to wonder why a lot of MN'ers find being friends with your colleagues a strange concept?

[likeifyouhate]

So ... not really a thread about a thread but having read one this seemed to have that theme running through it.

Do people really find it baffling that colleagues are more than just colleagues and are actually friends?

Two of my best friends with people I worked with (6 years ago), I saw one of them on Sunday and I'm meeting the other for dinner tomorrow.

My last job I left I still keep in contact with my friend. We are meeting up for drinks next month.

Where I work now I'm friends with a guy and we hang out a lot outside of work too (nothing romantic).

Do people really find the concept of colleagues being friends that odd?

I am quite quiet at work in that I don't sit there gossiping all day because I get bored of the same old conversations.

I find that so dismissive.

Maybe thats what you and your colleagues do. No one I work with and myself included sits around and just gossips all day.

to be honest I think it's more to do with type of person than type of job or stage of life. Many of my friends I've met through work (I'm an academic in a university), many through family ( a number of ex spouses of ex inlaws !) or other friends I've met via my interests. Thinking of one friend that I met via a hobby, and am friends with on facebook, she works in her local supermarket and seems to have a lot of work-related friendships judging from her facebook posts. Another friend works in the City, in the financial sector, and also has friends from work (we did meet at work, 20 yrs ago).

So that's academia, finance and retail sectors where my friends have other friends through work. I am finding it hard to think of a sector where work related friendships don't happen. It is more likely, I'm guessing, that because I'm quite sociable then I would be friends with other sociable people - no matter where they worked?

OTOH, what's also interesting to me is the poster up thread who talked about meeting friends via a local pub. Now I can't imagine how you would meet someone in a pub and become friends . I go to pubs with friends not to make friends and I'm guessing would come across as a grumpy old cow to all the sociable pub type people!

I just go through life meeting people and if we click then we become friends .... regardless of how I met them

Me too, but I have always worked some distance from where I've lived, so haven't got into socialising with colleagues that much over the years, no need while you're at work as you see each other all the time, then once someone has left it has to be a pretty close friendship to make the travelling to see each other likely to happen. I definitely don't keep work and home separate though, I do home stuff at and work stuff at home and I don't think being friends with your colleagues is weird, just not something that has happened all that much to me. I did meet DH at work though .

I'd say the majority of my friends are people that I've met through work - to be honest I don't really have the opportunity to meet people in other ways, so if it wasn't for work I wouldn't have many friendships.

That saying I never actively go looking for friendships at work - it just happens. I think because so many of us are very similar and at the same point in our lives, we all get on really well. We also work in an environment which is very team-based, and if someone doesn't get along with the others it really affects how the whole place works.

Quite a few of us have met our DPs through work, me included.

OTOH, what's also interesting to me is the poster up thread who talked about meeting friends via a local pub

that was me. We went fairly regularly (well, a couple of times a month) and would go to the quiz nights and we just got to know people through other people we already knew. It isnt a case of walking in, picking someone and deciding that they will be your friend! There are of course some people who I avoid like the plague as they are assholes, but thats the case wherever you meet people I would think.

I love some of my ex work colleagues more than my own family, have known them for years and some of them helped me through some very traumatic times (bereavenent). We know each other so well and it's basically because we sat 3 feet away from each other for 8 hours a day for 15 years or so. Some have left now and I miss them so much I feel lost as the replacements are just not the same.