Oh man, I feel this one. After a bad experience I stopped sharing ANYTHING about my private life and my coworkers would bust my balls about that, until I snapped and shouted “None of your fucking business”. They leave me alone now, so mission accomplished, I guess.
Anybody who thinks that behavior is rude is a busy body snake and is best avoided, regardless.
This is meme has a bad implied advise. You have to interact with your coworkers in so far as you build working relationship to trust each other, because teamwork and professionalism is required in most jobs. Also, building a work friendly relationship with coworkers will pay off when you want to get promotion or recognition, because you will get good word of mouth from colleagues and thus build a good reputation.
I understand where people are coming from with this, but one has to balance knowing when to recognise if your workmates can be trusted and become good friends, or knowing how to keep professional but friendly distance. Unless you work in an environment where teamwork has less importance, or you don’t plan to move up the corporate ladder which requires good reputation, or really don’t want to make friends with colleagues because they are toxic, then by all means be “rude”.
I fall into “rude coworker” territory, but have managed to do really well in my career. Different groups at my company have requested me to move to them, was just promoted to Expert in my software product, and actually just got offered a job with a 30% raise by one of the clients I work with (which I ultimately accepted and start next month).
My secret is that I’m a hard worker and I’m very thorough with everything I do. I take mentoring others seriously, and although I’m not naturally a very patient person, I am always patient with my coworkers and clients.
You don’t have to be good at socializing to climb your way up, but you do have to make up for it by actually being good at your job.
I take mentoring others seriously, and although I’m not naturally a very patient person, I am always patient with my coworkers and clients.
This is what I mean. You have to have “people’s skills” because it is important in a job where teamwork and mentoring are required. You don’t have to socialise on every company events or be friends with coworkers outside of work. But being professional and friendly goes a long way. I know of people who may be good at their jobs on technical level, but are bad with managing people because they lack both social skills and social intelligence, which makes them pass over for promotions.
I just ask people about their lifes. Most people love to talk about themselves and i have to talk less about myself and dont run out on unproblematic small talk points.
Also, building a work friendly relationship with coworkers will pay off when you want to get promotion or recognition, because you will get good word of mouth from colleagues and thus build a good reputation.
Haha, yeah, and just look them in the eye and give them a firm handshake!
Meanwhile, in modern life, the way to get promoted and better paid is job hopping, or starting on your own.
You could only get away so much with job hopping. And besides, I have job hopped before, adjusting to new working culture and environment can be challenging and eventually drain you as a person.
You could only get away so much with job hopping.
Really? Because that’s not been my experience at all. You can even come back to the same company multiple times. Sometimes it’s even easier since you “know the company already”.
adjusting to new working culture and environment can be challenging and eventually drain you as a person.
I guess that’s a personal thing. I don’t experience that at all, but if you feel the need to personally reconnect to all your coworkers, I can see why it would be very draining. If you see your coworkers as coworkers, it’s a lot easier.
In some industries, job hopping is completely fine because of their nature and circumstances. But in my one, it is tolerated for those who are just new in their career, especially the newly graduates. In my field, the longer you are in your career, the more they expect that you to stay in a given company. Each companies in my field have their own quirks, so they appreciate people who stay on for long because they don’t have to train new starts on the nuances (some companies backstab their long time employees, but that is kind of expected in any industry). Some might even think weirdly if you are doing some practices you picked up from your previous company (like reading the SOP). So, adjusting to new work environment can be daunting because different companies (in my field) do things differently.
I am a pretty sociable person. I consider many of my previous and current colleagues as friends, but they are different kind of friend, which is work friend. I would hang out with them and go for drinks or talk about things outside of work; but I won’t share with them too intimate details of my life, as I do to my long time friends I grew up with.
I basically agree with all but the coworkers not friends thing. You spend a fuckton of basically everyday with these people - you need to make it not a living hell for everybody, and the only people who ever say this shit are the most hostile, passive aggressive, self centered, backstabbing, anti-competitive, two-faced people you’ll ever meet.
Like sure you don’t have to give each oral and have lunch together, but, christ, don’t be such cutthroat selfish pricks to each other, that’s what the billionaires want.
Friends are people I like, share hobbies and interests with and want to have around me in my life. I picked my friends myself and I’m proud and happy with them.
Coworkers are people I’m stuck in a room with 40 hours a week. Of course you should be polite and friendly, because you’re stuck with them. They got foisted on me and dealing with is part of why I get paid.
