Man… it’s so weird.
They want to have Friday beers in the office. They want to go to the game together. They want to organize little events after work that I’m semi-obligated to go to. I went to one, reluctantly, and one of the executives more or less made it clear to me that he had been against hiring me in the first place (for understandable reasons).
No I don’t like you people, you’re pod people, why the fuck do you do this with your lives
Edit: It wasn’t just me, either. They all would get excited for sandwiches from this one place, and I went with them one time and they all clearly thought it was a treat, and the sandwich was foul. Just a big stinky wad of toppings and condiments. I never went again, and every so often with some fanfare they would go there again. I literally don’t know what’s wrong with them.
I’m self employed, which means I get to avoid the vast majority of these events. Unfortunately it also means that them inviting me is a Big Deal, and saying no isn’t really an option.
One company did a quarterly outing to a brewery. Now, ignoring it’s a bad idea to get drunk with coworkers (and then drive home), they only had IPAs, and I loathe IPAs. And they had “BBQ” which rivalled the mediocreest microwave leftovers.
And they claimed to love it. Either they’re huge liars, or have horrible taste. But I did note only about a third of their employees were there at the time.
They could be vying for position.
“I was ashamed of myself when I realised life was a costume party and I attended with my real face” Franz Kafka
Yeah bo
I know my share of history
How hard it is to be free
From wearing masks that turn to skin
Hiding what you could have been
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.
I am sick of this “you have to be sociable at work” bullshit. Leave me the fuck alone.
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.
If you dislike so many people you work with and feel like you are “stuck in a room” at you job, why don’t you get a different job, where you like your coworkers and enjoy what you do?
I enjoy the work I do. I’m self employed and I got to hire all my coworkers myself. But "this person should be my close personal friend"is a very poor criterium for hiring someone.
Maybe I could have phrased it better. Most people at work I have a perfectly fine professional relationship with, but I wouldn’t be friends with them. It’s like neighbors, it’s good to be nice with them, but in the Grand scheme of things, we’re only spending time together because of physical proximity.
Maybe I have really high standards for friends, but if I didn’t work with these people, we wouldn’t find eachother remotely friend-material, so why does working together change that?
If you run into someone at work who uses this list as a way to judge other workers … it’s probably time to change jobs.
I never trust the ‘spends lunch break in car’ types. First one I ran into was listening to Rush Deadbaugh and the second was talking to god or something.
I’m one of those people. I wouldn’t be caught dead listening to Rush Limbaugh or his ilk though, and I’m also not talking to god. I’m just recharging my social battery.
None of those things are rude.
Correct, but refusal to engage in small talk, banter, discussing your lives, and the occasional social outing, will have many see you as stand offish, asocial, and your refusal to do this basic community building stuff, as being rude.
Being forced to do these things seems childish
The rude part is judging people.
Not wanting to engage in small talk or banter in a situation that they would not be in unless they were paid is completely understandable. Everyone is different. Nothing on that list is rude. And you are validating why people do the things they do. Because some asshole is going to call you rude.
I don’t mind grabbing a beer with coworkers after work, but that’s it. In work I’d rather have my mind somewhere else.
Oh hey, it’s me!
It me
Someone on linkedin made that meme.
I’ve found few people I’d call friends at jobs. Most people who tried to be “friendly” with me were social climbing shitheads working an angle or emotionally-stunted people trying to recruit me into their petty shop floor dramas.
There are plenty of comments similar to yours and every time I see them I wonder, what industries do these people work in, and how much work experience do they actually have. If you’re doing something highly competitive like certain kinds of sales or finance, it makes sense that there’s going to be a lot of jerks around you. But in a lot of other jobs, like if you’re working at the grocery store or something, it’s not like anyone gets any advantage by trying to manipulate you. So I’m really wondering, what are these fields that are just completely full of totally worthless human beings?
Have you ever worked retail or food? The amount of pettiness and back-biting is equitable to that found in a high-stakes corporate setting.
Professional kitchens are by far the worst jobs I’ve had in this regard. I’ve watched a middle aged line lead purposefully fuck up whole tables just to get revenge on the teenage waitress who turned down his advances. I saw a service lead get arrested in the parking lot because he was going to blast a coworker with his .45. Why? Because the asshole coworker tried to sabotage the lead’s dinner service by refusing to help him during the rush because he was passed over for the position.
This is not including the loud and public break-ups between coworkers, the fist fights, the time a prep cook tried to work his shift while fucked up on enough oxy to kill a bull moose, or the time these two stoned idiots decided to thaw 80 lbs of chicken wings by putting them through the industrial dishwasher.
I feel like if you are friendly with your co-workers it makes the days go by faster.
Tends to make the job easier, too. Lots of accumulated experience that goes neglected when people hide in their cubbies and don’t interact with one another.
If we try to talk to coworkers we are told to get back to work, but then I’m expected to show up to extra events and get drunk with people I usually am not even allowed to talk to? No thanks, why are they surprised by this?
This is exactly how I had to get by when I worked with other electricians. Working for myself is the tits.
There’s a lot of herd mentality in the trades and it’s fucking exhausting. Not only is it almost expected to go for beers and jack off about work after work every other day, but you’re up a creek if you don’t have the same views on absolutely everything as them either. Agreed, running my own electrical shop is rad.
Hey, so what’s your views on religion, politics, and class dividions???
eats popcorn and glares as you answer
Proceed to shoot off incoherent insults when they’re different.
