So when I worked in last 2 roles, I’d joke around and have a laugh with colleagues, the workplace culture of those places I guess was more relaxed, but I got that sense of lack of camaderie or fellowmanship from others too during my time working.
Sorry to be naive, but is it because some people look out for themselves and it’s kind of “Yeah you’re a funny guy but uh… when shit hits the fan I ain’t there with you” kind of shtick.
Not saying these guys are assholes or anything, but I just think with the current world in any work industry it seems to be tricky to make real friendships inside and outside of work.
I don’t know if this just me but I notice that big distinction of the joking around and sharing the same invested topics (I.e. video games) but no more than that
TLDR - Confused if people are being genuine, but they don’t really “care” in a sense?
Please let me know if I’m spouting gobbledygook, thank you.
What you’re saying is a bit gobbledygook. I don’t want to make friends at work. I want to do my job and then clock out when finished.
Yeah but not all people need or want that. I agree with op. Camaraderie makes the job easier.
But you can’t expect it from others who don’t have the same needs.
Isn’t that the whole point of hiring people that fit the company culture? I’ve worked at both types of places in different stages of my life. Both can feel good or bad depending on where you’re at. Don’t try to change the job to fit your needs. Find a different one.
The words “company culture” always make me laugh.
Company culture is the first to go out the window when shit hits the fan.
People being let go for speaking their minds, în the most respectful manner, by a company that “values openness”.
Culture being changed to fit the current corporate needs.
“Company culture” is nothing but corporate 🐂💩.
Don’t drink the corporate kool-aid, kids.
“Not fitting company culture” is just how racists get away with not hiring qualified candidates.
The fit was always code word for suburban whites for a lot of things
Society has caught on now.
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It is just a job and my only need is being paid for doing enough not go fired.
Can’t blame you for that mentality
If I remember correctly, this is literally one of the points taken from the sabotage handbook. Is your job really making you so miserable, or is this some kind of organized propaganda campaign?
Is your job really making you so miserable
Management and HR departments are quite efficient on that kind of moral sabotage. It could be an organized propaganda campaign, at least those would make sense.
Doing the work you are paid for is sabotage?
🤡
Is you naive or a bootlicker?
doing enough not to get fired
Ok, not the exact same phrasing, but close enough.
Totally get that. Just saying that different people want different things out of their jobs, and it’s a good thing that there are places where all of them can fit.
Most places suck ass to work for.
Good jobs are few… So most people don’t get what they want lol
Not all people want to fake the “office family” dynamic.
I feel like that’s a different thing. “We’re a family” is a forced perversion of actual meaningful relationships with co-workers.
I will concede there is a spectrum of professional familial attitudes.
I do agree though, that the forced family is the worst.
At some point, someone found out that people who get along with their coworkers work better and like their job better. So, some dense HR directors thought, “If we want people to work better, we should force them to be friends!”
Then you get mandatory team-builders that maybe two people enjoy, and the rest are thinking about how they’d rather be spending their time.
Forced family is the worst
But this is literally how family works for the first 20 years of your life. You don’t get to choose one. You are assigned one from birth :D
You’re missing the point. For some people, it’s not faking it
I’m not missing the point. For most people it is fake and used as a tool against them. The “office family” is a tactic utilized by employers to make workers complacent without raising benefits. It’s in the same toolbox as “pizza parties” and “PTO donation”.
Gotta disagree. I’ve always had the belief that if you’re in management, you don’t get to play the comradery game with staff because that can easily be perceived as preferential treatment or fraternization. Management has their connections with other managers. Staff should use their comradery against management. However, your perspective isn’t wrong either. I just believe that even if you’re faking the “office family,” it still makes work that much easier
The office “family” gets in the way of clear and honest communication by guilt tripping anyone who disagrees by treating them like someone who upset grandma at Thanksgiving. It has always been counterproductive in my experience.
The true office family are the ones you hang out in the break room and talk shit about everybody else with.
You got the wrong office family haha. I’ve always had the belief that you should always have the life you live at work and the life you live at home. You’re not supposed to take your work home with you and you should never bring your home to work. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be civil and conserting while at work. And I honestly don’t think there’s anything wrong with your mindset. We all perceive situations in different ways. But being earnest to your coworkers with clear social lines never hurts anything. You should be allowed to be very concerned about a coworker that has health issues, but on the same hand, it shouldn’t dictate your home life or emotions when not there. I hope I’m explaining what I’m trying to say correctly.
