Co-workers

One of the more irritating things about most of the TV I watch is how all these people who work together never seem to have any lives outside of work. Their work ‘family’ is it. They’re all great friends and hang out together even when not forced to do so by working hours.

Does anybody out there actually work under such conditions?

I’ve been working since I was 16 and am now pushing 50 and have never, ever encountered such a situation. Where co-workers are friends, they tend to form exclusionary cliques that are then quite cruel to their other co-workers. Not fun if you’re not in The Group.

Most groups of co-workers are barely polite to each other. We don’t get to pick our co-workers and probably wouldn’t pick the people we end up working with. We’re lucky if we can work with these people. Hoping to make friends is very unrealistic.

In all my working life, I’ve made two friends that lasted after our work association ended. I still maintain contact with them, mostly over Facebook. But if not for that, I probably would have never spoken to them after we both moved on to other employment. That’s the way it seems to work.

If you can find someone you can be friendly with, the friendship ends when you are no longer co-workers. It seems that employers is the only thing you have in common, no matter how well you get along. I’ve run into ex-coworkers and been confused at their response to meeting again. I’ve always been glad to see them, they give me a cold shoulder, usually. And it’s not just me. I’ve spoken to others who have had the same experiences.

I am now retired and on Disability. Once I got used to staying home every day, and that was quite an adjustment, I realized that no one was now forcing me to associate with unpleasant people for money. It’s an odd form of prostitution, really. I have contact with my friends and don’t have to fake interest in nasty, boring people. Win-win!

I still get to read the Internet all day and now I get to cook and knit as much as I want. More money would be nice but everything is a trade-off in life.

No more nasty people I have to pretend to like!