enjoying working with co workers but disliking socialising with them - c or d

there was a memo about this in the daily office mail the other day

every job i've ever had

this thread = essence of ilx

I could probably socialize with the group that's here now (I not only went to lunch with some of them today but I initiated the outing and gathered the people wows) but I have a strict 'thing' about not doing it, say, after work/weekends. I compartmentalize a little too well, I probably seem like a robot to them sometimes in the office but it doesn't bother me. When I befriend someone there who's cool they just leave so why bother. It's a sales office with the attendant turnover so sometimes, with certain mixes of personnel the atmosphere becomes a fratty go-getter club and I run screaming from that type of shit though I've come to accept people who're like that a lot more than I used to.

this thread = essence of ilx

Arf. Shouldn't really though. I mean wherever you make proper friends - school, uni, internet - you just gravitate towards people you get on with: similar interests, outlook, whatever. But at work you're stuck with whatever randoms applied for and got the same job as you.

yeah but jobs are a reflection of your interests, outlook and whatever

i sort of enjoy hanging out with them outside of work because they're a bunch of drunks, and crazier than my normal friends. i figure it'll be a memorable night out at least

but jobs are a reflection of your interests, outlook and whatever

i wish..

yeah but jobs are a reflection of your interests, outlook and whatever

For some people sure, for others it's just a way to make a living. Plus it's just a more limited pool: at uni there are coursemates, flatmates, societies; whereas at work you're generally just limited to the people in your immediate vicinity.

xp - what, you wanna be one of those people who loves their job? I hate those bastards!

ilx should be renamed inapp

i'm not a people person

Oh man, totally classic. Working with friends is bad because friend stuff, the friends tend to think you'll take shifts or work or etc. because your friends. These favors are more easily declined with people who have a solid coworker status. AND it is very pleasant and important to have fun, friendly, enjoyable coworkers, but when you hang out any other time, ALL the conversation is about your job, even if that's not what you talk about while working with them. Conversely, they think if you've drank at their house a couple times they think they can exploit you at work. So the thread title describes the perfect coworker relationship.

"there was a memo about this in the daily office mail the other day"

why does this reply seem to always pop up in my threads? i dont read the mail.

ive actually been getting along with my co workers a lot better in the last few months (prob cos i know this position is coming to an end haha) so i thought, phew, this contract is closing soon, less pressure to all get along, well go out tonight and things will be diff to previous work outings, but no, actually, i just realised the dynamic is just crap between us all. it just doesnt work.

i think it's healthy not to socialize with your coworkers.

also: never sleep with your coworkers. there are about 10 threads about that.

The coworkers I've gotten along best with now work elsewhere on campus, but that makes hanging out with them these days more enjoyable, since we're not prone to vent about our situation as we used to.

the only co-worker i ever slept with is still one of my best friends.

i'm not a people person
haha! wouldn't have it any other way

i never eliminate the possibility of making friends through a job/workplace, but for the most part i don't want to spend any time hanging out with people i don't really want to hang out with! i only socialize (work parties/events excepted) outside of workplace with co-workers if they're people i'd be friends with in any other context. i am a some people but not most of them person.

i kind of enjoy being social in the workplace though or at conferences and events/settings with a very specific purpose and timespan. it gives form to socializing and takes pressure off to be 'good friends' or whatever. more about being 'aimiable' social. i don't know, as long as i'm not bored by boring stuff i'm okay.

that said, i learned to drink martinis when i became friday-evening drinks friends with a co-worker in an office job i had in university. that was good. he also had a fast car and bought me sushi.

Current job, I go out of my way to avoid socialising with this lot, I dont know why but they weird me out. I get on fine with them as workmates though.

My last job was awesome though, a lot of us already knew each other outside of the job (and had come on board thru word of mouth hiring hence all knowing one another) so shiftwork meant half the helpdesk gothing up on friday nights late and heading out clubbing after the last shift was done. Awesome stuff. I miss that place.

i dunno i don't find it hard to relate to other people even if there's not much we have in common. i must be the crazy one.

yeah i even have good friends with whom it wld seem i have nothing in common with. sometimes it's just a connection thing on another level - i dig this.
but let's not rule out your craziness

this thread = essence of ilx

-- hstencil, Thursday, August 2, 2007 11:57 PM

i opened this thread thinking it was going to be like 5 years old.

haha me toooo.

this thread = essence of ilx

SO, SO, SOOOOO OTM.

I have to spend 8 hours or more with these people every day! Everything I have to say to them, I've already said. Why would I want to spend my off-duty hours with them?

