Editor’s Note: The following post is by contributor Zee from Work to Not Work.
Robots are cold hard calculating machines.
Perhaps it’s their pragmatic approach to work that makes them so efficient. Maybe it’s their lack of empathy so they don’t waste time gossiping with coworkers. Or maybe it’s because they don’t need sustenance to keep going so things like lunch breaks and food comas are irrelevant.
That’s what I’ve turned myself into at work. I stopped eating lunch… Well, I stopped eating food a while back because I wanted to see if I could. But now that I’m done with my experiment I still don’t eat lunch because my new liquid diet is much more well-balanced and efficient. I’ve also never really been the kind of person that chit chats with coworkers about things. Sure I’m friendly, “how was your weekend?” that sort of thing, but I never really get beyond the pleasantries that you would tell a stranger that you’re meeting for the first time. Honestly, a robot could spout out these calculated pleasantries, it’s kind of like saying, “Hey how’s it going?” it’s a question that really just means “Hi.” No one really expects a real answer from it.
Image Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/Victor Habbick
It’s not that I don’t care about what my coworkers do outside of work, but it’s that I don’t really care. “Oh your boyfriend dumped you, that sucks. Did you hear back from the client about that issue we were having? I need to get that resolved. k thx!”
I mean, what am I really going to do about anything they tell me, so I don’t know how much I really care. Then there’s also that I just don’t feel like I have the time since I have so much on my plate these days. Sure I could gab on and on about stories from the past, or other general water cooler talk, but for every minute I spend doing that is a minute I would have to stay later to finish my work.
I’m also being a lot more honest with coworkers and managers when it comes to work. If they aren’t performing well or I’m not happy with something I’m not afraid to lay out some cold hard truths. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been there a while and I’m becoming jaded or if it’s simply because I lack empathy for people who can’t perform their jobs. Or maybe it’s because I value my time so I’m not afraid to speak up isn’t something isn’t going the way that I like.
For good or bad, I’m slowly becoming more and more of a robot at work. I’m efficient, productive, people get along with me (though not on that personal of a level), but aside from maybe one person, there’s no one I would go out of my way to hang out with outside of work.
I’ve never felt like my friendships, or perhaps lack of real friendships at work has ever hindered me. I earn the respect of my coworkers and am trusted by simply doing a good job. Right now the combination of my work ethic, speaking up for myself, and perhaps even a lack of personal relationships might be opening some new doors for me which I will be writing about as soon as it’s formalized.
I think the next step will be to outsource my job to another country instead of transforming into this robot that I am now. But that’s another topic for another time.
I’m semi-robotic at work using your definition. I have never taken a lunch break with co-workers. I tend to work through lunch, only taking a few small breaks throughout the day. This way I maximize my time at home doing things I want to do! However I do socialize a bit with people in the workplace. Are they my best friends? No. Do we talk about our weekends? Yes.
My husband now works from home and LOVES it. He gets his work done and that’s that. No pointless meetings or living on someone else’s schedule. Sometimes it’s better to not have the personal relationships because you don’t have to worry about feelings getting in the way of work decisions.
Courtney,
I completely hear you on minimal socializing at work. I think the main reason I try to work as hard as I can at work is because I don’t want to be there any longer than I have to be. Being done with work for the day is usually one of the highlights of my day.
Work relationships can be a tricky balancing act. If they are your peers then it’s usually not going to be a big deal because no one will be viewed as someone in a position of power over the other. But if you’re a manager I could see work relationships becoming more difficult. Like, if you promote someone who’s a friend you could anger other people, or if you promote someone else over your friend then you could irritate them. Hopefully if those situations arise you can carefully explain all decisions in a way that makes sense to everyone though.
I’d say I’m pretty social at work, in that I run the fantasy football league so a lot of people who don’t actually work with me will stop and chat to me about the weekend football etc – a lot of the time, I don’t know what they do or what department they work for but I know a lot of people on first name terms!
