Yes, I agree, work friendships can be a double-edged sword.
I think people make friends at work since they are there so many hours with these people, and we don't have as much time outside work to make friends. Or our old friends have had kids and we never see them.
At my last job my coworkers did not like the bosses and some other co-workers, it became really hard for me to be objective, so it was easier to adopt their views. Maybe to my career detriment. I just could not deal with the bosses anymore. I don't know if it was because the bosses really were impossible to work for, or I could not figure out a way to work with them because the coworkers convinced me there was no way to.
I can't say it too much, because it works for me: work here
GREAT BIG EMPTY SPACE
socialize here.
It will come as no surprise that I'm a strong advocate of keeping work and personal life separate. I can get along with people at work, but coworkers are not your friends. There is always the competition thing and people will do anything they can to screw you over if it means they can get ahead.
I agree with Eddy however, I feel it's important to at least be pleasant at work and try to get along with co-workers or your life at work will be a living hell. You don't have to be best friends but be friendly.
I tend not to go out for lunch with co-workers or socialize outside of work. In my experience, nothing good comes from it.
I agree that expecting strong friendships at work is a big no-no, and a recipe for disaster. But pleasantness, casual acquaintances, an occasional lunch friend, a mentor, someone to bounce ideas off of -- these are all acceptable levels of camaraderie, and safe levels at that.
(So long as you don't down four martinis at that lunch, and start blabbing about your crazy boyfriend.)
I'm going to be the exception to the rule, but then again I work at a place where they expect me to share a bedroom (for months - not just a quick work trip) with colleagues. So I know that I'm not normal. We have to rely on our cohesion on a personal level to make things work professionally. I have relied on coworkers to solve personal problems, had them over to my place for drinks (as part of a larger group), and a bunch of us always go together for coffee and meals.
When I worked in high-tech and when I was at university I did this a bit - I went for a day-trip by canoe, met up a few times a year at someone's house for a big dinner, had lunches together, and talked about our weekends and plans for the future. I never had any problems with this, and had one friend comment that "I wish I had coworkers who weren't all 60 years old so that I could hang out with them like you do".
I have also worked at places where this isn't possible, and was completely fine with it. For example I worked at a place where I was with four other women and all they wanted to talk about was wedding plans and so forth. I was polite but tried to avoid them socially.
My guidelines - if I think about them - would be that I don't expect anything. I go with the culture that already exists within the workplace. The other would be that any physical relationship happens after we have stopped working together. I will not be in a romantic relationship with a close coworker, although it's easy for me to move if required.
Part of the reason that it works for me at this job is that we are guaranteed to be working with each other for a short time. A year or two if we're lucky, possibly three at the longest. We will likely work with those people again so we can't mess it up badly either without having long-term consequences, but if you don't like someone personally then it's easy to work around.
I know that it isn't for everyone, but so far in over 10 years I have no regrets and in fact have benefited so much. Not everyone at my work is this friendly either, and that's fine. There are some projects that require more personal commitment (usually related to the amount of travel and sometimes to the type of work) and those people know not to get involved in those projects. It's not a problem and nobody minds, but they wouldn't fit well in the type of projects that I love. I don't seek them out for this reason either, but I do enjoy these friendships as a benefit. I spend so much of my life at work that I might as well enjoy all aspects of it!
I have always been friendly at work, but rarely, if ever, socialize with co-workers outside of the workplace. If I have, it was usually because there was some big engagement party or something. I always skip the Holiday parties. Actually, there was one woman I use to meet for coffee, but then she quit due to workplace politics. I use to meet another woman to walk her dogs. We didn't work together, but had shifts following one another.
I am a very private person at work. I have found that the person who you believe is your greatest supporter and friend, can turn on you in a heartbeat. Workplace friendships are the oddest thing, IMO.
From my past experience, some people will remember things that I have said and done (and maybe even confided in) and bring it up years later. This is especially true if there has been some petty fallout or something. WTF? Even I forgot about the conversation! Get a life people.
The majority of people LOVE to talk about themselves, so if I ever feel that people are prying into my personal and private issues, I gently flip the conversation and questions back onto them. It is truly amazing what some people will talk about...and I am just a co-worker. They really don't know me at all.
Ugh. I hate articles like that. They smack of Cosmo's "101 Ways to Keep Your Man" style of writing and in an effort to be as bland as possible and appeal to the broadest base of people, they miss the mark completely and alienate everyone. MHO.
I don't think you can cut it down to catch phrases such as "Keep your guard up, at least in the beginning". Duh. I am not a guarded person. It's not in my nature. I function best when I use my intuition and enjoy my workplace and coworkers until something happens that proves me wrong. I have had 40 jobs in my life, and I've enjoyed the vast majority of them, and I've ALWAYS had workplace friends. Always. This is the first place where things have gone sour, and that took YEARS for it to happen, but I really do chalk that up to a toxic work environment and the exception, not the rule. My sister has tons of workplace friends, and when my mom worked, so did she. One of my best friends (Angela, the one who died in 2007) was a coworker, and she was the one who taught me the value of making friends at work.
Much like those stupid Cosmo articles, making blanket statements about how to 'snag a man' or 'keep your guard up at work' does a great disservice to people who are not into the politics of friendships/relationships, and would rather let things develop organically. I let things develop organically here, and they happened to rot. But that has not alwyas been the case, and I wouldn't presume it to be the case in every workplace.
I hope one day to have a great job with lots of coworkers who are friends. I still have hope on that front. I'm an open and friendly person and I bring that out in people, so I do tend to make friends everywhere I go. I think I make the workplace a better place by being this way and not being a guarded asshole. I think I'm at least contributing to a partial solution, not the problem.
