhani and basmati rice, I felt proud of us for not only getting through the whole thing intact but for actually enjoying it. It was nice to have a grown-up evening after many weeks of riding the newborn rollercoaster. There were laughs, no awkward pauses, many glasses of wine and second helpings. Would I have enjoyed the evening quite as much if our dinner guest had still been the boss? I’m not sure. Would he have agreed to it? Probably not.
Still, it was a success. I think they felt the same way. Not that I’ve asked.
Anjli Raval is the FT’s management editor
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