My Dinner With Work Friends
I’m coming up on my 38th anniversary at WOBM (I’ll save the nostalgia for some time next week) and I was thinking the other day about how many people I have worked with over that period.
Many times somebody will bring up a former co-worker who I don’t even remember even though they may have been here for a year, two or even longer. Of course I accept that as I get older I have forgotten much more than I’ve remembered.
It’s funny about work friendships and how they often differ so much from those out of the office. Truthfully over all these years there are only a handful of those I have worked with who I enjoyed what I’ll call post-office hours relationships with.
You know the kind where you might talk on the phone when you’re not at work or get together for lunch or a drink. It’s not because I’m not a friendly person although many feel I’m a bit of a grump which at times is true. I think it’s a deliberate attempt on my part to separate my two lives one in which I spend nearly half my day (if not more) while working and the other where I’m home or with family and non-work friends.
There is another part to this which is more a reflection upon the industry in which I work. If you’re a teacher you likely spend 20 or 30 years with many of the same people and it’s only natural to develop more meaningful friendships.
However in my case I have seen so many come and go it’s hard to build that type of relationship. Over the years I have almost used that as a defense mechanism to not get close with some because I expect at some point they or yes even me more might be gone. it’s just the nature of the business.
I say this a night after a rare non-business hours social event as our Market Manager Mike Ruble took a group of us to dinner at Aqua Blu in Toms River. The food and wine was outstanding, and so was the company.