Oh, I just wanted to add one more observation. I really truly believe this is an American style of behaving in the workplace. I have noticed in my travels that Americans tend to be more guarded and more suspicious in the workplace (justifiably so). There are not the same human rights and workplace rights there as in the rest of the world (it would appear) and add to this the fact that your health insurance is/was tied up HEAVILY in your employment, so you really are slave to your job in a way that Canadians (for example) are not. You have to behave a certain way on the job to maintain health benefits, so of course you are going to behave completely differently than if you were free to be yourself.
MHO.
I agree that it's good to have work friends to commiserate with from time to time and if you really do "hit it off" with someone, it's not a bad idea to grow that relationship outside of work. Who doesn't need more friends in their life?
I'm with Jo; most people are my friends right off the bat until they do something to piss me off. I try to keep an open mind.
I suppose the tenure track world is a different side of academe, but the type of behavior advocated in this article would pretty much guarantee there'd be talk about the new hire's "not being a good fit for the department" if that level of collegiality were displayed. I work at a huge college in one of its largest departments. With very few exceptions, all of us have close friendships with colleagues both within our own departments, and in many cases, throughout the college. There's a bare minimum of collegiality that's expected for everyone with whom we work from the lowest paid staff member to the college president and higher, but beyond that we have several large, complex social networks with varying levels of friendship from "chat in the workroom" all the way to "would be among the first to call for a personal crisis."
People who don't appear to have any friends among their colleagues are seen as odd. In my department, we have cliques of people who socialize outside work, but most of them will also have some level of work friendship with many of their other colleagues. My first year, I got into a bit of trouble because one of the "alpha females" wanted me to do a lot of socializing outside work (mostly to listen to her bash my new colleagues, whom I hardly knew). The first year TT is grueling, so there isn't a lot of time for that crap as you're just working so hard to learn the department/college standards and keep up with all the new responsibilities.
We don't really have a lot of competition because there's more than enough work for everyone and there's not a set number of people who will get tenure/promotions in any given year, but this person became very competitive with me when she realized that I was smart, worked hard, and wasn't going to shirk my job responsibilities to play her social games. She took my polite refusals as a personal rejection of her, and I've been paying ever since because she is fixated on me and automatically opposes anything I do. However, I was also fortunate enough to learn that I was far from the only one who'd been given this treatment and ended up finding my place in the department because I was willing to stand up to her and do what was right. I just give her a wide berth now and wait patiently for her retirement/implosion, one of which should happen very soon.
I will say I hate the "we're all one big family" holiday parties. My chairperson tries to pull us together all the time with stuff like that, but just because he says it doesn't make it true. People will always gravitate toward others who share their values and interests. I will put in an appearance at these functions and be polite, but it doesn't change the dynamics of the department in any way. Overall I think I get along better with most other people throughout the college; it's just my own little dysfunctional family department that causes most of the social issues.
I haven't had a problem making friends at work. As you know, it's where you spend most of your time. Three of my good friends are former colleagues (I moved so I work somewhere else now). I think it's important to note that there's a line between your work and your personal life as well and one shouldn't influence the other (any more than possible, I understand it happens), but if one of your work friends isn't cutting it for you, I've never had a problem just backing off and keeping things more "casual".
I operate under the belief that its good to have casual friendships at work and it can be beneficial to know about your coworkers (personality, habits, etc) so you can work more effectively together. It doesn't hurt to be open to chatting people up a little, and when I interned in hospice it was very helpful as a contract worker, because the nurses were much more open to helping you if you were able to show you weren't there just to point out all the problems (which is easy for them to assume about a social worker).
I'd say don't air out all your dirty laundry and give them ammunition to use againist you, but a little conversation here and there about little things can positively impact how others percieve you. It's much easier to hate someone you don't know at all.
Koi, I can certainly agree with that. Being nice and sociable at work is fine. But feeling forced to socialize after hours is coercion.
ITA Eslbee. How an employee chooses to interact with others and how much is up to that employee.
I get along very well with the people I work with. I feel like I work with some pretty nice people. There are some that I'm not crazy about; but as they say, there always has to be someone! There were places I worked at where the people were just horrible.
I never hang out with anyone at my job. Once in a while I have gone to lunch with someone, but that's it. I enjoyed it. There was never a company dinner dance at where I am now, and that's good. At another place I worked at, they did it a couple of times but I would not go because I didn't have a date.
A couple of years ago on the 4th of July, I went to a BBQ by a good friend of mine at work. I liked him and he invited me. There were not too many people there, but it turned out to be a disaster for me. I didn't feel comfortable with the other people aside from him; and then he had invited someone from my job that I didn't like at all. He was a real jerk. He was middle aged and had just got married to a Filapino girl that was young. When the two of them came, they sat on the couch just kissing. It made me so sick. I had to leave before the dinner was served. I felt bad about leaving, but I just had to.
That was the only time I was with someone outside of work.
I tend to keep an open mind, too, but I'm definitely a pretty private person. I might talk about my art or what I did on the weekend, but NOTHING about my religious beliefs, and I try VERY hard not to get caught up in office gossip, because that WILL bite you in the ass.
I went out with the other admins in my building after work once, and I thought we'd be doing it regularly, but either that's not happening or I've simply been excluded (I'm choosing to go with the first option.)
I like most of the people in my immediate group, but I'm not sure they like me all that much, but that's OK. There are plenty of other people from the buildng I see and chat with every day.
Jen M.