Socializing at Work

Although I'm great with clients and co-workers in work meetings, I tend to become awkward with those same people when they try to bridge from the work aspect of our relationship to a more personal one. What I mean is: talking with some co-workers about changing the software to better assess a client for ADHD is fine, but when someone makes a joke about their girlfriend, I reply with a fake laugh and pull their focus back onto the meeting topic. In a similar form, if they try to chat me up about my weekend or my personal life, I tend to kind of deflect the question away with "Oh, I'm doing fine", "nothing much", "ya, pretty good" without bothering to reciprocate the question back to them.

Some of the reasons for reacting like that would be my tendency to keep my work life and personal life separate. It's not that I believe they should be non-overlapping, but I just tend to not want to share details about myself with people whom I might not consider a friend - this is undoubtedly layover from my intensely closeted, self-preservation days. Most people like to ask the generic, general bonding questions of "How are you with the ladies?" or "Do you have a girlfriend?". My answers tend to involve unelaborate lies of "I do alright for myself" or "Not right now", without any interest in reciprocating the investigative and kind-natured queries.

On a separate level though, I've always had trouble considering clients, co-workers or even professors and teaching-assistants (TAs) to be people like myself, with personal lives and interests beyond the same company or university class. Back in university, I easily imagined Profs and TAs as people who attended a class for the day, then returned to their offices where they waited there patiently for the next day's class to arrive. Yes, I thought of them as robots.

Exceptions for these rules do of course exist: I work with Kieran and we talk about anything. That is of course because I knew him before work. My boss is, oddly enough, also an exception to this rule. He's just way too cool not to talk to.

As a change from my normal work routine last week, my boss asked me to head to a downtown office for the full week. A special, big-name clinician/trainer was in town so he wanted me to handle her in-person and hangout in the background in case she needed help while at the office.

The first two days were both stressful and boring. My normal day consists of on-and-off work-and-play: when I want a break, I go watch TV, or cook, or bike to a cafe. But in an office, when I needed a break I didn't know what to do. Go talk to the many co-workers/office people, all zooming around and talking to one-another? Ya right, that violates my modus operandi. So I'd pretty much go get a glass of water from the kitchen, smile, nod, deflect personal questions and then sit back down in my chair and force myself to work more.

As the end of the week arrived though, I wasn't going to stand being bored out of my mind anymore: I decided to try considering my co-workers as human beings *cringes* and actually enjoy talking with them. After strategically placing myself at a new desk, next to a very friendly guy I had previous shared lots of online meetings with, I just waited for the social opportunity to show itself.

My first chance eventually materialized: my neighbor swiveled his chair around and threw out a comment.

Guy: Oh jeez, that damn school-parents association is giving my wife a hard time...

Me: I would LOVE to hear about it.

He gives me a quick awkward look, since my voice had way too much eagerness and very little of my standard indifference. I took a mental note to be less excited by his mundane chatter. I then immediately took a second mental note, to avoid thinking of people's conversations as mundane chatter.

Turns out my social pounce was the perfect springboard for actually enjoying myself at the office. We got to talking more throughout the day and I really started enjoying speaking with him. It probably helped as well that I spent half an hour on a Skype call with drunk Alicia (in Australia), who was seeking advice on what to do about having a long distance boyfriend and having "accidentally" spent two hours making out with a lesbian, whom she then invited over to sleep with her. My co-worker seemed quite captured by my exclamations of "well if you want to sleep with a girl, go ahead just remember your boyfriend will probably be pissed" and "I'm not too sure what to say to get out of this...I'm only good at getting out of 3-somes".

From that first guy, I got the confidence and the state-of-mind to see the others around me as non-robotic, normal people too. Next, I began chatting with the front-desk assistant and some other account woman. Some engineers seemed to respond to my friendliness and come over to me. By then end of the day, I was having an awesome end of day with some 50 year old woman make sexual innuendos as she tried to teach me to use the automatic coffee machine.

Lady: Remember, just jam the rod into the hole. You should know how to do that!

Me: *Laughter*

Lady: Now take that flat piece - remember, flat like my chest - and place it on top of the rod. To review, the thing's flat like what?

Me: Like your chest!

Lady: Exactly!

Maybe my co-workers and I even looked excited like this!