An intersting question. Should coworkers be like "family"??

fishgutzy

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From an article:

“We’re like family here.”

It’s a line that seems enshrined in the collective unconsciousness of American workers. We spend more than 2,000 hours per year with our co-workers, so it seems only natural that we should think of them as family. We celebrate birthdays together, honor anniversaries, hang out at happy hours … these people are like a second family. Right?


Of course it is wrong. One should never get too attached to ones coworkers. Companies won't think twice about throwing people to the curb if the numbers are down for the quarter. But we don't kick out family.
I can honestly say I don't miss anyone from a previous job. They few I maintain contact with I don't miss because we stay in touch. But they are still more former colleagues, four wheeling crew or shooting buds. We don't just hang out. Don't go to family events together or anything remotely like one would do with family or friends.
Am I an outlier or do more people, than not, stay detached from work colleagues?
 
In all of my work life I only have ONE person that has become entrenched in my life, a fellow Trooper from GSP.

Co-workers are NOT family, they only work with you. They will throw your azz under the bus if they think it may serve their purposes and help THEM. They will attempt to befriend you and have you think they are your best Bud when they are truly the snake in the grass. I don't fraternize with ANY employee of the same company, or any previous company. Especially NO happy hours, liquor tends to loosen the tongue and loose lips sink ships......
 
My last job was in a small office of 16 people. I liked most of the people and I got to know them very well but I didnt hang with any of them after work or go on vacation with them or travel for a Xmas party as was done several times during my tenure. Didnt help that the job SUCKED and I had 5 bosses in 6.5yrs. I say work is work and family is family but I dont want to hang out or go on vacation with family either. I guess I am a misanthrope in that regard and thankfully my wife is the same way.
 
I can honestly say I don't miss anyone from a previous job. They few I maintain contact with I don't miss because we stay in touch. But they are still more former colleagues, four wheeling crew or shooting buds. We don't just hang out. Don't go to family events together or anything remotely like one would do with family or friends.

So they arent friends, but they are your shooting buddies and guys you go wheeling with? Sounds like friends ha

Yeah, Im tight with the folks in my department.
We take a trip each year together (along with the other male coaches), Christmas parties etc

Youre right, in a company the bosses will cut someone in a moment, but that doesnt mean that you cant get along with your coworkers who have no say or control over that sort of thing
 
Yea, about that. Only people I like is my wife and kids.

Just because I work with someone doesn’t make them family. Nor am I gonna say in anyway shape or form they are. We are there to do a job, make money and lend a hand every now and then and go home.

Even when I worked in a corporate office, the same applied. Just had more egos to deal with
 
My co-workers are very much like family....in that they're entitled, needy, lazy, demanding, half-wits. I opted out of the birthday celebrations, I don't attend "employee appreciation" day or the company picnic, I don't participate in the many potluck functions, and I don't hang out with any of them outside of work.

That said, if the hot chick in accounting with the tiny ass and giant hooters ever leaves her hubby and needs a shoulder to cry on over beers after work, I'm all in.
 
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I'm tight with my immediate coworkers. (well I was, now I work at home remotely).
But we were 6 dudes in a small jobsite trailer for our office for years. It was hard not to get to where we were all buds. We'd all go out for beers and wings after work and even get drunk and play golf together.
I still skype them almost daily.
 
It maybe like extended family. You know the third cousin you get along with at reunions. But wouldn't want to hang out with in real life.

I think there is something to it though. I also agree with President Trump in that the way to end the racial issues is all people going to work. When I go home at the end of the day I hang out with my family little other interaction. But at work I'm with some of the finest people I know and they are not my same race and have taught me a lot about their cultures.
 
Co-workers are NOT family, they only work with you. They will throw your azz under the bus if they think it may serve their purposes and help THEM. They will attempt to befriend you and have you think they are your best Bud when they are truly the snake in the grass.


So THEY ARE EXACTLY LIKE FAMILY
 
Business is business.

If I happen to be friends with co-workers I consider that to be a happy bonus.

On a side note, I am considering starting a family business for two young adults in my small extended family, and I am cringing at the idea that firing either of them will be harder than firing a government employee because the family will have financial skin in the game. Makes me wince thinking about it and wonder if I have lost my mind.
 
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My co-workers are very much like family.....

That said, if the hot chick in accounting with the tiny ass and giant hooters ever leaves her hubby and needs a shoulder to cry on over beers after work, I'm all in.
Isn't that like incest or something?
 
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Should coworkers be like your family?
Like your parents and children? No.
Like your siblings. Possible, but probably not.
Like your uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, and cousins. Maybe.
 
Coworker is a coworker ... not family or friends. I’d say even maybe only one or two are friends but you’d better really know them ... kinda like don’t fish off the company pier. In today’s crazy political crap environment keeping business business and friendship out of it makes the chances of crap happening at work lower.
 
Short answer, No.
Work is work and my time is mine.
However like @Chuckman pointed out, there are some exceptions; MIL, FD, LEO, EMS people spend a lot of time together, sometimes in very stressful situations, in close proximity to each other, and often with the opposite sex, or their preference of sexual orientation. I've seen those bonds and relationships be both extremely beneficial as well as extremely destructive.


Where I worked at in PA, our shifts was extremely close knit, we did everything together, it's where I met my wife. Over the course of a few months when we moved to NC, 8/12 people from that shift left that agency, 6 moved to NC.

