Work as Family

[dancerjodi]

We were discussing the concept of the workplace or the people you work with being like family last week in my Sociology of Organizations class. I've always been a happier and I think, more productive person when I've been in an environment where that *was* the case.

It made me think about my past work at Tufts Health Plans and where I am now. I think after being here almost a year I'm finally feeling like a part of 'the family'. We have a small group, and though its quiet and we're all very different there is some sort of camaraderie there.

A woman in my department took it upon herself to be "Activities Chair" or something like that, and wanted to get the ball rolling on fun at or after work things to take some of the boredom out of our 40+ hours each week. This Wednesday is our end of the summer get-together at one of the director's houses. Next month there will be a trivia contest (match the person to the description - i.e. obscure facts about each person where one can try and guess who they are). We'll hopefully do something once a month outside of work too. This should be nice.

The most amusing part though, is that this woman wrote a mission statement for our group, a really silly one about having fun, relaxing and trying to keep ourselves from jumping off bridges. She also gave everyone "titles" and wrote up a little description of said title. All of these are posted on the wall near our kitchen.

My new title is "Building Supervisor", the description that I am "Keeping it all together and giving Bob Villa a run for his money".

Hee hee!

What do YOU think about the workplace being family or not (and if it is or isn't appropriate)? Given that we spend more and more time at work it seems fitting that people would develop social constructions at the workplace.

Comments

[devina.livejournal.com]

While I genuinely like most of the people I've worked with, and think they're all good people, I don't see them as family and don't enjoy spending time with them outside work. There have been a couple of women at this job and my last one I was particularly close to, and would happily go out for drinks with occasionally. But my life outside work is not vanilla for the most part, people in finance mostly wouldn't get it. So it's easier to just not look to establish close relationships inside work.