Years ago I read a reddit thread saying you shouldn’t pursue friendships or relationships at your workplace. Then I again see all over the places over the internet that friendships don’t happen a lot after you become working adult and that they’re struggling make new friends. My question is If you don’t purse friendships, how would those happen?
Want to know about the thoughts of people over here.
I tend to agree, but I’m also a very private person and like to keep my work life separate from my personal life. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with befriending or dating coworkers as long as both parties are able to be appropriately professional at work.
I think it may also depend on the type of job and where you work. I have worked at some places where I felt comfortable making friends and hanging out with coworkers - mostly retail jobs where the work itself was very social and casual.
My job right now is fully remote, so I’m friendly with coworkers, but can’t really hang out in person even if I wanted to.
It unhealthy to seek to establish relationships at work because you or the other person may suddenly be forced to leave. You should have a support network outside of your employer.
That all said, you spend most of your waking hours at work so it’s likely you will form friendships and you should celebrate those and try to shift them outside of the workplace to preserve them if employment statuses suddenly change.
The only actual disadvantage of work friends is that those strong relationships can keep you in a position that isn’t healthy for you and it makes it more difficult to come to the decision to leave for greener pastures.
The only thing I consider verboten is dating at work. Don’t date some from work - never. NEVER.
It’s fine to date someone at work, as long as you don’t care if you stay employed there. All the possible negatives of a work relationship can be mitigated by leaving the job.
If you absolutely need that job, then no, it’s a bad idea.
It may be fine for you - but when you date someone at work, you run the possibility of making it awful for everyone around you.
Of course you should - make friends with whoever you like! I’ve made friends with colleagues and am still friends with them years after I left.
The only reason I can think of not to is if you or they are loads of drama and you don’t want to bothered by it at work.
People are people wherever you meet them.
The other downside is the situation I’m in. I made friends with a bunch of coworkers, then I got promoted to be their boss. Makes for a very strange power dynamic, where I have to code stitch between boss mode and friend mode.
Plus, I’ve had to fire people who I’ve been friends with for years. That fucking sucks.
I turned down a promotion this year for several reasons, one being that i didn’t want to supervise my friends. I didn’t want the awkwardness, and i was afraid my imposter syndrome would get much worse. My friends know too much, haha
Been there. The worst part is how it sours you going forward. I have rarely made friends at work since then, coworkers or employees, because you never know. Missed out on what could have been good friendships, but it also happened again at another job, so hard to say if it was for the better.
I think you should, but to a limited degree. It generally makes the work place better. But do not invest too much into those friendship, since one day one of the friends might leave.
This somewhat depends on the work place, though. If there’s room for chitchat without a supervisor being witchy about socializing on the clock, I don’t see a problem with it.
One caveat is that being on friendly terms is not the same as being friends. Would they be likely to accept an invitation to do something outside of the workplace?
You’re spending 40 hours a week with them, why wouldn’t you want to have someone to shoot the shit with, or have a lunch buddy etc?
The phrase I run with: don’t shit in your own backyard.
dont get your sugar where you get your bread.
Yes, absolutely. Why would you not?
You’re going to see them regularly anyway, so might as well be on friendly terms. Depending on where you work it’s possible or even likely that you’ll share some common interests too.
Yes, you or they will probably leave the company at some point, but that’s no reason not to make friends in the meantime. People come and go all the time; that’s life! If you’re lucky, you’ll make a friendship that survives even if you have to part ways at work. If not, just be happy with the friendship you had for as long as it lasted.
There’s a difference between being on friendly terms and being friends. I’m on friendly terms with everyone I work with, I’m not friends with any of them. Even those I’ve worked with for many years. I’m not at work to make friends or hang out or talk about personal issues. I’ll listen politely to whatever a coworker wants to say to me, but if its not about work I’ll try to redirect the conversation or end it as politely as possible. For me it’s about professionalism; if we’re not talking about a work related subject, we are off topic and wasting time. There’s also the potential for drama that comes with people at work knowing about your personal life and keeping a strict division between work and home avoids that risk.