There’s a huge difference between “not a living hell” and “sharing my private life and feelings”. If everyone is professional and polite, that’s great, but I dislike quite a lot of the people I work with and wouldn’t spend 10 minutes with them if I didn’t get paid for it.
I fully agree with most of what you’re saying. But I also have many close friends who started out as coworkers, but we found out we’re enjoying each other’s company.
Hell I’m crashing on a former colleague’s (and former boss’s even) couch right now, and another colleague in the same city offered theirs. Another ex coworker is my deepest confidant in just about any topic.
It’s a bit tricky to find out which people are worth deepening the relationship with, and how to cordially avoid the others. But that’s just like everywhere else tbh.
Edit: I wanna add it’s perfectly fine to keep your distance to people from work, as long as you’re not being an asshole. I know I would have missed out on great seemingly lifetime friendships with that attitude and I don’t recommend not joining this seemingly cool person for a drink after work for the sole reason that you work together.
It’s fine to be friends with your coworkers, but it shouldn’t be an expectation
I’m torn, most of the time I’d agree and I do befriend co-workers myself most of the time. But I do kind of resent the fact that often people at work often come to dislike you if you aren’t spending time with them during breaks/lunch.
Thing is, I know why: gossip/shit-talking about you is easier when you aren’t around. I know co-workers will start shit talking other employees (or even the manager in a personal way rather than general work complaint way) and even when I myself dislike the co-worker/manager they’re shit-talking myself I tend to soft-defend them because of the discomfort over talking shit about other people.
EDIT: I kind of wish people could just be more blunt/open or even confrontational and not do the Machiavellian thing. Rip the bandaid off.
I have to agree. Work, like school, has a mixture of people, some you’ll get on with and others you won’t. I’ve made some good friends there.
If you dislike so many people you work with and feel like you are “stuck in a room” at you job, why don’t you get a different job, where you like your coworkers and enjoy what you do?
I enjoy the work I do. I’m self employed and I got to hire all my coworkers myself. But "this person should be my close personal friend"is a very poor criterium for hiring someone.
Maybe I could have phrased it better. Most people at work I have a perfectly fine professional relationship with, but I wouldn’t be friends with them. It’s like neighbors, it’s good to be nice with them, but in the Grand scheme of things, we’re only spending time together because of physical proximity.
Maybe I have really high standards for friends, but if I didn’t work with these people, we wouldn’t find eachother remotely friend-material, so why does working together change that?
>spend 8 hours a day, minimum, sitting next to some guy
>try to make small talk to break up the monotony of wage slavery
>guy doesn’t even respond, or gives short answers at best
>damn, he must either not like me or isn’t a very sociable person
Exactly. I’ve made friends with a few of my coworkers and at least one of us shave done fun things on the weekend. Making friends as an adult is hard, especially in a new city. I wanted my coworker to feel welcome.
I’ve found few people I’d call friends at jobs. Most people who tried to be “friendly” with me were social climbing shitheads working an angle or emotionally-stunted people trying to recruit me into their petty shop floor dramas.
There are plenty of comments similar to yours and every time I see them I wonder, what industries do these people work in, and how much work experience do they actually have. If you’re doing something highly competitive like certain kinds of sales or finance, it makes sense that there’s going to be a lot of jerks around you. But in a lot of other jobs, like if you’re working at the grocery store or something, it’s not like anyone gets any advantage by trying to manipulate you. So I’m really wondering, what are these fields that are just completely full of totally worthless human beings?
Have you ever worked retail or food? The amount of pettiness and back-biting is equitable to that found in a high-stakes corporate setting.
Professional kitchens are by far the worst jobs I’ve had in this regard. I’ve watched a middle aged line lead purposefully fuck up whole tables just to get revenge on the teenage waitress who turned down his advances. I saw a service lead get arrested in the parking lot because he was going to blast a coworker with his .45. Why? Because the asshole coworker tried to sabotage the lead’s dinner service by refusing to help him during the rush because he was passed over for the position.
This is not including the loud and public break-ups between coworkers, the fist fights, the time a prep cook tried to work his shift while fucked up on enough oxy to kill a bull moose, or the time these two stoned idiots decided to thaw 80 lbs of chicken wings by putting them through the industrial dishwasher.
Where tf is this rude? Someone like this would fly under the radar 9/10 times and be considered a great employee unless thy aren’t doing their job.
