To say my co-workers aren't my friends?

[annon1368]

NC due to being outing.

Since my work sent us to wfh after covid hit there has been an annoying push from our team management to over compensate for not being in the office, they have made a mission to have 3x a week team building sessions often lasting an hour. As apparently, I am the most ‘anti social’ team member (I’m an introvert) I was made to arrange every single one as part of my development plan

6 months later I have point blank now refused to arrange any more, I have a high workload and spending three hours a week attending them is bad enough, let alone the time it takes me to set them up and create quizzes, games etc. I am the busiest member of the team and this is well known by snr management, my workload has exploded since coronavirus as in addition to my normal role I am now responsible for our covid response efforts.

For the last couple of weeks many team members haven’t been attending the team building sessions and get no flack, today I have a lot on and have told my line manager that I wont be attending todays quiz, after which she called and moaned about me not making time for the team. I politely asked if she had said the same to the other team members over the last few weeks who also couldn’t make the sessions, to which I got silence.

She then moaned about how we as a team aren’t friends with each other, other teams are all friends and we should be the same. To which I replied you are all my co-workers not my friends, its been 6 months and we are no closer to being best buddies, maybe we are all too different to get to the point of being ‘friends’ to which she hung up and has arranged a ‘performance’ review next week with me.

AIBU to say that my co-workers are just that and not my friends?

@ravenmum

Tbh it sounds like she is either making good use of the fact that you go along with the idea of "you = introversion = not sociable", or she is biased against you, either through personal dislike or due to your non-belief? HR is the way to go here.

What do the other members of the team think about being the left-over group of outsiders? Could you bond over your irritation about being treated so unprofessionally?!

Tbh I am very close with the two other non religious members of the team, we are friends outside of work but don't make a big thing of it in work as the others would feel left out.

If you want to look 'pro-active' and stave off performance review, you could suggest some more structured 'team-building' (rather than social) stuff that you would 'like to implement' with your team (then you can delegate the actual organising of it). Stuff like finding out everyone's Belbin Team Role or Networking Colour Butterfly or Imagineer a Narrative of Friendship or whatever the latest corporate bollocks on this is. The advantage of those models is there is a lot of lip-service paid to everyone having a different 'style' and therefore 'role' in the team. It might help ram it into your manager's head that there are different ways of being a 'team player' (vom) and it would make you look like you give a shit (when quite understandably you don't).

I made good friends from jobs. As you say you cant force friendships. Last job I was pleasant but not much in common. They havent suggested lunch or I havent. Im gone since April!

I think you need to be very careful. She is unprofessional to tell you off for not being friends and hanging up on you. It is unprofessional to have 3 hourly sessions of team building a week, when are you meant to work?! Id just be very careful of her behaviour and any potential performance reviews. They should be based purely on your professional standards. Being friend.y with colleagues is not a professional requirement, despite her determination that it is.

@rivertoskateaway

Valentines gifts?!

Yeah a couple members of the team this year was the first valentines they had since a divorce and one was widowed so I arranged little gifts for each member of the team so everyone would at least have something small on their desk etc.

@simitra

Just noticed about your pregnancy. Congrats.

Can you not use that a bit to get you out of some of this extra work?

Not suggesting you slack and do nothing but you have another life to think of now. How about one of your non-pregnant team-mates doing their share?

How soon can you reasonably begin your maternity leave?

I'm very early on and no one knows properly but it's the only thing keeping me from rage quitting at the moment.

If I wasn't I would consider taking this further but it's just not worth the aggro imo at the moment

So basically you are friends with some, but are downplaying it at work because you don't want anyone to feel left out? And now, because of this thoughtful act, you are being treated as if you were unsociable.
Seems like someone fails to understand what being sociable really is.

@user1471457751

If she dares to give you a negative performance review I would take it higher, either via her boss or HR. Not only is she wasting a lot of time each week, it seems like she's almost bullying you by getting you to arrange all sessions. Only an idiot would think forcing someone to create 3 team building exercises a week would be a positive.

Yeah I have had to push back before so am just waiting now until this review - it's so frustrating as she has put it under my 'soft skills' in which I need to develop

Good god has she never heard of you “Work to live, not live to work”?

Op you are not in the wrong. HR is the only way with the written proof of what you are being told to wasting your time on. Quizzes etc are not work. Forced friendships never work, even if you had things in common, which it’s would seem you don’t other than the batshit LM.
I thought all this nonsense had died out over the last few years.

Oh also, if it's in your goals, it needs to be measurable - so try to pin her down on what 'being friends' with your team would actually look like. I should think anything she says would either be something you do already (thinking about them e.g. the valentine's gifts) and could evidence, or something so completely mad you can challenge it.

