When you come home after work, during your days off, or when it comes up in conversation = (if you or someone else decides to talk about it)?
In my experience, my parents always asked me about how my day went back when I was in school, and they’ll still occasionally ask me about how my day went at work…
However, I’ve been told that it all depends on if someone wants to talk about their job or not, since one of my friends told me that he doesn’t like talking about his job after coming home from work, which is understandable, but at the same time, I’ve witnessed some of my friends and family members occasionally rant and vent about their jobs…
When I was growing up, that was pretty much the main topic of conversation between my parents (who both worked) over dinner. I have the sense that it was their way of releasing the pressure valves that had built up during the day – especially my mother, who worked in a job where she had very little agency, and whose immediate boss was a member of the family that owned the business. It was a little tedious, but I wasn’t obliged to participate or even pay attention to it.
I never wanted to talk about work because my job was a little obscure and what I did was generally not interesting to anyone else. But I would do so if someone asked, and I would try to be brief, just to be polite. I don’t mind if other people do it, it’s something to talk about, and I can be interested at least up to a point.
My husband and I work for the same entity, in the same building, with the same people. You better believe we’re bitching about it when we get home! We do try to change the subject after the first wave though, or we could go all night and where’s the fun in that?
My wife has little to no interest in what I do for work, which is fine, because I have little interest in talking about it, to her, or anyone really. It’s boring.
I don’t like talking about my job to anyone. I find it sad that small-talk revolves around, or at least initiates conversation related to the work we do - my job does not define me, and it’s not my passion. So, when I need to have a light discussion with someone new, I avoid asking about what they do for a living, and instead ask about travel or hobbies or music, or literally anything other than work. Yeah, my career path has been less than satisfying.
Back when I worked as a prison doc, I always had a few relatively tame sanitized stories to tell folks as indicated, but I kept most of the real nitty gritty stuff to myself. I’d share some with other medical or corrections colleagues, but very little with others outside that community. My spouse and kids didn’t hear about the real troublesome experiences I had to deal with. No need for them to hear my personal experiences about Man’s inhumanity to Man, etc. I’d bitch about the politics/bureaucracy of my employment, however.
I’d also be happy to get on my soapbox and talk about medical reform, criminal justice reform, etc. when asked.
After 20+ years of marriage I’ve found it best to let my wife completely vent and rant after work. Because she can’t do it AT work home has to be a safe place to release any pent up frustrations.
If she doesn’t then any anger bottled up inside is liable to come out with some stupid argument at home. Also just as important to not try to resolve any work frustrations she might have or make any suggestions on how to handle them. She just wants me to listen and be supportive.
She does the same for me and it works pretty good.
Yeah, I would hate that. I see that a lot in the consulting firms I work for. These husband wife partner or director couples who met in their 20s at work, got married and then spent the next decade working together.
My wife was in the corporate world for 20 years before going on to more freelance and socially-worthy pursuits (including focusing more time and energy to raising the perfect child). She is a great person to bounce things off whether it is financial analysis or people management decisions or office politics. She will sometimes tell me she doesn’t want to hear it. Only a few times a year. We also worked in the same company (adjacent department) for two years eons ago. But she has an idea about my working style, and it’s, er, limitations.
My daughter asks a lot about my work, especially since she started working in a more professional environment (she’s only 17, but she’s been an instructor in an after school crammer for a year and a half). She’s always asking about things like performance evaluations, training, development, promotions, career paths, dealing with difficult clients and coworkers, etc.
A lot of people seem to think my job is more interesting than it is. So they often ask about it. And it is not really easy to explain in a 60-second soundbite. Plus, mine is not a “happy” job, and it is pretty interrelated with a lot of America’s more unfortunate issues - unemployment, income/wealth disparity, access to medical/social services, social security solvency… So when someone wants to talk about my job, it can devolve into a long real downer of a conversation.
Like I said, my job is not a happy one. I HAVE to do it when working, but I PREFER not to when not on the clock.
I have to be careful about what I say, at home and to friends, because I must respect solicitor-client privilege.
If it’s something I’ve been in court on, that’s public, and I can speak about it in a general way ( but even then, must respect sub judice), but advice to clients in files that are not public, can’t talk about outside my office.
I met my wife at work. I’m technical and she was in sales, so there was no conflict. 38 years later, we both appreciate that she can understand some of what I whinge about (she retired in 1990).
I retired from a fire alarm company. I can still bore someone to death talking about the job. We did have some clients that insisted on and NDA. I do not know if I am still covered by it, but that client is a very large part of the company’s revenue so I still stick to it.
If someone asks, I’ll say I’m in IT. If they look confused after that, I’ll say computer stuff. If they seem genuinely interested after that, I’ll say data center tech. If they continue to ask, I’ll go into what it is I actually do. But usually nobody makes it that far and I’m glad.
Same here. But different buildings. I’m in IS/GIS we work with everyone. My wife and my departments are particularly close as we develop a lot of systems for them and others that use their data.
That said, we don’t talk about work too much. Maybe “so and so is leaving” or possibly a work related question. And honestly, my line of work (GIS) while interesting, sometimes makes peoples eyes gloss over.
Like many folks, we met through work. Still there 32 years later.
A lot of what I do is CUI, so I tend not to talk about it with anyone outside of work.
On a related note, it’s a bit annoying when I go out to lunch with coworkers and some of them insist on talking about work-related stuff, a.k.a. “shop talk.”
I’m the same. My friends and acquaintances have no idea what I’m working on, because of that solicitor-client privilege. I won’t tell them, and they know not to pry.
I don’t mind fielding simple questions on general points of law from friends and acquaintances in such settings as the sports bar, but I’ll shut the conversation down if it gets more complicated than a two-minute answer.
The nuts and bolts of my work is boring, technical, and often confidential, so i rarely talk about it. But the human interactions, the quantity (or lack thereof) and other “what did you do today” items are certainly things i have chatted about. If i had an especially tedious 3 hour zoom call, or we had a reorg and i was moving to a better manager, my friends were likely to hear about it.
I work in software. I really don’t think anyone wants to hear the ins+outs of my (mostly self inflicted) problems or triumphs getting code to do what I wanted today or my difficulties trying to get a developer to understand that a bug wasn’t a feature request. Plus, I love my job, but I don’t want to recount it when they’re not paying me to do so. That’s basically an unpaid self review, and I don’t like doing those when I’m being paid to do it.