it’s not rude but you will be an outcast because of it
we’re social animals, if you don’t show yourself as part of the pack you’ll be treated as an other - with suspicion and distance. it’s much better to first show that you want to be part of the pack, and then establish yourself as someone who keeps to themselves. this way you’ll get even more peace and quiet, because people you’re on friendly terms are more likely to respect your personal space
this is the difference between “that lonely guy over there (he likes peace, but is nice)” and “that lonely guy over there (he creeps me out)”
A job would feel a lot longer if I wasn’t on friendly terms with my coworkers
I have never worked longer than a few months in any company where i did not know the owner.
Who makes the money from my hard work, is basically more important to me than getting a paycheck at all.
Which is why i have started my own company, and try to run it with shared ownership now.
I kind of get the meme, sometimes doing small talk and little things for each other makes work less tedious and keeps the vibe up.
Oh for sure, but as someone on the other end of things, it’s mildly exhausting to keep managing social interactions, especially if I’m already tapped out. It’s not always unwelcome, but I’m very happy doing my work just chilling as well.
One of my coworkers is very transparent when they’ve exhausted their social battery, and it’s great!
I think they give the game away by listing being neurodivergent as a negative. A negative which is in and of itself “rude”.
“Your brain processes information differently to mine? That’s rude! Why would you deliberately annoy me like that?”
There are really touchy-feely workplaces where most of all that just isn’t an option. I’ve worked at such places and I’m still traumatized.
At the height of the lockdowns I used to work in an advertising agency and it was like that. Because of the lockdowns we all have to work remotely and I got so much more done because I wasn’t constantly being asked questions about my life, favourite sports teams, and my opinion of whatever the latest office drama was.
Only partially were they actually doing their job of trying to advertise a crappy one-star hotel as a holiday villa. I think it ended up getting called something like hideaway lodge, or something equally original.
Rude is the coworker who thinks their shirts meant to antagonize anyone left of the US version of “center” are hilarious, rude are the coworkers who talk shit about trans people on break, rude are those who spend every conversation saying “mentally ill people should be locked up and oh by the way trans people are mentally ill”, rude are the ones who make the LGBTQ employees scared that one day they’ll just come to work and find a parking lot full of people waiting to jump them because the government said it’s legal.
I consider myself quite polite when these things happen in my workplace and I’m not slashing tires or torching cars, and instead all I do is say “hey that’s not okay and here’s why…”
Doesn’t stop HR from coming and telling me I need to be respectful of my coworkers opinions. (HR guy is a democrat, but like… One of those “if you’re being oppressed please resist quietly and peacefully within the confines of the oppressive laws made specifically to target you” kind of liberals)
Remember kids: the standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
Yeah I got pulled into a meeting with HR for not respecting the opinions of a flat earther. He was the most useless most passive drone I’ve ever met.
At one point turned his screen upside down and he tried to work with that for a week before he asked IT about it.
Has a “we’re coworkers, not friends” mentality
And if you don’t, you’re a child looking for friends in the wrong places.
Wym?
Work isn’t really the place to be searching for friends
we’re social animals. you can meet friends everywhere. claiming you can’t do it in the one place you spend most of your waking hours is ridiculous. work is probably the most common way people make friends.
I didn’t say you can’t make friends at work. More that you shouldn’t be searching for friends at work.
I’ve made plenty of good friends at work, but it is not the default expectation. You clock in, do your job, clock out, get paid. If you end up working well with someone and become friends, cool.
And that’s the basis of what “professionalism” is. You should be able to work with anyone that’s not an outright jerk, and if you find someone you like working with, that’s even better!
if someone thinks that’s rude, they were lucky to have no actually rude coworkers.
i had some who would change other peoples chair adjustments every day, steal food, poison other peoples plants or boop passing by coworkers in the sides/ribs forcefully when passing by.
That’s not rude, that’s cruisin’ for bruisin’
Any of that would get HR involved immediately at my company, and probably fired. We recently fired a VP over sexual harassment (no details), but given our other policies, I’m guessing it was pretty tame by other companies’ standards.
I hope others here work in halfway decent companies as well.
Or they were those actually rude coworkers themselves.
ASSIMILATE
I got the ass, wanna imilate me?
My people
That’s not amusing, that’s depressing.
