A Friendship Is Born

 

 

As children, one of the easiest things to do is to make a new friend. A simple "You wanna play tag/GI Joe/Barbies?" is the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Throw in a "You wanna be my friend?" at the end of playing and it's done - friends. Unfortunately, our baggage from friendships past make a previously easy process into an emotional minefield. "Can I trust them?" "Will they get along with my other friends?" "Do we wear the same size in shoes?" - all important questions that come to mind when we consider adding a new friend to our lives. Also, it's much harder to befriend new people; as kids, we played with the neighbors and made friends at school. Now, we spend most of our time at work.

Which leads us to the vaunted work friendship. When we spend the bulk of our time at work (which totally gets in the way of real life), it's almost impossible not to develop relationships with our co-workers. Generally, we see them more than we see our friends, family and baby boos; it's not uncommon for people to have work husbands and wives. These relationships can be quite significant as they can make or break a job. I've had several jobs in which the people I worked with made the tedious monotony of what I was doing bearable. On the flip side, if you work with a bunch of people you don't like, it can make your job really awful, even if you enjoy the work you do.

While some people are able to have clear boundaries between work and home life, the personal and professional lines of a work relationship often get blurred. If there is someone you connect with and you see them everyday, it can be quite difficult to keep things on a totally professional level. After all, we're human and most of us thrive on human connection. How do we connect? We talk. A lot. About ourselves. How many conversations can you really have about how unfair it is that HR is cracking down on stapler use? Exactly. Inevitably, we start talking about other aspects of our lives - our friends, our kids, the cutie pie you conversated conversed with at the bar, the co-workers you don't like, etc. Before you know it, your co-worker has become your work friend and you're adding each other to your list of Facebook friends.

Although it may seem like a work friend is more of a tertiary person in your life, it's important to maintain harmony in that relationship. In some ways, it may be one of your most crucial relationships; you see this person five days a week and may be dependent upon each other to get work done (or cover for you when you're running late). If there is funk in your relationship, it could be detrimental to your career and create a hostile work environment. (I guess that's why folks are dissuaded from having office romances - it's never a good idea to sh!t where you eat. But that's a whole 'nother blog...)

If you're lucky, your work friend turns into a friend friend. The great thing is that when one of you inevitably leaves, you'll still be friends as you've discovered you have more in common than hating the new time sheet system and being enraged about the whole stapler situation. And when they move to a place named after an older black man (who knew there was a town out there called Jerome!), you'll have a reason to go somewhere new and a free place to stay.

Although I'm really (REALLY) sad to see her go, I'm very excited for my friend friend and this next journey she's about to embark upon. I will miss you alotta bit very much, but I'll see you soon. In Jeromey Rome.