Is it “unprofessional” to care about your coworkers?
Navigating friendships at work
Early on in my career, a colleague put it plainly, “Coworkers are not friends.” I was 21 at the time. He was quite a bit older, so I imagined that “he knew better.” The message stuck. Admittedly, sometimes I would think to myself,
“Why not? I work with a lot of really cool people! They’d make great friends.”
To be honest, he was kind of an extreme. For example, when folks in my office would gather “outside of work,” he would rarely, if ever, make an appearance. I remember thinking this was a shame since he was genuinely fun to be around. He was a Stanford grad (without any pretension), a natural leader, effortlessly charismatic, and a great conversationalist, if sometimes a bit blunt. I would sometimes wonder what he would be like if he had been at the event. Was he somehow “different” when around friends? Would the event be different if he were there? Would the event feel “more formal” since his very presence, given his general preferences, might signal to others that the gathering is actually a “work gathering”?
Looking back, even the way I talk about it is a bit peculiar. How do we know when we’re “at work” and when we’re not, especially post-COVID? Are we that different when we’re working? If so, why? In my previous posts, I’ve talked a bit about how social forces shape how we think, feel, and behave. Simultaneously, the way we think, feel, and behave informs those same forces. So, what is it about current social norms that might lead someone, like my coworker, to draw such a stark distinction between “coworkers” and “friends”? Relatedly, what’s at stake when we decide to take up (or resist) those norms? Is it unprofessional to care about your coworkers?
Money muddles meaning-making
Employers pay you to perform a role, often as part of a group or organization. This process of exchange signals a shift in the relationship between you and the activity you’re performing. Put another way, “I am a ‘professional’ X because I get paid to do it.” Indeed, we define an activity as a “hobby” based on whether the person is being paid. We call them “a-vocations” because you don’t get paid for them. If I play the guitar in an empty room and don’t get paid for it, I’m an “amateur” musician. If I play the guitar in an empty room and someone pays for it, I’m a “professional.” The quality of the playing is only relevant in as much as it relates to the likelihood of payment.
Of course, we can get fancy and add more criteria to our definition of what it means to be a “professional” musician. We might exclude, for example, “street musicians” who get paid for tips or “traveling musicians” who get paid informally by low-budget venues. Still, the economic exchange seems to be at the heart of how we make sense of the behavior. It helps us understand the person’s motivations.
This is where things first start to get strange when considering relationships with coworkers. For many, having a “working relationship” with colleagues is an important (maybe even necessary) precursor to their success. Many folks even get formally reviewed, for example, on their ability to work well with others. Does this mean that we’re getting paid to have a good relationship with our coworkers? Many would call it naïve, if not dishonest, to respond to this question with a simple, “No.”
We’re paid to be around our coworkers. We’re not paid to be around non-coworkers. There’s something about the economic context that changes the way we think/feel/act. In short, money muddles the relational meaning-making.
Are my coworkers just being friendly because they “have to”?
Do they care about me? Do they even know me? How “close” are we? The specter of economic incentive seeds the doubt that makes a meaningful relationship with another difficult, if not impossible. But that’s not the only obstacle in play at the office.
Being professional means being strictly rational
Modern work environments tend to think of themselves in mechanistic terms. Remember, I’m paid to play a role or to fulfill a function. Organizational theories abound about how to optimize employee performance. These theories assume several dehumanizing notions, like the idea that we should be strictly “thinking beings.” They recommend (demand?) that we check our feelings at the office door. The phrase “It’s nothing personal.” perhaps best exemplifies this kind of thinking. It is code for “don’t get emotional,” or if you’re going to “get emotional,” don’t express it.
Similarly, debates around whether or not it’s “ok to cry” at work reveal a specific bias against the expression of certain kinds of emotion. If relationships depend on people being their “authentic selves” and work prohibits expression, what does that say about the types of relationships that are permissible (possible?) at work? To be clear, it’s not just crying that can be considered “unprofessional,” laughing too can be outside the bounds of professional decorum. So, folks on either end of the emotional spectrum really do need to “manage themselves” differently at work.
