do you consider your close office mates as friends?

Prime time of any working individual is spent with colleagues. It is essential therefore to maintain a cordial relationship with them which could also include socialising which in any case any office encourages. We had a club which organised picnics and get togethers and it is here that colleagues pick their friends.

No matter how close the office mates to me, I still regard them as my colleagues rather than friends. As I will try to keep a good relationship with them so that it will be better for me to work. If they were my friends, then I could be myself. Namely I could lose temper or speak something to them directly. I don't really have to consider about what they think about it. But the truth is they are my colleagues, so I have to respect them. I love China

Some of my coworkers I really can call as friends. But this friend being doesn't depend on time amount which I spent with them. People become friends not because they are all time together. Rather it is issue of how they react on each other. I can call the person as friend when I can truly speak with him, when I know that if I will be in trouble or just feel bad, I could call him and he will not reject my call. I know many people who lot of time spend together but never become friends. So the same is true if we speak about coworkers with whom we spent almost all week - they could become our friends, but not because they are all the time around us.

Hi chiyosan. Well i think some of your office friends can be your friend just casually. But for me i won't make really close friends because i believe at work you can never make close friends, atleasr not for me i won't make due to the politics that never ends there and you always tend to take things more personally when you make someone your close friend.

Yes, I called them and treat them as friends. We work in same place and share same profession so we must treat each other well. Weare all one in confronting and solving problems in our work place so there's no way we can't be friends. After work, we have time for each other as we have facebooks and the net for communications. And we also have a time for some girls' day out where we all enjoy each other.

Hello chiyosan, Most of my time of the day is spent in office though i don't have that much closeness with colleagues except for one or two person & that too is limited as i don't talk to them my personal things. And i believe we should not consider our colleagues as closed friends it is better if we consider them as colleagues only and should get so closed to them as any time they can reveal your secrets that you have told to them to people at workplace.

I do have some really good friends at my workplace. As you mention when you work with them for so long, you do get along with them and start making friends. The only thing you need to be cautious is that the friendship should not come in the way of professional decision making. Cheers! Ram

At the moment I have a job where I am very independant. I have co-workers, but we don't spend much time together. We greet eachother when we meet and sometimes we chat a little but we are not close friends. When I was working in the home health care team I didn't have that much contact with my co-workers either. We met in the morning and we met at lunch, but the rest of the time we worked on our own. I always enjoyed the lunch that we had together, because that was the only time where I was able to talk to my co-workers. I became friends with one of the other girls and we always had lunch together. Unfortuneately we have lost touch today.

It is a natural thing. With whom we are spending 8 hours in a day the close relation will be developed. But it is not necessary that we have close relation with all office mates. It is depend on common interests. The person who is like us in some matter we will be more close to that.

Yes, I can say that I already can consider my officemates friends at the end of the day. It's because after 6 months of being with them, I can already tell them something more personal about myself and they have already shared something more personal as well. We talk during our free time and even during office hours. That's how close we are. Anyway we are only 4 working together in one shift that is why we are more closer.

Hi chiyosan! I consider some of my office mates as friends,not all of them. You see, for a certain time you thought you can trust them and pour out all your heart and show your true self to them just because you got comfortable with them, and then here comes the truth that they really can't accept you as yourself because they have different beliefs, philosophies and such. True friends are hard to find, and in my workplace, I can only consider one or two of them.

Sure! I am actually still close friends to my officemates. It's been 4 years since I retired from the workforce, but my friendship with them has not changed. We still see and meet up with one another from time to time.

sure i'll do that. i currently work part time since i'm still studying. i knew someone at work and only after a few days i started to talk personal matters to him. and so do him. although we are from different races and religion and even have a very huge gap between age, i feel comfortable with him and i even consider him a friend.

Hi chiyosan, I just came across your discussion and I would like to join the discussion Yes, I would consider my office mates as my friends.Our company closed a few months back and I am missing all of them.It so sad that I do not get to see them everyday just like we used to, though I get to talk to some of them but still not like the way before

We are a small group at my job, and yes we are friends, we also are on each others facebook pages as well as chatting on the phone sometimes.

It may not always be the case but so far most of my workmates have become my close friends and I have not had any problem with that. In fact I find it wonderful earning friends as I move from one job to the next.

When i was still working in an office before, i do came across a few colleagues who are very understanding and friendly. Just like you had said, we had spend more hours working and chatting together as compared with our family. Over time, indeed some of them seems like our friends, since we ever spend time go shopping together. But, i am unable to openly share my life story with them. So far, i only have one colleague who really is like my friend and we still keep in touch with each other until now. Indeed it is lucky if we have a colleague who happened to be our friend, too.

Yes. I consider most of them as friends and family except for this one particular individual. I think she's out to destroy me as well as the relationship that we have here as co workers. You see we considered ourselves as more than co workers working for the same and common goal. We treated ourselves like family and that we've always been open minded and vocal about our true thoughts about any particular matter. This individual I consider as an outsider. She is not a trustworthy kind of person because she get to back bite all of us to other branches. I feel like she is trying to paint a bad picture of us to other people which kind of render me irritated and infuriated at her. At the past I've confronted her about it. She just kind of shrug this off and she does have the audacity to tell me that I am the problem in this company and that she is going to tender her resignation because of me.

Hello! Chiyosan In my case, yes! I consider my office mates as my very close friends. We are actually treating ourselves like brothers and sisters. Our organization or in our branch itself, we are just around 10 workforce. We are like family, we pray together during the morning devotionals, we eat together during snack time as well as lunch meal. Though we don't go home together because we have different status, some of us are married and some are still single. Most of the my single office mates went out of the office often late for they almost consume their time overtime for work. My office mates are blessings for me, I thanked God I am surrounded with people like them!

I regard my colleagues as friends. Since you are going to meet then 8 hours a day, it is very important to have a good relationship with them by socializing with them. It always good to have somebody you can depend on at work... besides your boss(too dangerous). It's very important to be likable among your colleagues. If not, they may be psychotic and despise you to extend that what every you have done wrongly, they report to your boss.