You can make a friend at work but the actual work is just that, work.
Most people don’t want to be there, they don’t want to interact with you either or anyone there either. It is a sterile corpo ran shit hole.
Also, for owners it is always faking…
If ask them for a raise and see how they react lol
But they say they are chatting about video games and joking around, what more do you want?
It’s work tho, so it stays there. You have to get on with someone really well to want to see them all day at work and then after as well.
True. Me and a friend of mine used to work together and live together. Then we’d go home after work, get drunk and play video games just to wake up and do it all over. Granted thar was years ago.
I did work with my now wife at one point. But we never actually hung out too much when we were working together because we were management and she would always go hang out with staff which I wouldn’t do
I had a friend who I worked with and then lived together. But we were friends first who happened to share a job.
I met this guy at work. It’s a very long story, but the short and skinny is I was homeless and he and his mom gave me a home. I suppose he’s more like a brother than anything else. They never asked for anything in return. He just wanted to hang out and get into shenanigans. And shenanigans we certainly got into
Its a cultural thing that definitely exists where I live
Not only that but it makes it easier to care about one another, which gives a greater incentive to unionize.
I totally agree with you that I don’t need to make friends at work. I 100% clock out at the end of the day and make a hard cutoff between personal and work life. I can even work with people I personally dislike just fine, as long as they’re not making things harder for others.
But OP was talking about camaraderie, which is mostly just about being generally pleasant to be around - as Merriam-Webster defines it, “a spirit of friendly good-fellowship”. Nobody likes to deal with the moody guy who doesn’t want to talk to anyone either, including the other moody guys. There’s definitely a minimum level of camaraderie required not to make things harder for everyone involved. You don’t have to lean into the “we’re a family” BS not to be unpleasant.
Different companies have different broad cultures, and different subcultures within teams. Some companies just don’t have a sense of camaraderie built into their broad culture.
One thing that people don’t always understand, and I always point this out to people I work with, is that your professional relationships are much more important than the company itself. Everybody is going to move on from their current job some day. When that day comes, they will benefit from having strong relationships with past team mates, either by knowing folks who can help them get new work, or by knowing folks who they can bring in to tackle projects at the new job.
Your professional network is one of your most valuable assets in your career. The people you work with are real people, with real families. Relationships with great team mates are more important than the company you both work at now, and will outlast your time at that company. Camaraderie is key to that whole scenario. Make sure you reach out to people you respect and enjoy working with and tell them how much you value that professional relationship. You will both be better off for it.
I always say: if I’m ever in a situation where I need a job and can only get one with a former employer - do I want them to say “hell yeah” or “hell no”?
I’ve worked with people who, if they had to ask me for a reference, I would decline to give one. By the same token, I would reject their application for a job in my company or team. And I have worked with the opposite - people who will always under any circumstances get help from me if they’re looking for a job. All the competence in the world doesn’t help if someone is miserable to be around.
Having contacts, people who are willing to give references and similar always helps. Sure, you can do job hunting hard mode, but why make things unnecessarily difficult?
After a few decades of working my default is to avoid making close connections with coworkers outside of work because of the trouble it can cause at work. I don’t want to be at work in the first place, why make more trouble when I can instead just be professional and get along with everyone in the context of the work itself?
For me, I just don’t have any interest in making friends at work. If we happen to get along, then great! Gimme your number and I’ll text you memes about this week’s House of the Dragon after work. Daemon needs to get the hell outta Luigi’s Mansion, am I right hahaha
But outside of those one-off friendships, I just don’t have the emotional energy anymore to maintain any meaningful connections with somebody just because we happened to apply to the same LinkedIn listing. Life is too stressful to be thinking about even more people and their problems.
Maybe it’s just because of my line of work, but nobody does this job because we want to, we do it because we’re competent at it. We’re not here because of some shared vision or dream, but because the hiring manager accepted “some college” on the applications. We’re only sharing this space as a matter of consequence, not intention. That’s not enough for me to form a bond on in a lot of cases.
Maybe if I worked in a field that I was passionate about, things might be different and I might be more open to connecting with people. But otherwise I’m just here to do what I need to pay my bills, and that’s it.
And yeah, it can be lonely. That part can suck.
Being friends is off the table, but solidarity among workers is important.