Even seemingly progressive notions like that we should strive for “work/life” balance also assert a schism between who we are at the office and who we are “in life.” Yes, there has been some progress in this space, especially with the recent proliferation of corporate wellness programs and a growing understanding of mental health.
Baked into the logic of these well-intentioned efforts is the idea that your well-being matters only because it informs your productivity.
As an employee of the organization offering such services, you may be reminded of this fact when “open enrollment” comes around. These programs exist as an extension of employee benefits, so they are often downsized or eliminated when companies come under financial strain. They’re considered supplementary. In the end, they are another form of compensation, another economic transaction, subject to the same murkiness of motivation. Does your employer care about you as a person? Or are you just another “human resource”?
Given this compartmentalized context, what hope is there for any genuine connection at all? If I can only express my emotional experience within the bounds of what’s “professionally acceptable,” can I have my emotions at all? Will I be constantly monitoring myself? Might it be easier to just numb completely? Am I supposed to maintain a level of “removed” professional coolness perpetually? How can I connect with others if I’m not allowed to stay in tune with my own experience?
Few people know how to coordinate
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that you and your coworkers have a similar relationship to your work and are similarly willing and able to express your emotions at work. You’d still be in the somewhat sticky situation of figuring out how to signal to one another that you’re interested in being “more than coworkers.” The framework itself seems to set us up for failure. What does “more than coworkers” even mean? Is it like trying to be “more than friends”?
For whatever reason, making friends as an adult seems to get more and more complex with time. I think it is because we spend so much time “being serious” at work. Or because…
…we avoid the complicated situations that stem from caring about the people with whom we spend most of our waking hours.
Plainly, we’re lucky if we manage to become friends with even a small number of people post-college. The odds just don’t seem to be in our favor, at least not in the US.
To briefly explore yet another complicated dynamic, consider how befriending coworkers of the opposite sex, in a heteronormative world, is riddled with all kinds of potential hazards. Sure, people are sometimes willing to identify a “work wife” or “work husband” (again heteronormatively). Still, these relationships are often the most bound by the specific space/context of work. Put another way, if people see you spending time with your “work spouse” outside of work, they start to wonder and sometimes begin to talk. What if you are friends with that person? Well, if you’re both already in relationships, the specter of infidelity looms large. If not, our collective obsession with “shipping” opposite-sex relationships will make it difficult for you to be friends.
So, what can we do?
I wish there were some clever code-word that people could share, which would permit them to genuinely get to know one another even if they’re coworkers. Something that could succinctly signal, “I know we work together, but you’re super cool! It’d be great to be friends in a completely earnest and platonic way.” Bonus points if it can remove the baggage that comes with everything I’ve mentioned above. Maybe that already exists, and I’m just out of the loop. Maybe in some offices, people say, “Let’s go for some croissants.” and that’s the code, that’s the signal… An adult equivalent of two kindergarteners who somehow find it easy to be friends.
Alas, I don’t think it works that way, which means that there’s only one viable path forward for people like me — talking about it.
Yup, it’s the good ol’ fashioned “putting-yourself-out-there-and-doing-the-best-you-can-to-communicate” strategy. What’s kind of strange is that these kinds of conversations may be more difficult and awkward than the kinds of notoriously awkward interactions for which there already exist many social scripts. Most people can intuit a flirtatiously awkward “meet-cute.” We see them so often on screen! But what’s it like to be in a “We-should-be-friends-even-though-we-work-together” conversation? How do people, entangled in a complicated net of external forces (forces that really would prefer you not care about each other), find a way to connect?
Truthfully, there’s only one way for you to find out — broach the subject. Maybe your coworker will look at you like you’re crazy. Maybe they’ll completely understand. Maybe it’ll be a little awkward. Maybe it’ll be super awkward. But regardless of what happens, broaching the subject will in and of itself challenge the notion that genuine relationships have no place at work. Real relationships are a byproduct of honest conversations. Luckily, that may be the only real way to be professional and genuinely care about your coworkers.