In my last job, my manager wrote in my appraisal that I wasn't sociable enough both in and out of work. She made a target of how many times I had to speak in each daily meeting (not at all relevant to my performance) in order to "pass" my next appraisal.

How does making friends benefit you at work? I’m assuming you aren’t outright rude or ignorant of others 🥺

If I were you, I would join a union now - your workplace does not have to be unionised for you to belong. The TUC has a union-finder tool. If this is how they behave about ybeing sociable, I wouldn't necessarily expect her to play fair once they know you're pregnant.

I have had several friends from work over the years, including those I've been on holiday with, and one I was bridesmaid for. So I agree you can forge friendships at work, but you can't force them. I have other colleagues to whom I am civil, because we have to work together, but I can't imagine choosing to go down the pub with them. And that's normal, because we're all different. It's only a problem if there's such antagonism or hostility that colleagues avoid communicating when they need to work together.

We do have team socials- physically back in the old days, and virtually since lockdown. These were every other day, but they're now every other week - and they've never been compulsory. Some attend pretty much all; others attend very few. It's not part of anyone's performance, because that would inappropriate.

my manager wrote in my appraisal that I wasn't sociable enough both in and out of work.

How is out of work anything to do with them?

I am fully in agreement with the OP- I work with some very good people, no-one drops each other in it, help each other out at work, but they are colleagues.

If your only friends are those you work with, what will happen if you move job or when you retire?

I am fully in agreement with the OP- I work with some very good people, no-one drops each other in it, help each other out at work, but they are colleagues.

If your only friends are those you work with, what will happen if you move job or when you retire?

Oh god I hate the forced annual Christmas Party which I always end up having to clean up after, I'd get so much rage if I was forced to attend a jolly social 3 x a week let alone organise them all unpaid in our own time of course.

Earlier on in lockdown somebody tried to force a social quiz on us. We were all to bring a quiz round. On own time again.
Deafening silence in response to the idea

I agree that over-done team building meetings can be seen as a chore and that the goal of making everyone friends is ridiculous. However, team building efforts as such are not nonsense and their true goal is to increase familiarity between team members to prevent hesitation in communicating problems and misunderstandings - which are relatively frequent and can be very painful issues especially in virtual culture where everyone works from home.

Some of these activities mask the bad things at work that can happen. Just have everyone turn up on time, respond in a reasonable time to requests and have some good manners is much better than all the so-called 'fun'.

I'm on your side. That's a massive waste of your time, especially when you're not enjoying the quizzes! I'm introverted too. I worked 8 years in my last job and viewed them all as colleagues, not friends. I have my own friends outside of work and like to keep them separate.

@EBearhug exactly. Apparently it means you aren't a team player. Yes, I worked in a team but we had our own caseloads and never ever did you need to do anything to do with another person's. Meetings each morning were completely pointless.

Also, I'm a single parent with limited support so why would I want to pay so I could go out with these people in an evening, rather than my friends?!

HR have said to me in the past that what I do outside of work is entirely up to me to disclose to colleagues or not, as long as it's nothing that could bring the company into disrepute. This came up (before lockdown) because apparently I never tell anyone what I did at the weekend. No one ever asked, and I figured they weren't going to be fascinated by my tales of laundry, housework and the supermarket. Of course, if I had regaled everyone with these exciting anecdotes, I'd have probably been talking to HR about interrupting people with inane chatter when they were trying to work - I think some managers set their mind against someone and whatever you do will be wrong, and I think the OP has this to deal with.

At the start of enforced wfh for all I put in daily non work calls for all the team. However they were 100% optional and some people attended daily and some never have. Some of our team live alone and value social interaction through work quite highly.

After a few weeks, I dialled them down to twice weekly - I was getting too busy to do them every day - and we have a mixture of just chats, sometimes quizzes - but Kahoot or we steal them from another team - so no one has to do much preparation.

No one is judged for not attending - people are different and I understand some folks are darn grateful not to be in the office. It would be ridiculous to judge someone's work performance on how social - or not - they are.

3hours a week!? I'd go to HR & say it's impacting on my work too much. You can't force friendships . Social event co ordinator,is that on your job spec ,it should be a mutually agreed remit,not forced on you.Also, if you spent that much time on anything else away from work you'd get a bollcking anywhere I've worked & I've contracted everywhere !

I work in a school, each year we are usually moved to different classes and were tokd before summer holiday. I long for that list because i spent 2 school years having to work with one of the moodiest, jealous people on planet earth. If they were having a bad day... Wow did we know about, they wouldn't speak to anyone, they'd trurn their back on us...group chat was only polite with them and the moment the school year ended i deleted and blocked them. I couldn't give a shit what they think. Ues, there's always a chance we'd work together again so i will have to be polite at work, outside of work they can go fuck themselves