I jsut don't want the people I have to spend so much time with to know that much about me, either. My personal life is none of their business.

what can i say? i pretty much get along with people. hence also spending a fair amount of time conversing on message boreds, too.

Look, if you like your job - or if your job is in a field that you are actually interested in - then I could see how you might want to socialise with your colleagues, because you actually have something in common with them.

I have fuck all in common with most of the people that I work with. That doesn't mean I hate them or dislike them, it just means I'd rather spend my precious time off with people I do have stuff in common with, and can relate to. And more importantly, can relate to me without giving me those *looks* like they think I'm insane because I care about the things I care about.

"threads very much in character"

For me, it's always been more that I dislike my job so much that I dislike spending time with my colleagues outside work because they remind me of my job. Because it's what we have in common, it's what we tend to talk about, and I don't like that. Mister M, on the other hand, loves talking about work, and so he will hang out with his work colleagues for hours and hours and just talk about work (v. boring to be around).

get fired and none of you will have this problem any more.

I actually (stupidly) tried to befriend our employees. I invited'em out for bowling. Everyone had fun, we took pics, promised we would do this again but never did. My mum (read: boss) kept saying I had to befriend one of our collegues, I had to confide in her, blablabla. I felt like a complete MORAN. So now I just talk about babies and *stuff*. Nothing serious. Just *filler*. I don't have any expectations and that works fine. Also I never ever invite'em after working hours. Why should I? I see'em enough already. Also, maybe it's a little bit different because I'm halfway between boss and employee. *shrug*

Accentmonkey OTM!

Stence, don't tempt me.

If I didn't have this bloody mortgage... except no one else in this company even knows how to do a mailmerge, let alone run the DB.

i leavin my work soon but my co workers want to have a monthly get together after ive gone. WHY?!

well yeah the no-money thing kinda sucks.

I've told you before, Stence, prostitute yrself. ;-)

well that will be on some other bored's cut it out thread soon, sigh.

I want to be friends with people I like. How I meet them is of absolutely no importance.

Mark OTM.

In my last two jobs it was the opposite, not particularly enjoying working with them but loving socialising with them outside work. I think myself and two or three of my old co-workers went through the whole of January 2006 without spending more than 24hrs apart. That was weird.

In this one I am happy to keep church and state separate.

Yeah, sticks and stones may break my bones but flirting will never hurt you.

Sorry if it upsets you. I'll quit it. But seriously, if a bunch of kids want to be dicks, what does that have to do with anything?

x-post to Stence.

That said, January 2006 did involve rather a lot of dancing on rooftops and relatively little of the talking about work, so that helped.

On the few occasions that it's happened, it is nice to have a friend at work, it makes things a lot smoother and happier. But these friendships don't usually extend past the period of your working together. I find that kind of depressing.

(If you don't get close to people, it doesn't bother you so much when they leave - story of my life, really.)

the whole "team" at my last job used to go out together every friday night. when i started there, i joined them for the first couple of weeks. it was kinda fun, and they were cool people (most of them), but you know ... by the end of the week i'd kinda had enough of them.

so i knocked it on the head very quickly. and straight away, so did half the rest of them. it was as if they'd been waiting for someone to pipe up and say: "you know, this is a bit shit, isn't it?"

All it really depends on is whether you have shared interests or topics of conversation outside work.

I meet, if I meet someone at work who I think is really cool and I would happily hang out with, the last thing I want getting in the way is a kind of ticker-tape "this is a work person, this is a work person" going through my head. Why does it matter?

It's not like there's a ticker tape, it's just PAINFULLY OBVIOUS within the course of about a 5 minute conversation by the kettle if we have anything in common.

Maybe. But I also think in some cases people are a bit more reserved with what they talk about at work which leads to a mutually stilted conversation. Possibly because it's sometimes difficult to fight off the temptation to put them in a little box labelled 'work person' and assume they're only interested in talking about spreadsheets and slagging the boss off and (at a push) the football or what was on TV last night.

No, I've had slightly more personal conversations with work colleagues. The usual is about music, as soon as they find out I'm a musician. But I'm such a music snob that's hard. Conversations about books, we have, too. Because that's an easy one - seeing what everyone is reading on the train. But it's like... if someone comes back with "What on earth are you reading a book about Victorian cemetaries for, you weird morbid person? And who on earth is Richard Feynman?" especially accompanied by *that* look.

I don't want to spend my me time explaining or apologising for myself.

Well in that case yes they probably are a bit of a tit. Then again I'm not used to my aesthetic choices being questioned in that way (apart from my boss who mocks me for virtually everything I like but then again I mock him back for what he likes so that makes it okay).

