Share Your Work Friends (not!) Story

marko

Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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Mar 16, 2011
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Some recent threads sparked a few memories about people that you worked with who you thought of as friends only to find out differently. Over the years of working closely together, small formal barriers often break down and the relationship becomes a bit more personal. At the upper level you always suspect that they only laugh at your jokes because you're the boss, but it's easy to fool yourself.

I had been responsible for over 1800 people globally with 5 or 6 direct reports. When I retired, the people who I thought were friends, I never heard from again and, surprisingly, people who I believed didn't care are still in contact. Funny how that is sometimes.

But here is a brutal illustration:
After the acquiring company finally let me go (a hilarious story I've shared here a few times), there was some "Where will he go? Will he take me with him?" from the crowd.

One of my former reports who I had mentored and worked with very closely for over 15 years invited me skiing at his house in [a world famous Colorado ski resort]. Nice. I had often called him "the son I never had" and we always got along great.

A nice dinner, some scotch and a great next day skiing. Early morning and first chair the second day: we're riding the chairlift and he casually says "so when are you going back to work?". I hesitated about 10 seconds, grimaced and said "mmm, y'know Mike, I think I'm done. Unless something really interesting comes along, I'm not going back to work".

Amazingly, about 2 minutes later, before we even reached the end of the lift, he suddenly "remembered" that he had a phone meeting in an hour and had to get back to the house. It was like a switch being flipped. "You keep skiing and I'll catch up later". Two hours later he calls me saying he has to fly back to New York right away but "I left the key for you and enjoy the house for the next few days".

I never saw him again.
 
After 33 years at mega corp. I stay in touch with 1 person. We had a couple of get togethers, in the first few years of retirement, but we've all kind of drifted away.
 
When I retired, the people who I thought were friends, I never heard from again and, surprisingly, people who I believed didn't care are still in contact. Funny how that is sometimes.
+1. I was very surprised but experienced the same. A couple guys I was sure would stay in contact went dark within a few weeks. A few others who I never expected to hear from again stayed in contact for quite a while. Some contacted me years after I left out of the blue. However, I’ve been retired 14 years now, and moved 750 miles from my last work site, and I am no longer in contact with any of my former co-workers. Since I was the top manager at my site with 80 employees, I made it a point to not form close friendships with anyone there, to avoid any chance or appearance of favoritism. There are several I could still contact, and may if circumstances make it appropriate.
 
I live in a small town and still a few still working that we all started about the same time at the same place. We had a pretty good working relationships while working but never had any after-hour interest being together for social time. I can say if it come down to asking for some help in any way, I could ask them and vice versa and we would be there for each other.
We see each other very frequent in the last 9 years but still consider them a working friends with so many memories
 
Actually, my experience has been a bit different. I recognized that many of the people I worked with were work friends. Good people, nice to be around, but friendship didn’t go much beyond worked. The handful of people I considered genuine friends, have stayed in touch. Of course like any relationship, you only get out of it what you put in to it. I make it a point to reach out to my friends regularly. The golf friends are easy to keep in touch with. Others require a little bit more focus but thankfully, they reach out to me too.

The thing that surprised me, which I doubt will surprise others who are retired, is that I never got a call from work asking for any kind of help related to my job. One of the attorneys asked me to debrief on a case that was happening, but other than that, nothing. For those not retired, I assure you, work will be fine without you when it comes that time.
 
This shouldn’t be a surprise.

We have relationships that connect us to others at different times:

High School
Church
Work
College
Family
Neighbors

When it ends, so does the relationship. Look at how many families fall apart when the parents die.
 
I was never in a position of authority such as Marko, so more often than not, I was exposed to true characters sooner rather than later.

l just got off the phone with "my office daughter" (we frequently talk on the phone as she drives in to work) and am still in contact with some of my former co-workers, two of whom I known since the 1990's. I will reach out to at least two of them this week. In addition to discussing personal matters they do discuss their jobs since I "understand" and two of them have tapped me as a retirement / financial planning resource.
 

