Making friends at work has by far been the roughest ‘friend’ experience that I have ever had. To say that it was productive would be sufficient although I couldn’t tell you what was produced exactly. It’s as if I was just playing the part, attempting to do what I though was necessary to protect my career and my acceptance into this inner circle(the Job). This would all turn out to not be the case and I would regret ever attempting to make friends in a work situation as it is just not the place.
I thought that getting a ‘career’ was the only way to get into any sort of meaningful friendship. College, or the little bit of it that I accomplished, made it seem as if this is where friends in adulthood would come into play. In your career you will find companionship and all of the things that most(?)of us lost or never had to begin with. This again is just not the case and I have learned this the hard way many times. It’s as if during employment at X company it is very easy to assume that these people you have chosen to surround yourself with have any vested interest in maintaining a friendship let alone even being real people. It all turns very fake, very fast in my opinion and is not conducive to life long anything (friendships included). After all, they are just jobs that can (and do) go away at random for whatever reason wether we like it or not.
I feel that most, myself included, chose to make friends at work as it will indeed make daily routines easier having a cordial relationship with your coworkers. This can make going into work more pleasurable as you know that you will have something to talk about with these newly found ‘friends’ and it can help ease the nerves in the case of high stress jobs such as call centers or sales. Employers love this sentiment as well as it assures that you are responsible for finding your own happiness in this job (friends). It takes the pressure off of the company to provide a decent place to work in which you don’t need to escape anything mundane as they treat you with respect and dignity, challenging you at every step and providing whatever you need ($, benefits).
Now I must differentiate between the different lines of work and their respective potential friends. Restaurant work has some of the most genuine and vile people that I have ever met. They are the true grit of this county, bringing on a fervor and will to survive only seen in institutional settings these days. It’s as if they know that this is the end of the line, the bottom of the barrel so to speak. This line of work has the people that have no other option a majority of the time and have been dealt a rough hand in this game called life. I love these people and am one even though I left the field years ago. The tech world is different and much more predictable to say the least. It’s a world full of fluff and hot air. Their are good people within tech, they are just few and far between being over shadowed by scum that scam and live by selling off fluff and circle talk. It’s hard to explain as it’s an insidious industry full of self serving lunatics(opinions). I will always remain in the tech industry regardless of how I feel about it. This is due to the simple fact that humanity has no choice in tech. We will be using it for the foreseeable future and the rest of our lives.
So what about these so called work friends? What good do they serve and should you avoid them? Better yet, can you avoid them and keep your career afloat. I don't even know how to define work friends. Corporate America is full of this fluffy garbage that I consider insidious in many ways. Don’t sell me on your ‘culture’ and how much I could benefit from fitting in with your current staff. Sell me on what you can do for me and my life outside of work. I go into jobs knowing that this transaction will not be fair. You will get more of my time than most of my loved ones so start proving yourselves to me. This is how I feel about work friends. HR plays this as a way of not having to provide a decent environment for employees in which they can put the ball in your court, so to speak, forcing you to make the environment acceptable via you fitting in or…not, doesn’t matter to them at the end of the day. This all ties into the horrible habit companies these days have of calling you ‘family’. I absolutely hate this and it will forever be a red flag if a company refers to themselves as family or even worse is actually run by family with the occassional poor bastard getting thrown into the mix. This is almost always done to prevent poor business practices from escaping the ‘family’, I.e. hiring the ethical, normal way (Indeed, etc). Its just a way to keep doing whatever silliness got them to where they are without having to actually hire according to the law and common sense. It doesn’t necessarily have to be blood family even in these types of situations. This is usually ‘friends’. It’s all insidious and I hate is is basically what I have to say. This was mostly a rant I guess but thoughts welcome.