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It is the strangest of relationships. We spend eight hours a day with our workmates, five days a week, forty-five to fifty weeks a years. We very likely spend as much…or more…time with them as we do with our family.
Yet what do we really know about the people with whom we work? We usually know weird, disjointed bits of information. This one has an interest in 1970s muscle cars, that one has a sister who is married to an engineer, the one over there won’t eat tomatoes, and that other one has some serious bad breath that nobody wants to mention.
The difference between family and workmates often boils down to this: we don’t feel any obligation to love our workmates and they don’t feel any need to love us. Because of that, we actually have to be more considerate of our workmates. We can tell a family member to use mouthwash and they still have to love us. Tell a workmate to use mouthwash and your next work order might go missing. Tell a workmate to use mouthwash and you may end up fetching your own coffee.
On the other hand, you can’t fire members of your family. Fortunately, they can’t fire you either.
Photo "2546036090" not found (invalid ID)Photo "2546036090" not found (invalid ID)Photo "2546036090" not found (invalid ID)Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