But here is a brutal illustration:

One of my former reports who I had mentored and worked with very closely for over 15 years invited me skiing at his house in [a world famous Colorado ski resort]. Nice. I had often called him "the son I never had" and we always got along great.
….
That is painful!
 
Same.
People I worked with closely were quick to connect (LinkedIn) when I left for another company thinking I could help network them out of a dying job. A couple of them were in the running to be a resource to help my wife understand the finances when I kicked the bucket. Another bent over backwards to help me arrange a funeral when my mom died. So I thought we were close.
But when I was laid-off-/retired and was no longer a network asset the contact dropped to zero. It didn't fade... it shutoff like a like switch.
I'm thinking I need to post on the AITA reddit thread.
 
I keep in touch with several co workers via Facebook only.
Only one person that I worked with for 20 years do I consider a "friend". We have gone on a couple short trips and she has invited me to her home twice, she lives in another state since retirement, and was caretaker for her Mom.
But, we only see each other every few years, and I am usually the one who reaches out. So that relationship is slowly fading as it is not as reciprocal as I thought.
Three former co workers have invited me to lunch since I retired 8 years ago, one I stay in closer contact with and have lunch 1-2 times a year as she also lives out of state.

However, being a strong Introvert, all of this doesn't bother me or surprise me! lol.
 
This shouldn’t be a surprise.

We have relationships that connect us to others at different times:

High School
Church
Work
College
Family
Neighbors

When it ends, so does the relationship. Look at how many families fall apart when the parents die.
That's not necessarily true. I still have good friends from high school, college, and previous jobs. But it does take more effort, so more superficial relationships are likely to fall idle or fade away.
 
Considering how extraordinarily easy it is nowadays with text, email, toll free long distance, etc I am a bit surprised these relationships don’t benefit much. Same with extended family. It seems like I usually reach out. If I reach out three times without a callback I’m generally done initiating the call unless its family.
 
I don't really have any shocking stories to relate about former coworkers.
I've been in my former employer's Quarter Century Club since 1997 and continue to attend their twice yearly gatherings. I'm age 74 now, so a lot of coworkers who made it to QCC are no longer active for the usual reasons...
 
I always tried to be cordial to everyone but never cultivated friendship except with 3 people at Megacorp. Two are still friends and we see each other a time or two during the year and the third (my closest BFF) has passed on.

Other than that, I run into old w*rk "friends" occasionally and we might chat for 3 minutes at Walmart. Most of my few friends are from elsewhere. YMMV
 
Go to lunch twice a year with a couple of folks I met when I first started there. One is retired like me. All other coworkers dropped off immediately. I'm pretty ok with that, but it's a strange feeling for sure.
 
That's not necessarily true. I still have good friends from high school, college, and previous jobs. But it does take more effort, so more superficial relationships are likely to fall idle or fade away.
Same. I still have several good friends from the 2nd grade that were my closest friends in high school. They've spent the past 25+ years invested in careers and raising families thousands of miles away from where I live, but we've made efforts to stay in touch. My friends from college are (primarily) my fraternity brothers, and we stay in touch, both formally and informally (organized events, text chains, zoom meetings and by phone with many). They are disproportionately "Masters of the Universe" types, but don't pass up a chance to (affectionately) call me a POS for posting a photo to the text chain when I'm out skiing or mountain biking. I try to stay in touch with friends I've made along my career path, though perhaps less frequently and less effortfully (e.g. LinkedIn messages on birthdays, etc.).

In the past year I've made more of an effort to reconnect with friends that have fallen off the radar. I've tried to turn those text chains into phone calls and have gotten on a plane to visit many friends that I haven't seen since before Covid. I know it's hard to put in the effort when friends can't reciprocate, but I'm happy to make the effort and am glad to be able to maintain those connections.
 
Same. I still have several good friends from the 2nd grade that were my closest friends in high school. They've spent the past 25+ years invested in careers and raising families thousands of miles away from where I live, but we've made efforts to stay in touch. My friends from college are (primarily) my fraternity brothers, and we stay in touch, both formally and informally (organized events, text chains, zoom meetings and by phone with many). They are disproportionately "Masters of the Universe" types, but don't pass up a chance to (affectionately) call me a POS for posting a photo to the text chain when I'm out skiing or mountain biking. I try to stay in touch with friends I've made along my career path, though perhaps less frequently and less effortfully (e.g. LinkedIn messages on birthdays, etc.).