“Rude” to the social butterflies at the office.
I feel like they would just not notice anyone like that.
There’s always some office drama going on where I work but I never have any idea what any of it’s about. No one tries to engage me with it though.
Man… it’s so weird.
They want to have Friday beers in the office. They want to go to the game together. They want to organize little events after work that I’m semi-obligated to go to. I went to one, reluctantly, and one of the executives more or less made it clear to me that he had been against hiring me in the first place (for understandable reasons).
No I don’t like you people, you’re pod people, why the fuck do you do this with your lives
Edit: It wasn’t just me, either. They all would get excited for sandwiches from this one place, and I went with them one time and they all clearly thought it was a treat, and the sandwich was foul. Just a big stinky wad of toppings and condiments. I never went again, and every so often with some fanfare they would go there again. I literally don’t know what’s wrong with them.
They could be vying for position.
“I was ashamed of myself when I realised life was a costume party and I attended with my real face” Franz Kafka
Yeah bo
I know my share of history
How hard it is to be free
From wearing masks that turn to skin
Hiding what you could have been
I’m self employed, which means I get to avoid the vast majority of these events. Unfortunately it also means that them inviting me is a Big Deal, and saying no isn’t really an option.
One company did a quarterly outing to a brewery. Now, ignoring it’s a bad idea to get drunk with coworkers (and then drive home), they only had IPAs, and I loathe IPAs. And they had “BBQ” which rivalled the mediocreest microwave leftovers.
And they claimed to love it. Either they’re huge liars, or have horrible taste. But I did note only about a third of their employees were there at the time.
Only those who have nothing else in their lives but work find this unfriendly. Work is not an event that I attend voluntarily, but to earn a living. I am polite, nice and helpful to my colleagues in everything that revolves around work. Anything beyond that is not a matter of course and should not be taken for granted.
A lot of that is going to be job specific. If you isolate yourself, you could run into various problems. First, you probably won’t be communicating with union members, and those members might be the kind of people who can help you if the bosses try to fuck you over. Second, sometimes work is stressful, and you might want support from people who technically have no duty to help you. If you treat them decently on a somewhat regular basis, they might make time for you even if they don’t need to. This also connects with your friends. It depends on your relationships of course, but some friends don’t want to hear about work complaints. If that’s the bulk of your friends, then you might want coworkers who are willing to listen to work complaints.
And it’s all nice and fine to say that you only attend work to earn a living, but the reality is you could have worked at a dozen places, and you chose a specific one. No one’s forcing you to be there. You could have gotten a job at 7-Eleven or Walmart, but you didn’t. You’re there of your own volition.
I don’t think anyone takes for granted halfway decent co-workers. We’ve all worked with total jerks, and people often have natural reasons to act like total jerks from time to time. If you’re one of them, that’s okay, you do you.
I’ve been ripped off enough by companies to only do exactly what I’m paid to do. That doesn’t mean that I’m not willing to help colleagues who have questions while I’m just about to disappear into the evening. It also doesn’t mean that I can’t talk to my colleagues about work-related issues, such as annoyances or anything else. As I said, I’m polite, friendly and helpful as long as it’s work-related. And I don’t do it because I hope to gain some kind of advantage from it, but because I want to be treated that way myself. The fact that nobody is forcing me to work at a specific job is true, but it misses the general point of the thread (and indeed of what I said). The fact is that people are people and therefore pretty much the same or at least similar everywhere - that’s the case in my line of work. And I have experienced countless times that colleagues are only too happy to share all the details of the past weekend with you, from family outings to binge drinking to adultery, but they don’t give a shit whether you had a good weekend yourself and dont even ask back. Most of them are not able to communicate at eye level at the absolute minimum and just constantly present themselves and expect some kind of recognition or admiration in return. And I’m supposed to share private things with people like that? For what? So that they can work with me more professionally? Or maybe just to make them feel better about themselves? I don’t care about that crap, let’s stick to what we came to work for. That’s called professionalism. Apart from that, it’s a mystery to me why you only consider colleagues to be halfway decent if they want to share private things with you. Maybe you should reconsider your expectations.
I feel like if you are friendly with your co-workers it makes the days go by faster.
Tends to make the job easier, too. Lots of accumulated experience that goes neglected when people hide in their cubbies and don’t interact with one another.
Any company culture that expects you to be friends with your coworkers is a dumpster fire. Run quickly.
