I’ve had this job for three years and I don’t think I’ve made a single friend here.
I don’t like going to the socials, I avoid the christmas party, I rarely chat longer then a few minutes with anyone at a time at work. I try to keep my chats about the job. My one good friend I’ve made (from before we were employed) is now becoming less of a friend because I find work issues are getting in the way.
Maybe I shouldn’t expect to make many friends at work…maybe my job position sucks (I’m an itinerant music teacher). I don’t know. I’ve managed to make friends outside of work though so thats a plus.
Not at all. I prefer it this way. I much prefer it like this. I don’t want to mix my social life with my work life. I do as few social events with co-workers as possible. Just enough to avoid that ‘not a team player’ bullshit. I really think it is pathetic that so many people at work seem to have no lives outside of work.
Absolutely! At least with the ones around my age and thus haven’t commited themselves fully to “family life”. Some of the others, I still share quite a bit with, but wouldn’t really call them personal friends.
But if/when I leave the country, I’ll probably only stay in touch with one of them.
No. There’s no one that I socialize with outside work and only 2 that I would even potentially put in the ‘friend’ category. The rest fall somewhere between acquaintance and barely tolerate.
My coworkers are the best part of my job. I love those guys*. I’ve taken Miss Manners’s advice and made a point of not mistaking work relationships for personal relationships, but I do make all my friends at work now. I just make sure that we have a social relationship outside of work and independent of work.
Not all of my coworkers, of course. But a lot of them.
All of my closest friends were at one time coworkers and we all became friends while on the job. At my current job, I would consider two of them to be pretty close friends and then a lot of “work friends”, where I mainly just see them at work but we might have hung out outside of work from time to time.
I should note that about 5-6 of my current coworkers are on their second job working with me (we used to work for another company, now we all work at my current company). We all got our jobs at this place thanks the others and we all get along very well both personally and professionally.
I made a conscious decision early in my professional life to avoid mixing my social life with my business life. It is pretty rare that I make friends (that last any length of time) with my co-workers to the extent of seeing them outside work.
I spend all day with these people. Why do I want to spend more time with them? Why would I want to allow any personal drama (mine or theirs) to pollute my working environment, or risk having things that happen outside work affect how thing happen inside work?
Heck, even the work social functions I avoid like the plague they are. If someone says that I’m not a “team player” because I don’t come to the fucked up “manipulate and embarass your employees for the benefit of the other managers” functions I’ve attended a few times in the past, then I’m quite happy to inform them that my attendance at unpaid, on-my-own-time events is not “team play”, it’s a voluntary imposition that I don’t choose to be a part of.
Team Play my hairy white ass.
(OTOH, back in the day, the Musicland Corporate holiday party was a blast. Where else can you see that big busted “look at me funny and I’ll file a complaint with HR!” woman dancing drunk and topless on a table in the courtesy suite?)
There are a few co-workers who I consider friends and a couple of close friends but I very rarely socialize with them outside of work because we already spend tons of time together.
Not today. I get along fine with my coworkers, but they don’t share the same interests that I do.
Back in my Pacific Bell days, there were a bunch of people in our office who all hired on at the same time. We got sent out of town for training, so we ended up hanging out together after class. We would go to dinner, hit the bars, and stumble back to our hotel rooms together. There was a group of 15 of us that remained friends (and sometimes more) for years and years.
I don’t mix my personal life with my professional life. I’m the boss in my office, and I’m single with no dependents. The staff all have families, so there’s not really a lot of overlap in interests away from the job.
I’ve been at my current job for about two and a half years, and I work with about 600 people. Of those, I only consider one a friend, and there are only three or four I’ve spent more than one evening outside of work with.
There are really only three of us at my job, and we are all good friends. The other two have worked together for 14 years, off and on, and I’ve worked with them for ten years, off and on. We see each other outside work a few times a year, for holiday parties and picnics, but other than that we really don’t have time to socialize. The last three years we have been essentially the only employees at this store, so we know each other very well and have to get along, because we work in such close proximity to each other…literally standing within feet of each other all day long.
I have a small handful of friends that were or are currently co-workers. My GF is one of them, although we aren’t exactly co-workers; we just happen to be at the same job at the same time, performing different jobs.
For the most part I’m like a lot of other posters here: I prefer to keep my personal life and my professional life separate, and keep a group of friends who do not work in my industry.
I only work with 2 other people - my brother and my business partner who is like an older brother. I’m very close to both of them.
We don’t work in the same location. I think it might strain our relationships a bit if we had to see each other every day.
It hasn’t been TOO hard working with my brother. I’m his boss, and sometimes my sisterly feelings keep me from being too critical of him but on the flip side I’ve known him for 29 years so I know how to “work” him the right way.
I’m only friends with 2 other people I worked with in the past, when we were teens. And we’re only really friends “in passing” (ok, on Facebook!)
I’m still friends with several people from the zoo and at my current job I work with my guy. Actually, he got me the job so maybe it doesn’t really count, being a pre-existing relationship.
On my team, a lot of us have similar interests so heck yes we hang out! It’s not that we have no lives outside of work, it’s just that we like each other enough to see each other outside of work. They’re awesome people.
Unfortunately they’re breaking our team up as they’re decommissioning us, but that’s another story.
That’s why you don’t have any friends at work.
I have mixed feelings about it. At my previous job, I was friends with everyone. We were constantly going to happy hours or clubs or people’s parties together. I’ve been to three bachelor parties, three wedings, birthdays as well as an interns 21st birthday party. It wasn’t anything forced. I just happened to work at a firm where they hire a bunch of fun, outgoing people who are cool to hang around with. The type of people who would be in a fraternity or sorority with you as opposed to the type of people who bitch about them. Also, to do your job effectively, you have to be able to connect with new teammates and clients quickly.
I mean you spend 8-12 hours a day or more with these people. It would be pathetic if you weren’t friends with some of them.
My current job, I hate my coworkers. I also hate my job and that plays a big role in it. Not only do I not hang out with them socially, I don’t talk about my social life with them.
The thing is, being friends with your coworkers can distract from your career. Also, a place where everyone is friends can become very cliqueish and that will affect your career as senior management’s friends and drinking buddies get promoted ahead of you and you just keep building resentment.
You also have to watch out for those resentful losers. I don’t think it’s completely an accident that I got fucked over in my last job by the one director who didn’t get invited to the bosses Vegas bachelor party with us.
Also, I noticed that those friendships didn’t stop people from quitting. And quite frankly, there are only a handful of my previous work “friends” I keep in touch with or really even consider a true friend.
I wouldn’t call them good friends, but I do have people at work I consider to be more than just coworkers. I’ve had a few of them visit my apartment (which, granted, is really close to work) and they’re all on my Facebook friends list. This includes my former supervisor, who’s pretty cool. We don’t hang out regularly, but we’ve done things outside of work and we talk about stuff like friends do.
Cynically speaking, I’m sure part of this is due to the fact I don’t work closely with or under any of them.
I don’t invite any of my coworkers to my place for sleepovers, but I try to make it to all socials, office vacations, etc. We’ve had office baths, though. The best(?) part of working in Japan is seeing all your coworkers and bosses nekkid.
Apart from the school-sponsored stuff, I don’t really hang out with my coworkers, most of them have families, anyway. If we run into each other out of work, we’ll have a little chat, and while we’re at work we’re all pretty chummy. A couple of the guys really like drinking, though, so if I’m in a bar mood, I can usually count on them for company.
It also doesn’t help that most of them work much later than I do. I’m generally one of the first people to leave the office while everybody else slaves away until god-knows-when.