I don't really like being mocked by strangers. (Or near functional strangers, such as workmates.)

Someone has to know me a long time before I'll accept being mocked by them in a friendly way.

I *really* dislike that kind of presumption of familiarity in an office setting. It makes things tense, which is a very unpleasant work environment.

I enjoy socialising with my co-workers but have been banned from doing so as they are terrible drunks that lead me astray (this is not difficult to do).

I can hear some of the IS people at the other end of our office talking about LCD Soundsystem, Calvin Harris and other contemporary beat combos but I don't feel like I could just wander over there and wade in ha.

I've found that most work people, if you bother to get to know them, have more interesting lives and interests than you might think.

Matt DC was totally OTM about people being naturally reserved, but you shouldn't assume that they're boring or have nothing to say.

I don't often socialize with people from work, but when I do I enjoy it. If it was more often, it probably wouldn't be as much fun. Work-sponsored (rather than just colleagues getting together informally) 'social' events like barbecues and dinners and christmas parties are hell on earth and I never go.

Oddly enough, in the past I've found a perverse pleasure in going to other people's (girlfriend du jour, or maybe another company you're working with) work do's. They're good if you like people watching.

I've found that most work people, if you bother to get to know them, have more interesting lives and interests than you might think.

Uh no. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. If you like. Which I shouldn't if it's colleagues. I have learned that distancing myself from my colleagues (about three meters har har) is far better. Maybe because I'm positioned *above*'em and hence it makes it easier to judge them objectively?

it depends how big a company you work at in a way.

the pool is bigger you'll find someone you get on with easier.

small office = less chance to meet good ppl.

Ah yes, we only have two employees. So it gets personal wether you want it or not. :-(

I haven't had co-workers in so long (nearly six years) that I'm not sure if I even know how to act around people anymore.

I understand you have to put pants on. I'm agin it.

i think socialising with co-workers is much better if you work in the 'creative sector'

but then maybe you're more likely to enjoy your job if you work in the 'creative sector'

Wht do you think that?

"i think socialising with co-workers is much better if you work in the 'creative sector'"

not necesarily....

Why not 'Wht'

i like my co-workers at both my jobs, and i'm close friends with two of them. but we spend so much time talking while at work that there's no desire to go out socialising with them.

i've been emotionally blackmailed in to 'staff drinks' tomorrow night, which i'm not really looking forward to. although it's free piss, so there's at least one upside. apparently it's for the purposes of 'de-stressing' the workplace, as there's been a little friction lately.

Wht do you think that?

(generalising based on) personal experience. but more chance of shared cultural interests perhaps particularly niche or 'elite' areas.

T/S, of sorts:

"I don't want to spend any time hanging out with people I don't really want to hang out with" and ("I never eliminate the possibility of making friends through a job/workplace")

vs.

"I think it's healthy not to socialize with your coworkers."

Although I've made my life difficult at some times by being friends with co-workers, I have to admit that the idea that you wouldn't even look for friends among your co-workers is something I only heard for the first time a couple of years ago. It honestly would never ever have occurred to me not to try and befriend people at work I think I like.

I think you're probably right, I just wondered...

Speaking as a person who works at the slightly more creative side of a totally non-creative business, I've always enjoyed working with the ad agencies, PR people, multimedia folks that we contract-in more than the people in the company itself. They seem like more kindred spirits somehow.

And what about workplace romance - good idea or not? I say not, but haf no experience good or bad.

surely work is, at least theoretically, the #1 way adults make friends so if you're in a situation where you're not able to do that then unless you're making friends some other way (classes, neighbours, hobbies, hanging out in the same bars long enough, thru existing circle of friends or indeed via the internet) then your social life is surely struggling?

but having said that it seems most people don't really make long term friends with colleagues. thank you internets what would i have done without you...

working in a restaurant means there's always a bunch of english/south american/irish/american/italian peeps who want to go out and get completely shitfaced drunk every night of the week. this was great fun back in the day when i was a young wee lass with the constitution of an ox.

but now i am a sad old loser who just wants to come home and read a book and drink tea and play on the internet.

