Work Friends Are Not Enough

Build your community in your community

In 2016, I moved across state lines on a week's notice so my partner could take an exciting new job. After a teary goodbye with my favorite barista (it was her last day, too!), I packed up the last load of crap and drove away from a neighborhood where I felt like part of a community. 

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

We settled into life in the new location, and I went about the hard work of finding friends as a grown-up. 

I reckoned that there are three places we meet people: Our neighborhood, work, and leisure activities. I seldom saw neighbors out and about, and was working in my home office, so that left leisure. I joined book clubs, went to knitting groups, bike rides, and art classes.

I learned that pre-menopausal women do not generally engage in leisure outside of the home. 

I graduated and got my first industry job. For the first time in years, I felt that familiar sense of community once again. I saw the same faces each day. Cordial hellos, small talk over the cube wall, and we had a shared interest in getting a product out the door. 

Finally, I understood. I struggled to find people in my community because they were getting their community at work. 

Relationships are sustained by a combination of shared interests, mutual enjoyment of each other's company, and invested time and attention. 

At work, you are paid to have a shared interest, and you spend plenty of time with your coworkers. It is easy to make a work friend out of anyone you get along with and whose company you enjoy. 

The problem with satisfying your need for community with work alone is that work friends are predominantly proximity friends. When your time at that job ends, you often won’t have enough left in common to keep putting in the time and effort to sustain those relationships. 

And even when there is a true friendship brewing, logistics become more complicated—and time more scarce—when you are not both spending hours in the same place every day. More often that not, you will fall out of touch. 

Work friends are lovely, but they are not enough. Take the time to meet your neighbors,  chat with your local business owners and employees, take a class or join a club. Build a community outside of your work, and it will be there even when your job changes.