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

[mizdarkgirl.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! One of my problems where I am is how click-ish it is. There isn't a lot of social interaction except a group of folks that go to a small gym & share the same diet. (Sorry, I do like food & think your diet is not more healhy then mine) People tend not to eat lunch so there isn't that social connections. I am one of the few that drinks coffe or tea so no one goes on "runs" or borrows.

Another issue I have is I am a verbal person. I tend to walk to someone's desk or call if I need to discuss things. Folks here email, even if they are in the next cube from each other. I need the body language & verbal clues to understand the message.

thoughts

[nepenthedreams]

Joining the Activities Committee at work has given me more reasons to enjoy going to work and I have gotten closer to the other people on the committee. I think you need to be close to your oc-workers because you see them for most of your waking hours. It really helps you work together on serious stuff if you already have a comraderie.

Obviously, real work will always be in the forefront but there is always downtime and if the downtime can be used in teambuilding activities or in charitable ways (we do a lot of charity work), then it's better for employee morale.

I think it's entirely appropriate for the workplace to be like a family. Back in the day, the village was like one's family and you worked side by side with your entire village in the rice fields or out hunting or whatnot. It really shouldn't be much different today if we all want to keep our sanity. The crazy workplace killings wouldn't happen if there was more of a community.

[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.

[roaming.livejournal.com]

I actively dislike some people I have to work with (unfortunatley for me, my direct boss and her direct boss). I actively like some of them (luckily, the other staff/admin I share an office with: we keep eachother sane letting off steam bitching about the faculty and our bosses, and how great and cushy a job this would be without their personality weirdnesses to contend with).

But NO WAY JOSE do I want to socialize with any of them outside of work. I've had enough and I want to flee home to MY space and the person(s) I actively choose to be with. :-)

But yes, I do think we develope social constructions at the office. Or have them foisted on us just by virtue of being captive audiences 35+ hours a week.
When it's good, it's good. When it's not, it's toxic. All I know is, ask the average worker about work, and they'll talk about stress and overload and migraines.

[macropixi.livejournal.com]

I don't socialize with my my coworkers after work. I've had friends at places I've worked before. But I tend to keep work and home seperate. Mostly because few people at work would understand me or my friends.

[nepenthedreams]

Other people brought up an aspect I didn't address, separation of work and home. I do not take work friends home, for the same reasons as most people. Despite having a pretty vanilla life in my own opinion, it is wildly different from most people I work with. There are only a few people I would socialize with after work, and even so, I would keep them separate from my other friends.

It's tough being in the closet at work. Everyone at my work talks about their life and sometimes I feel like I can't do that, or I have to talk around the subject.

That said, I attend all work social events, like parties, picnics etc. I mean, why not?

Work/Family

[dancer.livejournal.com]

"Other people brought up an aspect I didn't address, separation of work and home."

*other stuff snipped*

I agree with you, its rare that I bring work people "home", outside of work.

But what I was getting at mainly in my post was "Do you feel like you're a part of a family at work", which I do but it takes me a while to actually feel. It was the hardest thing with getting laid off last year - not having a job sucked but being "disowned" by my family and not seeing people that were such a huge part of my life for so long was harder. It was kind of like someone cut off my arm or something.

[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.