The place I work at currently, does not take the same approach. The vast majority of people want to come to work, do their job, and go home. I am one of those people. I have coworkers, colleauges, and some friends at work. There are very few people who I wish to associate with outside of work. I do not attend the family picnics, etc.

What I have found is this, I would rather spend time outside of work with people who have no idea what I actually do, if you put people who work together outside of work, they talk about work, put those same people at work, they talk about " How drunk John was this weekend at the beach". Neither is good, especially if John is the boss, or the boss now has to deal with a work performance issue with John and they're golfing buddies.

My feeling is that the term "Brotherhood", "Sisterhood", or "Family" gets confused with esprit de corps and camaraderie. I do not have to like someone to work with them, nor do they have to be my friend, but we are there for the same common purpose and working side by side, so I will give you the support, encouragement, and respect to accomplish the mission, it doesn't mean that we are going fishing on our days off...and that's ok.
 
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Yes, absolutely, but the military is a little different than your average 9-5 type job.
 
From an article:

“We’re like family here.”

It’s a line that seems enshrined in the collective unconsciousness of American workers. We spend more than 2,000 hours per year with our co-workers, so it seems only natural that we should think of them as family. We celebrate birthdays together, honor anniversaries, hang out at happy hours … these people are like a second family. Right?


Of course it is wrong. One should never get too attached to ones coworkers. Companies won't think twice about throwing people to the curb if the numbers are down for the quarter. But we don't kick out family.
I can honestly say I don't miss anyone from a previous job. They few I maintain contact with I don't miss because we stay in touch. But they are still more former colleagues, four wheeling crew or shooting buds. We don't just hang out. Don't go to family events together or anything remotely like one would do with family or friends.
Am I an outlier or do more people, than not, stay detached from work colleagues?

Hey, you aren't getting too close to Jade are you? :p
 
Horror vacui. Destroy the family (insert sociological/cultural forces of choice), replace it by something else e.g. workplace relations or whatever relations we affirm subjectively.
 
I've had some super close friends as co-workers. Only semblance to family is there's a whole bunch of them I don't like but get forced to interact with.

I've long lived my life with the understanding that people will come and go usually without much regard to your wants, getting real attached is a giant drain best avoided.
 
"Only semblance to family is there's a whole bunch of them I don't like but get forced to interact with."
What i wanted to say but it was too early in the morning to make the words come out that way.
 
No. Friends at work are sorta like Facebook "friends"-

I have made friends at work, .5 % of whom eventually became real friends, but 99.5% of the rest failed the test.
When I retired , it wasn't 3 months before even the most "friendly" co-worker stopped communicating.

Surprise, that was about the time they realized I could no longer bail them out of their tough problems at work or do the heavy lifting that they could take credit for. Luckily I figured that out a couple years before retiring and had been thinking it was time for Atlas to shrug. It was...beautiful... to watch the confusion amongst all the parasites.
 
Hey, you aren't getting too close to Jade are you? :p
That in the one exception. In fact it is because I am generally so disconnected that my colleagues here noticed it and make comments.
She is still not at the closeness of family though. :D And when I get a new Job, I doubt I'd stay in touch with her, regardless.


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The people I work with at both jobs want nothing to do with me outside of work.:(
No not really, few of us go to the range, but I keep my life private but I am a good listener.
 
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I actually like my co workers. Family not so much.
When we lived in MA, close to family, my side and my wife's, I never went fishing with family. But I would drag along folks from work sometimes. Particularly during drive on season at Plum Island.
But only one person from that work place I invited to my home for my son's 1st birthday party. My 20 something nieces were ogling him when though he had his wife and kids with him. Ha! He's once of the guys that defines the athletic cut suit.

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Interesting topic because our work team was once like a family. We worked well together and was the only positve section in our building. Two years later our Manager resigned.

The new Manager does not believe in the family concept and we have lost 8 employees in 5 weeks and the moral is poor.
 
Interesting topic because our work team was once like a family. We worked well together and was the only positve section in our building. Two years later our Manager resigned.

The new Manager does not believe in the family concept and we have lost 8 employees in 5 weeks and the moral is poor.
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Companies won't think twice about throwing people to the curb if the numbers are down for the quarter.
The company I work for has never laid off a single employee...never...not once, even in the recession. I work with guys that I consider family, guys that I would lay down for and that would do the same for me. We work in a high stress / fast paced environment, at a place where your word is your bond, and they value loyalty and honesty highest of all. We will cuss eachother out, call one another some straight up rude stuff, heck I was red faced yelling at a kid two days ago. 20minutes after we said our peace it was all over with and we were back to being cool. Its all about the culture of where you work.
 
Family :eek: Co workers have always been closer.
I didn't call coworkers to come help me auger deep holes to sink 12 foot 6x6 PT beams to build a pergola in Lowell. I called family. We dumped 1400 pounds (dry) of concrete an 4 pergola holes and two fence holes. A sweaty day. They guys from work that I went fishing with would never do that for me. :D
 
Jade is probably the first coworker I'd "take a bullet" to protect. Part of it being the connection that has developed. Part being that she is only a few years older than my daughter and the parental instinct to protect is strong. (I'm also 3 years older than her father. So it does feel a little weird that I like watching her walk away when she is wearing the spandex pants.)
 
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