So it might be better to think about this incident in the broader context of personal expression and identity. Nancy Rothbard, a management professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has researched the way people “handle boundaries between their work and their personal life,” as she puts it. I suspect your manager would be better off recognizing the potential pitfalls and avoiding this kind of question altogether. But either way, your best move is to make your own boundaries clear — yet also try to avoid an outright conflict. But also, count yourself lucky, because I suspect that in most workplaces, there are more important things to worry about.

Source: New York Times November 24, 2017 10:52 UTC