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

[grovegoddess.livejournal.com]

I've had only 3 "standard" workplace environments in my adult life. Each one was a family in its own way and each one worked or didn't according to its appropriateness and truthfulness. Although there was some interaction outside of the workplace, home and work were almost always separate.

At Tosci's, I was one of the bosses but "boss" didn't really mean much except you got paid more. Everyone there was alterna-something. We all wore our lives on our sleeves and hid nothing. This left us raw and open much of the time. When work became tough, we snapped and our relationships faltered but in the end we'd get through it and work fine again. We knew it was a phase.

At Timberland, it was corporate and I was an underling. There was more structure here. I was VERY close to my work group. We ate together talked about our problems with our spouses over lunch, drank beer after work, and snickered over inside jokes. The rest of the department was close to but there was a them and us, oddly there were 2 bosses in the department which perpetuated the whole thing. Much like parents and their children. They all like to say that they don't have favorites but they can't help but sharing similarities with some and not others. It was nice and very healthy. This time marked the most productive of the department and it wasn't until the "parents" started feuding that the whole thing began to falter.

At AWARE, it seems that, in retrospect, we were falsely open and close. People wanted a close working environment but aside from mostly being witches we were very different but pretended to be something else. It was that functional-dysfuntionality thing that goes on in families. You know, don't tell me what's really going on and everything will be fine thing. It didn't mean we felt any less close, which is why it was so disheartening when I got forced out. I felt totally betrayed.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it really goes on a case by case basis, which I guess is how families do or don't work in real life.