There’s a question that appears on those surveys that are regularly carried out among staff in large organisations, like one I used to work for. The surveys aim to “take the temperature of staff” and see what staff really think about their work. The question I’m talking about is the one that staff complain the most about having to answer.
“Do you have a best friend at work?”
No further direction is given, debates ensue in meetings over whether they mean a “work friend” (i.e. someone to bitch to about work stuff) or a real life friend. Debates are had over what “best” means. Is it “best” as in better than every other friends, or “best at work” which means you’ve more than one at work. Gallup, who came up with the question, have explained why it’s so important here. I hate the question, I hate the intrusion into my personal life. I will happily answer “In the last six months has someone at work talked to you about your progress?” or divulge whether “The mission of the company makes me feel my job is important”, but back away from my relationships anonymous survey.
But I’ve been thinking about work friends, and work best friends. They’re important. So, so important.
Good work friends make work bearable on the bad days. Colleagues don’t they’re just there. Work friends, work best friends, are different. They text you after work to check you’re OK. When you’re having a wobble about leaving a sick child there’s a friend who’s been there and reassures you that it’s going to be OK. When you want to rant about something, there’s someone to listen over a cuppa or lunch. When you need help on a work thing, or need to ask a stupid question, there’s someone you can ask who doesn’t judge. You can get directed around the office politics. When you need to get fresh air there’s a friend to walk around the block with at lunchtime. In olden times (aka pre-kids and commute) there was someone to go for “just the one” with after a bad day and end up in a nightclub on a Wednesday night. Friends, real friends.
I left college in 1998, and have worked in several offices since then. Different offices with similar desks, similar broken chairs, staplers that disappear and varying degrees of technology. I’ve had different work friends too, ones I’ve gone out drinking with, ones who’ve planned my wedding with me, ones who’ve lived every day of my pregnancies with me.
Sometimes the chair was blue, and the monitor eventually got slimmer, but this has been my desk since 1998
I’ve just left a work family and work friends who I’ve spent the last four years with. This work family shared my last pregnancy with daily (nay, hourly) updates, my kids’ birthdays, and major life events.
Some I’ll drift apart from, but my “best friends at work” are different. We’ll stay in touch, I have with the others from older workplaces.We’ll meet for pints or more likely playdates these days. We’ll still stay in touch on Facebook and WhatsApp and all that good stuff.
Because a real “best friend at work” is a real friend. They make work life easier. They are the reason you miss a workplace, the reason that people stay.
I see what Gallup are getting at now. But I still don’t like the question.
I used to at my previous job, but now I am at a place where I do not know many so hopefully soon I will have a new work best friend 🙂
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Interesting. I was never asked this question, but I would only have had work friends at the multinational where I first worked back in the 80s and I am still in touch with several of them. Since then I’ve enjoyed the company of workmates, but I never thought of them as friends and there’s been no effort on either side to keep in touch since, partly I think because I would have been at a different age and stage of life.
It’s so important to have people that get it – in my case, a contact centre where a lot of clients are confrontational means that it’s a must have to have people who understand exactly whats getting to you and for you to be able to just let it go over a cup of tea at break or a pint after work. Mine left recently for Canada so I’m feeling a tiny bit lost!
I can’t imagine coming to work and not having my “work best friends”, there is usually only 3 of us in the office anyway but that’s what we are. We whinge, moan, laugh, have cried together. It definitely makes coming to work and leaving the child behind that bit easier.
Usually, yes. My work is short-term, and keeping my focus on doing it effectively requires having a kindred spirit within reach. I haven’t found that in my current job and feel it keenly. Some of my longest-lasting friendships were hatched through work and have out-lived all contracts. It’s a funny time, moving on, isn’t it? You sound philosophical and set to hold on to them as you move on to make new ones. Mind you, I’ve also done sad goodbyes from folk only to hide from them in Tesco years later because I couldn’t remember their names. Our love obviously wasn’t real.
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