I’ve worked in my current office for two years and don’t know the first thing about any of my coworkers beyond their name and specialization. No clue if they’re married or have kids, or what they do on the weekend. We never chit-chat. I am infinitely happier here than anywhere I’ve worked in the past.
Any company culture that expects you to be friends with your coworkers is a dumpster fire.
Any company culture that demands friendship, certainly. But there are more than a few firms that do a good job of cultivating it naturally. When work requires collaboration and people spend lots of time together, they often form bonds of friendship of their own accord.
I find that companies which cubicle off their staff, silo the work so its never more than one or two people working on a given project, deliberately run short-staffed (particularly when business is slow and there’s ample time for socializing), have managers that give you heat for any kind of non-work activity, and visibly stack-rank staff so that everyone is on edge about layoffs can create an environment where people are poorly socialized.
But so much of this is about squeezing “efficiency” out of workers. If you’re not friendly with the people you spend a solid third of your day with, you’re not doing anyone any favors except the bosses. Alienating you from your co-workers is the end result of the long tail of union busting and precarious employment.
This is definitely extremely true and far more accurate than op which reads like they work at a grocery or fast food
Strong disagree. You can absolutely be friendly with coworkers and enjoy working with them without crossing the boundary into your personal life, and this is usually the best for long-term happiness at work. This is especially beneficial whenever people change roles and move to management - it’s exceptionally difficult to be a manager to a friend.
I mean, that’s called having “work friends”. You hang out at work, maybe grab a beer together sometimes, help each other out professionally, but they typically don’t enter into the rest of your life. This is extremely common.
Also, it really isn’t hard to be a manager to your friends if both people have any level of emotional intelligence. A good manager’s job is to support their subordinates, enable their growth, and shelter them from belligerent demands of uninformed clients or higher-ups.
Looks like someone’s got a case of the Mondays! /j
If we try to talk to coworkers we are told to get back to work, but then I’m expected to show up to extra events and get drunk with people I usually am not even allowed to talk to? No thanks, why are they surprised by this?
I am sick of this “you have to be sociable at work” bullshit. Leave me the fuck alone.
None of those things are rude.
Correct, but refusal to engage in small talk, banter, discussing your lives, and the occasional social outing, will have many see you as stand offish, asocial, and your refusal to do this basic community building stuff, as being rude.
Being forced to do these things seems childish
The rude part is judging people.
Not wanting to engage in small talk or banter in a situation that they would not be in unless they were paid is completely understandable. Everyone is different. Nothing on that list is rude. And you are validating why people do the things they do. Because some asshole is going to call you rude.
So yeah this is me. I’m sure it’s a lot of us here. If you’re lucky you also have that flavor of neurospice that comes with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, so that not only is the social interaction itself taxing, but then the idea of sharing personal information is horrifying.
The results you get from it still depend on how you choose to react to your environment. Importantly, your brain and neurodivergence are part of that environment.
And it’s ok. Being friendly and participating in chats is not going to sign you up to go to anybody’s house. Sharing some details about your weekend plans won’t invite criticism or sign you up for other activities. (but if you work in a toxic environment, use your own judgment and act accordingly)
I think even with those of us who are very introverted, a lot of how “present” versus “withdrawn” you come across still comes down to things like depression, anxiety, and fatigue. I am fortunate right now to have a pretty good environment between a good job, the right medications, and mental/physical health. I’ll smile and wave at folks around the office, or BS about nerdy shit with whichever other engineers are in the office that day.
…but then I’ll still put in my earbuds and not talk to anybody for hours on end. If another person doesn’t strike up a conversation, maybe I don’t talk out loud all day. And at lunch I’ll not just sit in my car but drive home to eat!
There’s also something deeper and more fundamental at play here. Part of figuring out how to take care of myself and enjoy existence more has been to consciously nudge myself towards actions that I expect to benefit my well-being, rather than what works best for me in the moment. It can be little things, but they do add up.
For example, stopping to ask somebody who does customer demos what interesting stuff they’ve been working on. It seems like the typical in-office time waster. However, a short positive social interaction with a friendly face can boost both of your moods and make both of your days better. The work-related subject is the easy way into starting a conversation (me giving advice on starting conversations is some Twilight Zone feeling shit) and there might even be something interesting to learn.
This is the point where I’d make a joke about how wasting a bit of the company’s time to improve the mental health of two human beings is a win-win in my book. But we all know that happier employees will literally produce better results for the employer too!