And what about workplace romance - good idea or not? I say not, but haf no experience good or bad.

totally depends on the individuals and how well they'd cope if it ended badly (depends how badly too of course).

lots of couples still meet/falling in love/getting married thru having worked together i assume.

workplace romance=COMPLETE FUCKING DUD

(most of the time)

(ok, only in my own personal experience)

re: workplace romance. i've posted this before, but i had a long conversation with a colleague of mine a couple of years ago who more or less swore that it was expected that many people here (Moscow) would meet their spouse through work. another friend of mine subsequently said that idea was rubbish, but still the percentage does seem fairly high.

generally though, i think it's a bad idea (and not just because i basically crush on every attractive female coworker who speaks to me more than once).

i dated a chef at the restaurant where i work, for three years. this only happened for two reasons: firstly, when i drunkenly slept with him the first time, it was the night before i was supposedly moving to another country; secondly, when i returned we hooked up again, but he'd given his notice. but then he started working there again a few months later.

currently, one of my bosses (who i am close friends with) is trying to convince me to have casual sex with him. this is why i DO NOT WANT to drink with him tomorrow night.

surely work is, at least theoretically, the #1 way adults make friends

Unless I'm way out of step with everyone else (possible!) I definitely don't agree with that. But then maybe I define some people as 'colleagues' where other people would call them 'friends'.

All the other ways to meet people that you've listed would seem more likely IMO.

If you have kids at school, other parents are a great source of nu-friends.

but if you did a huge nationwide survey titled 'where have you met most of your friends', what order would these answers be in with the most common answer at the top?

work
classes/course
neighbours
hobbies
leisure time hangouts (bars/pubs/clubs etc.)
thru existing circle of friends
the internet (social networking, online communities, chatrooms etc.)

feel that work would win somehow

Does 'classes/course' equal 'school/university' because that might edge it.

God, work would be at the bottom of that list. Unless you counted freelancing as work. I meet most of my adult friends through the music scene (hobbies, I guess), through magazines/media we've written through (does that count as work if you're not getting paid for it?) And yeah, the interweb.

Maybe that's another survey you could do. (But this being an internet message board, it would probably be distorted towards internet.)

Agree with Kate. Work is at the bottom. Way higher, but in no particular order would be :

univ
music/bands
sport
neighbours/local people
Friends of friends
other school parents

I think this 'not judging a book by its cover' thing really hit home when, I discovered that I discovered that one of the dads at my son's saturday morning soccer club a few years ago was best mates with Paul Simenon, and had played in a band with Joe Strummer. You'd have never guessed that he was remotely cool or musical. Another dad turned out to have a massive collection of postpunk recds and bootlegs - I knew him quite well for a while before I discovered that. I also met a former Dr. Who, but y'know I guessed that before I spoke to him. I'm observant like that.

Oh and a woman who was in one of the Superman movies.

Omg I am nothing like this thread! I have made my decision to be fairly hands-off in the workplace, ie I don't go into specifics of what I do at the weekend/evenings or any of my particular hobbies or like. But this is more to do with the fact that I am fairly isolated in my office now and there's not much common ground anyway. I still think it just makes it easier in the office if you don't really have to deal with other people's non-work related stuff.

On saying that I *have* sort of gravitated closer to a few people here but then again that is because they are the only others who work in my area and I need to talk to them about WORK a lot!

Stevem's last two categories are I think my ONLY "meet new friends" categories! (Actually no there's also a fair bit of 'hobbies' I spose).

If you have kids at school, other parents are a great source of nu-friends.

I read a very striking study in the Journal of YOU ARE GOING TO DIE some months ago that said that people with children are more likely to have friends in later life, because they form close friendships with other parents, and they go through bonding experiences with them, and so on. People with children are also more likely to know what's going on in the modern world because their children teach them about it.

One of my co-workers is my best friend. We socialize out of work regularly and the things we have in common have nothing to do with work.

I'm also good friends with the people from my last position (who I still work with on occasional projects in my new role). Just yesterday 4 of us were planning a road trip to Florida to see the new Harry Potter theme park theme.

But these are the only ones. The others are just co-workers.

Journal of YOU ARE GOING TO DIE

How much is life membership?

But yes - agreed. Other parents are a vital source of support, assistance and friendship when you're mutually up against it.

I made friends with a few work people.. those who are nice. pretty much same as how i make friends with people anywhere else really.

And what about workplace romance - good idea or not?

You can say that again. My husband works with me. But he's contemplating changing jobs. :-D

Aren't you his boss?

would you socialise with them at the weekend:

work: maybe one or two of them but it doesn't really happen
classes/course: don't do one but would like to
neighbours: don't know them beyond greetings on sight
hobbies: yes altho all my current hobbies are co-ordinated online
leisure time hangouts (bars/pubs/clubs etc.): not really
thru existing circle of friends: bingo
the internet (social networking, online communities, chatrooms etc.): superbingo

way too dependent on internet. i am hoping my next job (whenever i get one), hopefully in the 'creative sector', allows me to develop more friendships - but just branching out hobbies-wise probably a better bet.

or work for an internet firm

no they're all freaks

I hang out with my coworkers frequently. I do not hate fun.