Word of advice–be a good person to your colleagues, and let friendship possibly develop after one of you leaves. I’ve made many friends throughout the years once we each know there is no pressure to be friends. I’ve had many job leads throughout the years because people I previously worked with thought I was a great colleague.
You find good friends whenever you happen to be in the same place. Your personalities are compatible, and you like to hang out together. You had to go to some place that is a shared interest, after all, to meet that person in the first place. Like a local bar, or a bowling league, or whatever.
Your workplace can be a source of good friends, but people aren’t there based on shared interests, they are there because someone pays them all to be there. So the chances that you find someone compatible enough to want to spend time outside of work is slim, because you are not there out of any particular shared interest other than your career.
The real problem is that the amount of “third places” (like bars and bowling alleys) are decreasing. People spend so much on their housing that they can’t afford to go somewhere else to socialize, and are much more likely to just stay home and interact with their collected virtual friends online.
And also the fact that so much of our work is remote now. I am fully remote and my “team” is spread out worldwide. My work “socializing” is limited to asking people in Southeast Asia about the weather 5 minutes before the 10 pm (my time) meeting starts.
You’re only there due to the coercion of capitalism. And employees are direct competitors with each other.
I work in a restaurant and most of us are friends at this point. We drink together, smoke weed together, and generally enjoy each other’s company
I miss the restaurant. FoH was always a slow cat-fight with lots of low-key drama. You make a few friends, turn some tables, grab a beer and go home. It’s uncomplicated work (simple doesn’t always mean easy), or was in my time.
At the IT jobs you have the passionate and the jobbers. I enjoy debating stupid tech things with people but I get that at the end of the day they all go home to their families and real friends after. Our big deal is that even when we’re fighting or Dave’s being a right prick today, we can cooperate and work together like professional adults; and then some of us will hotly debate when and why ipv6 will never happen or something lile that.
But that may be an IT thing. They throw you together for a few years until they cut away half your team, and you have to decide how close you are as friends. The job I quit last year, some of us are on great terms, and we’re meeting tonight. I’m still on a Skype chat - sometimes a call, usually a rolling chat - with some peers from 2003.
There’s no rule that requires you to be friends with your workmates. Sometimes you are, but don’t force it. If you can work professionally with the dinks and make 1-2 actual friends, that’s maybe okay. Ultimately you need to survive work to live, and a good social connection is a bonus that isn’t always gonna happen.
Restaurant friendships are smth else 👌👌
Trust me, as someone who has that right now I dearly wish I didn’t. It’s false & unhelpful. Especially when there needs to be a painful change but people refuse.
Lots of conjecture incoming:
I’ve asked myself this same question, and coming from a military background rather than anything more typical, I think it coalesces as something altogether different depending on the situation.
When I was stuck on a ship with hundreds of others, underway two or three weeks out of every month, 6 to 8 month deployments sprinkled in just for fun… Hard not to come out of a situation like that with some lifelong friendships.
On the other hand, in the years when I wasn’t on a ship, almost regardless of the work, even if we were friendly during the day, when the time came to go home it was like cockroaches when the lights come on.
I’ve come to the conclusion all these years later that it was some combination of shared hardship, forced closeness, security in employment, and a core belief that we were all working toward the same goal. We were in it together, and it felt like it.
Social relationships come from everywhere, even work, and while there are many people who worry that friendships at work will distract from… I don’t know… There are still plenty of people out there who want to make the day go by a little faster by working with a friend.
Maybe it just comes down to people not being committed to their work, because why would you be? Sticking your neck out, working extra, helping others, etc. are punished in a lot of different little ways, to the point that the best alternative is just to hop between jobs, staying one step ahead of accidentally giving a fuck.
DoD work (both civilian and active duty) tends to bind people together a lot more than other industries, in no small part due to the factors you mentioned, but also because a) the additional barriers of national security/clearance work make it only really possible to vent about work to coworkers/friends from work, b) the work can often be unique enough that only coworkers have shared experiences to bond over and empathize with, and c) the civilian side of the DoD tends to attract career folks a lot more than it does transitory people. I think a disproportionate amount (when compared to private industry) of civilians who hire into the DoD stay in federal service for their whole careers. And people sticking around their whole careers tend to invest more in personal and professional relationships in the workplace, because networking is how you get opportunities, and you never know who you might owe a favor some day (or who might owe you one).