I have a number of very close friends at work who I regularly socialise with at weekends and there are a few more I would happily go out for a quick beer with, including my boss.
I’m pretty antisocial when it comes to my lunchtime though – work through most of my lunches so eat at my desk or if I’m not working, I’ll read a book.
One thing I won’t ever do is have an office romance, although there are lots of couples where I work (including people who have gotten married after meeting at work) – personally, that’s just a step too far in the socialising stakes!
Hey weenie,
I’d say I’m social but held back at work… For example I’m on the “Ministry of Fun” at work which is a small group of people that were nominated to help throw quarterly events such as pot lucks or after work happy hours. And I am social with people, but for some reason I just don’t talk about my personal life much with coworkers because a lot of it I have deemed “off limits” to tell coworkers. For example, my blog is off limits since I basically talk about how I don’t want to work, which doesn’t really mesh well with my actual work.
Though at the same time I’m not very social because when I send out an office email about our pot lucks I get a lot of responses from people that I know are in the office but I have no clue as to who they are!
It’s weird trying to figure out how social you should be at work!
-Zee
I work from home now so I only socialize with myself haha. When I was in an office environment I talked a lot to some of my closest colleagues that I’d worked with for a decade. I’ve made a few great friendships that will last past the work itself, but there are also tons of people that I highly doubt I’ll ever talk to again now that I’ve left.
Untemplater,
I wish I worked at home more often, I get to work from home 1 day a week and those days are awesome! I get a lot more done because I don’t get harassed by all the new people that I’ve trained over the time I’ve been at the company (which is over half of the developers I work with now!) For some reason when I’m not physically there they try to figure things out on their own, but when I’m there to field their questions they never just try to find the solution on their own.
But yeah, at some jobs I’ve made friends that I still talk to. They became real friends, not just work friends. But there’s very few of those for me. There is a group of people at my work that hang out together all the time which just I guess seems cool, but it also seems really weird to me. Maybe if I were a transplant to the area I would have more work friends. Perhaps that’s the deciding factor of how social you are with coworkers?
There’s definitely a bit of work-robot going on in my professional life too, but I’ve found myself becoming a bit less robotic over time, rather than more.
The robot part is a little voice in my mind telling me that I’m wasting every moment I spend “chatting” to colleagues about anything other than the direct immediate work outcome we need to discuss. Imagine I spent 20 minutes speaking to someone I’m friendly with about their weekend, my weekend or whatever personal stuff is going on for each of us – that’s 20 minutes I need to work later into the evening (and I work long hours anyway!).
For the first few years I listened to that voice and made sure that any interaction at work was entirely job-related (other than the necessary social niceties / politeness to stop people thinking I was rude!). In fact this even became a strength as I had feedback that I was seen as very focused and professional and that this contributed to my promotions (as I never gossipped or wasted time “chatting”).
But as I got more senior (I now run a large business unit with many hundreds of people working for me) and my job got more intense, I found that allowing time for a few minutes (up to 15 or so) once or twice a day to stop being relentlessly focused and just have a more informal laugh with people makes my day go more quickly and I’m more energised straight afterwards. I’m very selective about which work friends I do this with as it only works with people I know well enough to be relaxed with. I realised that I just can’t keep working at 100% all the time and these little breaks are needed to keep me going.
It’ll be interesting to see how things continue to develop – I always thought of myself as 100% focused but having realised the value of these non-robotic interactions, I’m wondering if it might be worth letting a little more of the robot go!
Prudent Pound,
I’ve also wondered about becoming less robotic lately. Something inside me just feels like a jerk when I ignore coworkers facebook requests. It’s not that I post anything inappropriate, it’s just that I like to keep my private life to myself. My outside friends are like a prized possession so I want to keep them all to myself.
But I too feel like I should tone it down a little when it comes to my working hours. I know that I’m not single handedly carrying the company on my back, so I can relax some and not burn myself out doing way more than is expected of one person.
-Zee