Obviously this is entirely your choice to make, but this all sounds really rigid and restrictive. If you view someone telling you about their weekend as “wasting time,” I have to wonder if that mentality cuts into your personal life too. It’s totally reasonable to make friends at work. If the concern is that they’d bring your personal drama to work, then just don’t involve them in any personal drama and you’re gold.
My personal life is very different, I’ll generally talk about whatever with friends or even people I’ve just met. I think I am very unprofessional when I’m not working, it’s only when I’m working that I’m like this.
The point about drama isn’t necessarily about me sharing drama, there’s way more potential catalysts beyond that. Office politics can get crazy and all sorts of things can create weird drama. Being the boring person who is nice to everyone but only talks about work topics is an effective way to avoid that kind of bullshit.
It’s fine to develop relationships at work and move them into “on good terms” territory if that is viable. It’s also fine if it is possible to move those viable work-friendships outside of the work environment to see if they can stand on their own. What is not smart however is to think that work-friendships are real friendships just because “we get along” at work. Most work friendships will drop you like a hot rock if you get fired. It’s important to be ready for that to happen even as you see what friendships might be viable.
Like most things, I think the answer is a frustrating “depends.”
I’ve made some life long friends through workplaces. I’ve made workplace friends whom I haven’t really ever thought about when I switched jobs.
Maybe the key is tone the relationship to whatever it’d be if you just knew each other through other friends? If you get along but don’t super click, a casual friendly work acquaintance is probably right. Do you two really get along, have some shared interests/perspectives etc? Then why be constrained with only kicking it at work?
It’s wise to make “friends”
It’s a little confusing because IMO both of these things are true at the same time: it’s good to make friends at work, but by default your coworkers are not your friends.
But that’s really just poor wording.
Having a friend or three at work is wonderful. It can make a shit job tolerable and a decent job fantastic.
Just choose wisely, take your time, and don’t be too trusting too soon. And don’t reveal too much personal information to coworkers that you don’t know well and trust yet. Some of them will use that info against you. Ambitious psychopaths can be very charming.
For real you’ve got to keep it tight until you really know someone. Don’t go telling everyone you smoke weed or something like that. You could do something completely innocent, someone takes it personally, and next thing you know you’re up for a random drug test.
But yeah one of the best friends I’ve ever had is my sometimes coworker.
Same. A former coworker and I were in two different bands together, and we’ve stayed in touch over many years. And I’m pretty tight with 2 of my current coworkers, and friendly-chatty with a third.
But I keep everyone else on a low information diet. Especially my boss. He loves to use people’s hobbies, personality quirks, etc, against them. Almost anything that isn’t “working hard like a professional” is seen as some kind of weakness by that idiot. His only real hobby is ‘craft beer’…because of course it is. (Not meant as a slam against people into beer, but my boss thinks that’s an entire personality).
We’re ambitious sociopaths, thankyouverymuch.
I recently came back from visiting my old boss. I stayed at his house for a week. (He lives on the coast in Florida; it’s great!) I’ve known him and his family for over ten years, and I consider them my dear friends.
But I still introduce him as the guy who fired me :)
(He objects, because he’s actually the guy who laid me off.)
I have work colleagues. people I commiserate with on interoffice politics and the like.
I don’t have friends.
I’m too old for other peoples bullshit and refuse to change my QoL because “Jerry” decided we’re going on a weekend adventure to methtown USA.
between work, home, and hobbies I’ve got barely enough time to sleep.
I have work friends but they are a different category from regular friends. I’m more inhibited around them (or at least try to be). At the end of the day your colleagues and you have got together to make money as opposed to socialise.
I followed the advice to not get close to colleagues for the last 10 years or so and regret it. I did it because I thought it’d make work harder when we disagree and I’m balancing friendship vs professionalism. Realistically, all the people I would have been friends with are mature enough to make it a non-issue.
I have started reaching out to some of my ex-colleagues I got on well with but it’s very difficult to rebuild the relationship without the daily interactions. However, I have a job at the moment because I have reached out to an ex-colleague just to catch up.
I’d say if you meet someone you like, try to make friends. Jobs will come and go but finding good people to surround yourself with gets much harder as you get older.
