Bird and I were talking the other day and the conversation turned to having work friends. I was wondering if it is the norm to have friends at work or do most people go in and do their thing while keeping their coworkers at the acquaintance level, never forming real relationships.
Here’s a quick summary turning what was a really long post into a shorter one:
- At my old job, I had 4 or 5 really good friends. We were close. We talked about our lives outside of work and sometimes we hung out outside of work. Heck, I ended up marrying one of my work friends.
- At my current job, I have no friends. There are several reasons for this: number of coworkers, structure of department, nature of work, lack of common interests, age range, etc. Literally, there are some days when I do not speak a word to anyone. While not an extremely social person to begin with, it makes for long, boring days.
- At Bird’s current job, she has a few friends. However, she will admit that they are quite negative, constantly complaining about work or anything else they can think of. This seems to directly affects Bird’s attitude (like them, she doesn’t like her job much either but I think it gets compounded by her friends harping on how bad it is every day). I also see her reasoning that it may be better to have negative friends than no friends at all.
In the past, this has led to some issues. Bird’s work is fast-paced and crazy stressful. She often works long hours and is flying a million miles a minute the whole time. Her boss is a crazy person. My work comes in seasonal spurts and currently we are in the slow season. There is little to be done and I don’t have any friends to make the day go faster (except Twitter friends!). When I pick Bird up from work at the end of the day, I’m ready to burst for lack of social interaction, ready to tell her the one billion things I’ve been thinking all day. She, however, needs a good 30-45 minutes to just decompress and not do anything at all, including talking to me. This had led to confusion and hurt feelings. In time, we’ve figured out what was happenign and we’ve learned what we need to do for each other to make it work.
But all that leads me to the main question, do you have friends at work? I am really curious as to where the majority lies with this one.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I only have one true friend at work. And she’s 11 years older than I am!
My direct co-workers are all acquaintances. I’ve been at my company for almost a year and a half and I’ve tried to gain friendships – but there are so many “cliques” of people who have worked together for 5-10+ years that they didn’t want a “new” person. Though people are friendly enough. I am a very outgoing, social person and am glad for my one friend that I can talk to during the day!
I have some friends that are in completely opposite situations, where they are good friends with EVERYONE they work with. Not so for me!
Friends at work, yes. If I quit my job. No. Except one. I do have 1 true friend at work. We will probably be true friends until the day we croak.
It sad, I don’t really have friends outside of work. Cuz I WORK TOO MUCH and SPEND TOO MUCH TIME HERE. LOL. But I love my job.
Oooohh interesting topic. Well, I’ve always tended to have a lot of work friends. I think I thrive on making more personal relationships with people at work. My office is huge though, and I’m only REALLY good friends with 7 or so people. 80% of the people in my office are close to retirement and the other 20% are young twenty-somethings like me (good planning by my company…not). Those 7-8 people that I’m really good friends with are young but I still have several friends in the older age group. I’m usually the one setting up our after work happy hours and inviting people over and stuff like that. It’s hard to meet people outside of work when you’re not in school anymore, so I like making work friends. Plus, like you say, they make the day go by faster when it’s slow!
I love my coworkers! But unfortunately I rarely hang out with any of them outside of work because we all live in different directions. We usually chit-chat throughout the day and run errands or go to lunch together on our breaks.
I think there are maybe two girls whom I would hang out with if I got a different job. The rest are great people that I admire/care about, but I don’t see us being close friends aside from work.
Great question!
I have no friends at work. I technically have 50 coworkers, but we all work from home so I never interact with them. It is definitely my least favorite part about the job.
@Ninja – yeah, that’s interesting. I was wondering about telecommuters. We have quite a few of them and I’d like to work from home because I’m not really friends with the people in the office, so it just makes it that much more awkward to interact (esp. at forced events like b-day celebrations (think office space)) and I’d rather just work from home. Still waiting to here a final decision on that front.
I’ve got friends from my previous job, as well as my current job. I hang out with a few of them outside of work.
No
and I wish I did! I’m one of the youngest and most junior here.
No, not at my current work. But at my old job I did.
Hi – found your blog through MPP. My blog isn’t a PF one so I haven’t linked it but I am mulling over the idea of starting one.
Anyway, to the question at hand. Yes and no. I did at my last job – I don’t at my current one. The differences? My current job is a 90 minute commute from where I live. I have a great time with the people here, and friday night drinks etc (did I mention the commute is via train?) but I think once I leave in a few weeks, I will only keep in touch with a few via fb.
My old job was in Aus (now in London) and I made loads of friends there. I was there for 8 years so that helped but much of my friendship circle in London is made up from old colleagues. I’m actually going to work with one of them again – and he assures me I will love my new colleagues.
Sorry for the lengthy!
Hi Sue – Thanks for stopping by and commenting. First of all, I think you should start a PF blog because it’s a great community to be a part of. Second, I wish you the best at your new position and here’s hoping you love your new colleagues as much as this guy says you will!
I’ve made and kept good friends from almost every job I’ve ever had (in fact, one of my oldest and closest friends I met at McDonald’s when I was 16, which was many years ago!), but my two closest friends at my job now both quit several years ago, and so I would have to say that I don’t have any real ‘friends’ here that I confide in or hang out with outside of work. I mean, I’m social enough with them but to be honest, there’s no one here now that I really feel such a strong connection with that I need to let them into that part of my life. I think it’s a good idea to keep work mainly separate from the rest of your life. Just my two cents.