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  • 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.

  • 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.

  • So yeah this is me. I’m sure it’s a lot of us here. If you’re lucky you also have that flavor of neurospice that comes with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, so that not only is the social interaction itself taxing, but then the idea of sharing personal information is horrifying.

    The results you get from it still depend on how you choose to react to your environment. Importantly, your brain and neurodivergence are part of that environment.

    And it’s ok. Being friendly and participating in chats is not going to sign you up to go to anybody’s house. Sharing some details about your weekend plans won’t invite criticism or sign you up for other activities. (but if you work in a toxic environment, use your own judgment and act accordingly)

    I think even with those of us who are very introverted, a lot of how “present” versus “withdrawn” you come across still comes down to things like depression, anxiety, and fatigue. I am fortunate right now to have a pretty good environment between a good job, the right medications, and mental/physical health. I’ll smile and wave at folks around the office, or BS about nerdy shit with whichever other engineers are in the office that day.

    …but then I’ll still put in my earbuds and not talk to anybody for hours on end. If another person doesn’t strike up a conversation, maybe I don’t talk out loud all day. And at lunch I’ll not just sit in my car but drive home to eat!

    There’s also something deeper and more fundamental at play here. Part of figuring out how to take care of myself and enjoy existence more has been to consciously nudge myself towards actions that I expect to benefit my well-being, rather than what works best for me in the moment. It can be little things, but they do add up.

    For example, stopping to ask somebody who does customer demos what interesting stuff they’ve been working on. It seems like the typical in-office time waster. However, a short positive social interaction with a friendly face can boost both of your moods and make both of your days better. The work-related subject is the easy way into starting a conversation (me giving advice on starting conversations is some Twilight Zone feeling shit) and there might even be something interesting to learn.

    This is the point where I’d make a joke about how wasting a bit of the company’s time to improve the mental health of two human beings is a win-win in my book. But we all know that happier employees will literally produce better results for the employer too!

  • 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.

68 comments