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.
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.
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.
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.
