I get along perfectly fine in an office setting with almost everyone. It’s the people who feel overly welcome to just come up and completely alter your day… and I don’t mean the boss with a priority shift, nor do I mean some critical incident that needs urgent response to fix. How best to explain it to you… In my team of 25 people, only one is a problem. Insists that not only does he need to be in the office, but that he works best if everyone else is at the office, too. When that happens, or as it consistently was before Covid, he was never at his desk. Where’s Mark? He has that xyz deployment today and no announcements have gone out. “I dunno, I last saw him upstairs chatting with Alex.” Great, he’s upstairs with the dev he bullies into doing everything for him again… Ok, I’ll send him a slack and an email reminding him we need his deployment outage announcement or the customer is going to cancel. … Nothing happens still. No one can find him. He shows up at my desk, hasn’t read the slack or email, “Hey, can you send out a notification for the deployment?” Where have you been? “Got side tracked talking with Han in sales.” Um, Han is on the automotive product, you’re on the ships product… “Yeah, I just saw him and we ended up talking and… and… and…” Meanwhile, I get an email from both Han and Alex asking us to try and keep Mark from bothering them today, they have too much to do. Alex’s email asks why he’s having to do Mark’s deployment.
That is what I’m talking about. If a person needs to be in the office to do the job everyone else on the team can do remotely, this is likely why they like the office. Now I get it, some people can’t get away from wife, kids, or other home stuff while working from home and an office gives them the space they need. Those people are happy to go in on their own and don’t try demanding everyone else return to the office to support them. Then there are those who feel they need the commute to shift gears. I get it, I use to be that way a long time ago. It just took getting use to the change and some open honest communication with the family that I’d like 30 minutes or so after work to switch into family time mode and why. That works well.
More than social vampire, you are giving off sociopath vibes. Wanting to put you at ease upsets you. I didn’t assume you were a programmer, that was just an example from my world / daily life. If I had to assume your work, I would expect it would be some job high on the toxic masculinity scale.
We don’t hate everyone. We desire the opportunity to prepare for social interactions at work. That you find that somehow offensive really seems like a lack of respect for others.
Not at all. That falls under scheduled training. In this example, the boss has told us that I am to train them. That means I can come into the office or work with them over zoom, depending on the situation, prepared with a lesson plan. I would have interviewed these people and have copious notes about them, as well, as I do the hiring. This allows me also to be prepared for the social interaction that most likely works the best with them. I could do this for a day, a week, or even a month, as that would be my assigned job role for that period of time. Acting and putting on the show for them would be the gig. While emotionally taxing, preparation makes it possible to do, and once having assumed the role, the persona, the mask, I am excellent at it.
Just like all social vampires… “How could my being around be draining on people?” People are being nice to you because they have to. There is an HR dept. and rules. News flash, not everyone likes you. Some, likely many, simply tolerate you. But that is true for everyone, not just you. We come to work to pay the mortgage, to buy our groceries, to buy the kid braces. Not to be everyone’s friend.
I said requesting training is awesome. Asking for a spot on my calendar to train you on something is perfectly fine. Interrupting my own work to get me to do something for you is not that. Casually watching me work without first asking me to be “on” for you is also not ok. I would want time to prepare to teach you. I could have prepared examples, and a workflow diagram, and most importantly, be prepped to be in “on” mode to socialize with you. It’s an effort to mask, just walking up and being an interruption provides no time to mask up for you, and you get an adhoc half annoyed and possibly unprepared lesson. Teaching someone properly is like taking the stage, or preparing a TEDtalk… Many of us need time to get into the role, because everything around other people is some form of act to best interact with the target audience.
What outfit do I wear?
What accent and pentameter have I discovered makes you most at ease and least aggressive?
What slang terms have I observed you use safely, vs which bother you?
Do I know which programming language you prefer, so I can show you in that language and prepare examples?
Will you smell like cigarettes, and if so, make sure I have measures to deal with that smell?
Have I scheduled it around the right time after we’ve both eaten to make sure neither of us is “hangry”?
Are you a loud person, in which case, some examples or even jokes I may cut out to prevent a loud outburst or comment that draws even more people?
Do I know what soda to offer you?
Doing all that for a real public presentation is actually far easier than doing it for an individual you barely know.
Don’t you see? This is an entire performance we have to put on for you. Watching someone adhoc is just cruel and invasive to that person. They have their own job to do and focus on, not worry about chit chatting with someone while making a dead line.
Spock - “May I say that I have not thoroughly enjoyed serving with humans? I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant.”
Do not confuse coworkers with friends. Some can be friends, but most are not. Most are just coworkers… people forced to be in a room or building working together. Those are mostly acquaintances at best. They aren’t all asking you to go have beers with them. We have our real friends who we picked organically to be around. You know where they aren’t usually? At our work.
Because I want to work at work and be home at home. It never stops when I’m working from home because I’m expected to always be on. This is a problem with you setting proper boundaries with your employer. This is not the natural result from working remotely.
Someone on lemmy called me a horrible person… I don’t think that was me, but I understand where they were coming from. From my experience of decades of working in the office, shoulder surfers, as we call them, are a huge drain on your time because of the questions they keep asking, while at the same time, aren’t doing anything productive themselves… but are still considered to be working. Personally, I hate that. If someone requests specific training, that is awesome, but just shoulder surfing? I see it as skimming the system to look productive when the person really isn’t. Part of the social vampirism vibe, too.
But overall I find it much more effective to be in office. Effective in what respect? In actually doing tasks and completing them on your own? Because the shoulder surfing makes me wonder if you really would be, or just appear to be.
One particular serial shoulder surfer really took it to extremes. I so regretted hiring the guy, he was all talk and was incapable of completing most projects on his own. Come to find out he also lied about having been a Marine, which also further cast shoulder surfers in a bad light to me forever. And if you’re out there reading this (Mark was his name), I am so glad don’t work with us anymore! He could only do his job from the office, too. Covid hit, and surprise! He didn’t know how to do anything.