Coworkers complained to our supervisor because I am indifferent. Why are people so needy.

[anissa834]

I recently got a job at a new location as a graphic designer.

I've been working there for 10 months so far. I really like this job even tho it's demanding.

But I got problems with my coworkers. When it comes to other coworkers, I mostly talk to them about the work at hand. I work with them when I have to but other then that I don't have any real relationships with them.

My interactions with coworkers are strictly formal and neutral.

I just come in, get my jobs done and go home. Plus I already have plenty of friends outside of work.

Sometimes, some of them would complain that I am anti social and cold but I up until now, it never escalated.

Before the complaint, here are some context.

There is that one lady coworker who is the golden coworker.

You see how many parents have several children but they have that one golden child ? The child that get the most attention, love, gifts and overall gets spoiled and sometimes get away from being punished ?

Well that coworker is the equivalent of a golden child. She is the golden colleague. She is also known to be the boss's good girl. She is extremely loyal to him and doesn't mind snitching.

She is one of those people at work that almost everyone loves and wants to get to know.

I personally don't care about her but I am not jealous or anything but some of my other coworkers also complained that I am indifferent towards the golden colleague even tho I've told them multiple times that I am here to be productive and get stuff done and I have nothing against the golden colleague.

Well the complaint came in because apparently the golden colleague have been out of work for a week last week for some kind of medical problems. I don't really know the details, I don't care.

She came back today. I said good morning to everybody and began doing what I had to do in the job.

Well my boss called me in this morning and he informed me that my indifference and coldness is making people around me uncomfortable. He did say that I am not breaking any company policies and he is satisfied with my performance but perhaps I need to be a bit more warm and friendlier. Even said "we are a family here" . I told him that I've been respectful and professional towards my colleagues but he talked to me about the golden colleague and how she is been out for a week and when she came in, I didn't even ask how is she doing and how her health is improving and how I am always indifferent towards her and that she is a bubbly friendly person and I don't understand why I am so cold towards her.

He let me go eventually because this conversation wasn't going anywhere. We kept going back and forth and we both got annoyed at each other but he told me at the end "think about this conversation okay ?"

Why are people so needy ?

I totally get you and I’m a bit like you at work .
I quite like who I work with but that’s it, no wish to be friends beyond the workplace , they are quite a social lot and my partner thinks I’m strange that I don’t want to go out to evening work meals and drinks but tbh whilst they are all really nice people I haven’t really got anything in common with them other than where we work , in the real world outside of work it would be quite unlikely for me to cross paths with any of them and I although I really love my job I try to leave that behind when I am not there. Like you I’m lucky to have friends outside of work

I don't know if you work in the office all the time or just drop in now and then. If you work there full time you spend a lot of time in the company of these people, there is no need to be BFFs, but a how are you, did you have a good holiday or whatever is sort of expected, it is a social situation as well as work. If you totally refuse to engage I can understand how that puts a bit of a downer on everyone there.

If you just flit in and out a few times a week fair enough.

You are not playing their co dependency game, they enjoy it, and you are not joining in.

TBH: this will not end well. They can't see their family issues, you don't want to change in order to fit in.

Keep your options open.

I know someone who would say they are “professional” and just get on with their job but they are actually really rude and cold. You might not notice but clearly others are observing your behaviour.

I don't really like the "family" analogy in business. We are all here to perform a task, the better we work together, the easier and more successful the joint enterprise will be. I think it is more useful to compare a work team to an elite sports team. Everyone should be at the top of their game, know how to work well, both alone and collaboratively. If you don't earn your place, you're out.

On the other hand, we all know family members who, no matter how dysfunctional or lazy, are tolerated because "family." That approach serves nobody in a business.

It's not the fact you didn't ask her how she is, it's that you don't fit in with the company culture.

Your boss wants you to make more of an effort to join in. Some people would love this kind of environment and others would hate it. I would find another job.

I didn't point that out in my post but the other coworkers who complained about me are the golden colleague's friends.

It's not like my boss got complaints about me from all the coworkers. It's just that the golden colleague's friend group is almost as big as the Russian army so the boss got lots of complaints.

This sounds like a bad fit for you.

Plenty of bigger places are less familiar.

This organisation has a particular close culture and your preference is more formal and distant.

Not an issue in a bigger organisation but not really ideal in a small organisation as it changes the dynamics.

I am in the middle and can see your perspective but the reality is culture is engrained and you need to either facilitate some level of friendship like interactions or accept this won't be a longtime position.

I'm like you OP. I keep work chat strictly neutral. We have an office attention-seeker who's made a few snipey comments about me. She makes them about others too, for attention... which is precisely why I don't engage! I'm planning to transfer so I don't mind too much. However weighing up what you said, I think if you are planning to stay in your role, you might have to pull out a few more small talk sentences to please the boss. It's silly.

Honestly, you’re now emerging as someone who is more than a bit odd and deeply inflexible.

OP, job performance isn’t only about doing the job, but how you do it. Where I work there are even expected behaviours to describe this. Nobody has to be friends with colleagues, but the ability to be able to work successfully in a team is essential. And because humans are social animals, for most people, that requires a certain amount of human interaction to grease the wheels.

If you were up against a tight deadline and something went wrong which put your chances of meeting it in jeopardy, would any of your colleagues pitch in to help you? I suspect, if you’ve kept them at such a chilly distance, nobody would care if you failed. Would you step in to help a colleague in a similar scenario? These are the things that demonstrate how you do the job. It’s not about being best buds and going to the pub together, but it is, in the best interests of your employer, important that everyone can rub along together.

