Colleague

[Zui78]

I have a colleague who’s a fantastic person to work with. Professional, polite. We are both seniors. All good on that end. But our place of work is toxic, and we lean on each other in the work sense - a lot of politics, etc. I understand he’s under a lot of stress, but lately I feel he’s constantly on me during the week. Texting at 6 am on the way to work. Comes over to my desk. Telling me so much personal info. He’s been like this for years, but since we weren’t in the same department, maybe I didn’t notice. I am setting boundaries, but my issue is that he’s so essential for me at work, I can’t cut him off. Over the weekends - zero communication. Monday 6 am/7am! He’s not like this with others at work. He’s now showing me the pics of his holiday, kids, and cats. I am happy to he his friend, but it’s getting intense. I don’t always reply, but his texts are so sad and intense that I must reply.

I’d go for a coffee with him and have a really good chat and see if he needs some sort of employee assistance referral or if there’s a bigger problem maybe.
be open and say you value his friendship -
as you’ve said - he‘s a support to you and you don’t want to loose that but maybe there’s something else that’s bothering him perhaps?

Archive his messages then you won’t get notifications
Tell him that the messages are way to early but if you can’t then do not reply to anything he sends outside of your working day and only reply to work ones