Spot on. This lack of secure employment (and yes, also probably lack of sense of purpose) also undermines the social relationships necessary to collectively bargain (with a union or not) for better working conditions. When workers don’t feel they have each other’s back, they are less likely to pressure an employer for better pay and conditions.
This is a pretty insightful comment.
I’ve come to the conclusion all these years later that it was some combination of shared hardship, forced closeness, security in employment, and a core belief that we were all working toward the same goal. We were in it together, and it felt like it.
This seems to explain why people who work in restaurants can often be close. There’s the shared hardship of dealing with a dinner rush, there’s a lot of forced closeness in the kitchen, and everybody’s working towards the same goal, whether that’s just getting through the shift, or trying to produce a really amazing dining experience.
There’s probably another one: depending on other people who work right next to you. If you’re working alongside other people but everybody’s working on their own project it’s going to be different than if you depend directly on the person next to you for whatever you’re doing.
Maybe it just comes down to people not being committed to their work
I think it’s the lack of all the things you mentioned. At an office job the hardship is pretty mild other than occasional “crunch time”. There’s some forced closeness, especially when people are crammed into an open-style office. But, I don’t think that’s the same kind of closeness you get in kitchen, or on a ship, or in a factory. You may be working towards the same goal, but it’s often a nebulous and distant goal. And, often, the goal isn’t something that feels particularly meaningful. You’re helping ship a product that may or may not be vaguely useful to some customers you’ll probably never meet.
But, I think the big thing is the lack of security. In the military you literally can’t leave, and unless you do something insane you’re not going to get fired. At most jobs, it’s extremely easy to leave, and many people feel like they’re always on the edge of being fired or laid off.
There is no incentive to doing note than bare min at work and helping people is more hassle than it is worth.
With that said, you ain’t got to be toxic but most work is just that straight up toxic lol
So I went through fire academy in a trade school. We had a small class of 12 and months of mutual challenges. Learning how to get gear on, buddy checks, doing search and rescue searches crawling around blindfolded. Then doing live fire training in an old abanodoned house the academy bought for us, cutting open cars etc. It was the closest “Band of Brothers” feeling I’ve ever had with a group.
In the military it’s similar but not as intense imo. Still being with the same group with the same goal forms bonds and friendships. After going to your usit we mostly do the same thing as everyone else. Clock in and clock out trying to get shit done asap to maximize free time, but we still have spent deployments and tdys together. We give a shit about the big picture when it counts (large operations, helping Ukraine etc) but on the daily we mostly just try to help each other get through the day but it’s not totally friends centered. Bottom line is still that we’re all here to do a job, but that doesn’t mean you have to be socially isolated.
In my experience, this varies a lot between work places and departments/teams. I’ve experienced what you describe, and it correlates with shorter em0loyment durations and loads of people “moving through”. People don’t want to bother with forming bonds when they don’t know if the person will be there in a week.
And then there’s the complete opposite: A few coworkers and I have changed employers a few times, but in the same industry, and we’ve always been part of the team “field crew”. While we generally don’t care about the rest of the company and its office personnel, we always had fun when meeting somewhere around the world. While the amount of beer filed on the expenses as “department meeting” is enough to drown a flock of horses, we often do other things together, like museums, shopping, and sight seeing. Hell, we were supposed to go parachuting together once, but timing and weather intervened. The nature of this job makes it hard to maintain “normal” friendships, so we kind of have to rely on each other for that social interaction fix.
Yeah. It also depends on the corporate culture of the group and a lot of that comes from management.
I’ve also seen cases where people need to fit somewhat in the office culture.
The company I work for has a decent professional culture that emphasizes teamwork without any weird gimmicks. But I don’t get paid to make friends with these people. If anything, the people that think they’re there to socialize usually put the work second and make things harder for the rest of the team.
There’s nothing wrong with sharing jokes and having fun at work. As long as you understand that there’s also value in keeping your personal life seperate.
This is highly dependent on which company/agency you work, and even which dept or team you’re on within a company. I’ve made a ton of very good friends through the years at my jobs, but I’m also not friends with everyone who I worked with, and I recognize there’s a difference between joking around as friends outside of work and being amiable and professional at work
They’re just there for a paycheck, relax. Just do the job and head home.
Did you mean Camaraderie?
Yeah sorry lol, Guess the autocorrect didn’t fix it there for me!