To achieve this needs really just the barest of social niceties. It’s good to acknowledge that everyone is different. You need to be left alone to do what you do without people knowing anything about you. Others need something else. If everyone makes small accommodations to people who are different from them, the workplace functions much better.

Mention being ND, then you'll be covered under the DDA.

I wondered if you could be ND or if there was some sort of review/pay meeting coming up.

Me being quiet and perhaps not as social as others or cold as often put was only ever an issue when there was review and pay increase meeting coming up.

I realised later in one workplace I was unofficial mentoring as senior team members were very brusque and despite being quiet and not overly friendly as then young female I was more approachable - this was complete opaque to management. So management were surprised when team leader and senior staff fought to keep me during round of redundancies as they viewed me as cold and too quiet - and were surprised I was so popular - never reflected in pay of official duties mind.

I think at minute I must give out mum vibes - platforms and out in public teens and people in 20s gravitate to asking me and ignore whole swaths of other people - yet by older management still been told I'm too quiet and unsocial.

I wish it was possible to separate workplaces into groups - one for those who want their workplace to be friendly and congenial with supportive interpersonal relationships, and one for those who want to work, get paid, and have no meaningful social interaction with their colleagues.

That way everyone would be happy!

To be honest - and I do have a lot of sympathy with your view that you go to work because you are working, not to make friends - you do come across here as rather cold and indifferent. And I am taking your views of others with a slight pinch of salt because there are always two sides to any story, and even by your lights you seem to be rather dismissive and unfriendly towards your colleagues (and people here). You don't have to be friends with people at work, but you do need to be friendly. And if everyone is finding you difficult to work with as a result - and that is what you are being told by your colleagues and your management - and your approach is to simply not care, then I would start looking for another job. You don't fit in and you don't want to make even the slightest effort to do so; and no matter how good you are at the job your presence there is disruptive to your colleagues and I doubt you will last. Your boss is annoyed with you (whether you are annoyed with him or not is irrelevant - the boss calls the shots about your future with the company) and I am going to interpret something for you in case you missed the point... "think about this conversation" is polite speak for "this isn't forgotten, I expect your demeanour in work towards your colleagues to improve, and this won't be the last conversation we have on the matter if it doesn't."

Yes, me too.

It's just so unnecessary and like they take pride in coming across as better than everyone else.

I think it's often because they're hiding some sort of impostor syndrome or something.

Or that they think deep down if they show people who they really are, no-one will like them for it.

But ultimately they don't last long in my experience and if there's redundancies to be made, they're often first out the door with a huge sigh of relief from everyone.

You say that you’re professional and neutral, but the way you write about your colleagues here is immature, rude, and disrespectful. Maybe that’s what they’re picking up on, and not the cool professionalism you seem to think you’re exuding.

That’s pretty cold OP to not even ask how she is!! I think you do need to show more of an interest in colleagues to improve the atmosphere. Imagine if everyone was like you.

Can I ask is this a UK workplace and is your background European? As I think there may be a culture element here…

I won’t say where in Europe in case I get accused of generalising but there are some places where your behaviour would be completely normal.

I think you probably see your behaviour as being professional, formal and neutral, but it's coming across as rude to everyone else. I also come across rude at times so I get it. I don't like some of my colleagues and don't care about their personal lives, have zero interest in what their bratty kids are up to. But sometimes you just need to smile and pretend just to make life easier for yourself. It's ok to maintain professional boundaries, but you can be professional, as well as engaging, without purposely making people uncomfortable. You also need to be careful of people perceiving your behaviour as bullying towards them. It's the world we live in now.

I don't think you're being very 'neutral' about your colleague in this thread and I expect people have picked up on that at work.

That will happen when you get pulled into a meeting to discuss perfectly normal interactions as not being sufficiently pandering to someone.

OP I get it. You just want to do your job and it looks like they are now bullying you for not gushing over the queen bee. It is pathetic.

I'm with your boss on one thing.

Noticing someone's been off sick and a 'how are you?' is the tiniest moment out of your life. Human interactions matter.
Professional courtesy can be very good for your image. We're not robots.

And you may one day welcome a little kindness and consideration yourself. It goes both ways

But 'we're family?' No. Your boss, your colleagues are not your family or friends.

Oh stop being so stubborn and make a tiny bit of effort. It’ll make your working life easier in the long run. Everyone has to do things at work they don’t want to do and can’t see the point of.

Work is not family.

There is compromise here, you can see that surely? I wonder if your neutral stance reads as hostiile?

This strikes me as both a cultural difference and possibly neurodivergence. If you had an autism diagnosis, your boss’s conversation with you would amount to discrimination. Even without the diagnosis, it’s not good that they don’t accept your difference.
I would look elsewhere for work - somewhere that has a less family like atmosphere.

I think when you work in an office with other people regularly then you should at least attempt some social niceties, like saying to someone who has been off sick for a while that you hope they're feeling better or something. It's just kind of normal being a human stuff. I don't think anyone is suggesting you become besties or spend hours chatting to them, but superficial social interaction when you work with people is kind of par for the course. It takes very little time or effort and is just part of the kind of social contract of working in a team/workplace.

The fact you're so hostile about it here makes me wonder how you're actually coming across in the office. If multiple people are feeling uncomfortable about it and have mentioned it to the boss, that suggests to me that it's making the environment a bit uncomfortable.