Do you socialize outside of work with your co-workers? (female, male, present)

[himain]

In my restaurant business back in 2009 we did. Great times. Now I do not. I don't mix business with social life. I've never even had any coworkers on FB friend list

[fleetiebelle]

We're all still working from home and haven't really socialized in a year, but in the Before Times, sure, people in my workplace would go to happy hours, or a group would go hiking on the weekend, etc. It's friendly more than actual friendships, but most people get along pretty well.

[Mightyqueen801]

Yes, I have a friend I met through work with whom I am still friends more than 35 years later, as well as others. Most of us are retired now and/or have left the agency for other reasons.

Some of the friendships may not have come about except for our shared experience on 9/11. People bonded in ways they might not have otherwise because our families and other outsiders could not really understand what we were going through when we went back to work in new locations and began to try to rebuild, both literally and figuratively, and some of those friendships continued on.

[Stripes17]

In my early career, I used to socialize with co-workers and played on the company softball team.

Now, I don't mix work and social life. I'll go out to eat lunch with a co-worker sometimes but that's about it.

Oh and one of my co-workers is my shade-tree auto mechanic, so I do see him every now and then outside of work.

[UNC4Me]

Originally Posted by elnina

Depends. I would go to lunch together, but not much more. I separate work from private life, because I despise cliques and gossip at workplace.
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtoo...-policies.aspx

When I worked in an office (been remote for over a decade) I was told by a coworker on my first day of work to accept any lunch invitations from the boss since people she invited were “in” and those she did not were “out”. She invited me week 1 and I declined. I refuse to play games like that and found that you weren’t “out” as long as your work spoke for itself. She promoted me twice.

[WK91]

I think spending time with coworkers outside of work is a great idea. Networking is the key to a successful career, so even if you don’t feel like it, you should still go and participate. However, don’t be phony about it. Some people you can tell are only there to further their careers. Just act genuine, listen to people’s stories.

You should be walking into work everyday and in addition to saying hello, ask people about a specific thing going on in their world. But again, the key is to be genuine, don’t do it as a task that must be done. Try really, really hard to care about your co workers.

As far as work place romances, don’t. Just don’t. But if you must, let me leave you with a line from an old Kenny Chesney song, “Boy, you’re gonna wish you hadn’t”.

[Educator1982]

I honestly prefer not to socialize with cowerkers outside of work anymore. I will talk with them at work and be friendly. However, I always afraid as if there will be a fallout, it will ruin the work place environment. If it's a luncheon or a dinner, where pretty much everyone at work is invited, then yes, as long as it's infrequent. When I was younger in my teens and 20's and just working a part time job, it was common, and fun. Now that I have a more serious career, I don't want to take risks to jeopordize professional working relationships. Plus I have other friends and family, and obligations and responsibilities after work time. Sometimes we hang out with someone, and then we notice they or I have a side that we didn't know or don't want to have anything to do with. I find it very hard to go back or just to say "no I can't hang out" after accepting previous invitation(s). While if it's someone outside of work, it's easier to be more selective who we hang out.

[Nonesuch]

Even the coworkers who I would voluntarily meet up with after business hours, I haven't seen in person in just over a year, with no sign of that changing anytime soon.

Originally Posted by ThisTown123

I read a few articles online where some prefer to keep their work place life separate from their outside-of-work friends. Some don't like the idea of bonding with their co-workers....I worked at a place for a year where some co-workers have developed close bonds with each other over time. Some become REAL friends. If you find you have something in common, even better. I think some even hooked their friends up with a job there when there was an opening available. So some already knew each other prior to working there.

Some of my best friends, I first met when we worked together, and some of my best jobs, I got because a friend recruited me to join their employer.

I make a distinction between "work friends" and "actual friends who you met via work". Work friends are the ones who you might hang out with at lunch or immediately after work, but wouldn't make weekend plans with, invite to a family BBQ, etc.

If you're a social media type person: Work friends are connections on LinkedIn, never Facebook.

[Sonic_Spork]

Good point about the social media.

I've been personal friends with many individuals from my professional life, but I try to be pretty choosy about it.

Thing is, my boss, the big boss, though I know he doesn't expect us all to be goody-goody-two-shoes people he is older and religious and probably conservative. He's a nice dude, and I like him, but I know that asking him to know about and accept a lot of things about the person I am outside of the office, would be uncomfortable for him. It is just easier for him to like and respect me if I keep things cool and professional. And that means maintaining a filter.

So I'm careful which coworkers know about certain aspects of my life, though I'm comfortably open with a number of people, and I am even MORE selective about who I connect with on Facebook. Though I'm not a very shocking person on there, I just feel like there is an "evidence" quality to it, where if someone saw something I shared or said and I was perhaps careless, let my guard down, or forgot to keep the filter up, they could take their phone into the boss's office and... There is an actual clause in my employment contract that I agreed to, that if I do or say anything in a public way, that management feels is a bad reflection on the company, I can be terminated immediately.

If I am to fully trust a coworker and let them into the closest circles of my friendship, I have to take some time to get to know them and build some investment. There have only been a few such people in my whole working adult life.

And if you overshare dirty personal laundry in a "too much too soon" way with coworkers, you WILL get a reputation.

There was one gal (fired some time back) who told me the very first time we met, in the ladies' room when she was a new hire, about how she is a recovering addict who recently got out of rehab and what drugs she was into. And after that, even more drama and scandal. She had no filter, she'd cry and yell when she was upset, even at her desk, slam her phone down, stuff like that. She just did not seem to have good control over herself, or professional common sense. I was always polite to her, but I had the impression she thought we were close friends, and we were not. We never spent time together outside of work.

[ncole1]

A few times before Covid hit, I did, mostly the electronics club and one overnight stay out in the country. I am going to try to convince a few co-workers to come to a game night in July. I don't know what the critical mass is for these events when you have enough RSVP's that no one thinks they will be the only one.