In the past year I've made more of an effort to reconnect with friends that have fallen off the radar. I've tried to turn those text chains into phone calls and have gotten on a plane to visit many friends that I haven't seen since before Covid. I know it's hard to put in the effort when friends can't reciprocate, but I'm happy to make the effort and am glad to be able to maintain those connections.
I'm just slightly jealous of your keeping touch with really old friends. I w*rked in the same town that I did K-12 as well as university. 3 or 4 people I went to school with at one time or another w*rked at my Megacorp. We would say "hi" but that was about it. Same as I moved around our mid sized city/town. "Hi" was a typical greeting and not much else. Maybe I'm really the poster child for introvert as MB suggests.:(:cool:
 
I'm just slightly jealous of your keeping touch with really old friends. I w*rked in the same town that I did K-12 as well as university. 3 or 4 people I went to school with at one time or another w*rked at my Megacorp. We would say "hi" but that was about it. Same as I moved around our mid sized city/town. "Hi" was a typical greeting and not much else. Maybe I'm really the poster child for introvert as MB suggests.:(:cool:
I can relate. I'm super introverted. I'm great one on one but tend to avoid group gatherings. Many of our friends, particularly my college friends, tend to gather primarily for group events, which are settings where I feel anxious and totally drained afterwards. However, my desire not to be some friendless old curmudgeon motivates me to maintain those relationships, in my own way.

Oh, and to provide a reference point of where I am on the introvert scale, my better-half was traveling over the entire Christmas-NYE holidays. I made some slow cooker meals, tried a bunch of different bread recipes and went skiing every day. Other than our dogs, I spent the time entirely by myself and felt rejuvenated when she returned from her travels.
 
I was the Chief Engineer in a 1,200 person manufacturing plant years ago and eventually made Plant Manager. After years of promotions and cross country moves, I kept in touch with a few old employees I had. Now, 40 years later, we are still in touch and some of us visit each other every year. But we rarely talk about the Good old Days!
 
I feel fortunate to have made a couple of true friends from my last job and I have seen them numerous times socially since we stopped working together. We just saw one on Monday in fact. We would all see each other more but I'm the only retired one so they're all busy with work and life, raising kids, the usual stuff, but we keep in touch regularly. These are also people with whom we socialized outside of work when we were working together. We weren't just office friends.
 
I do have two old bosses who keep in contact (Christmas cards/emails) or the occasional phone calls. We aren't close but we have shared experiences at Megacorp which "bind" us.

One boss and I lived through different phases of a Megacorp crisis that we each (in our own silo) contributed greatly to the solution. A potential loss of 1/4 of Megacorp's sales loomed and we (as well as a few hundred other people) w*rked full time (and more!) on nothing else for several months. It all eventually w*rked out for Megacorp (with our help.) So when we talk, that's always one of our go-to topics. I look back on that time as one of the better times of my life. He eventually became my boss.
 
My BFF at my last job ghosted me about six months before I retired. On my retirement day, no one, zero, nada of my co-workers even acknowledged it.

Yeah, my BFF moved to the other side of the country, but we were so close. We'd text every day, she begged me to visit her at her new house. We business traveled together. We shared everything, then poof. It was gone.
 
My BFF at my last job ghosted me about six months before I retired. On my retirement day, no one, zero, nada of my co-workers even acknowledged it.

Yeah, my BFF moved to the other side of the country, but we were so close. We'd text every day, she begged me to visit her at her new house. We business traveled together. We shared everything, then poof. It was gone.
That's cold.

When I announced my retirement (with less than a week's notice - actual date was over 3 weeks due to accrued vacation) I had all kinds of folks show up at my desk to wish me well or to see why I was leaving - including my division director (who gave me a hug!)
 
And that's why I made a point of not staying in touch with any former employees from any company I worked for. I have no idea of my former departments' successes or failures. I don't miss a thing.
BTW, I mostly loved my career.
 
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