Should you hire friends to work for you?

The is a topic talked about frequently in the business world. From my experience I would say you can hire friends as long as you don't care to close them or if you are not real close. Things will get uncomfortable when situation arise and you may end up hating each other. We hired an employee that is friends with us and that was a topic we had before we hired him. So far we have not had any problem but he has only been with us for a few months.