It was a bad afternoon. Perhaps, a meeting had gone wrong, or a finding didn’t validate a thesis I had. Worse still, it may have been a dirty politics kind of day. I don’t remember the trigger. But I remember it left me feeling like a bag of bricks hitting against a stone wall repeatedly.
Just when I thought I should take myself to the bathroom to wallow in misery, a Dairy Milk was slipped across my desk. “Have it, you will feel better,” she said, walking away without waiting for me to respond.
When I joined the workforce a decade and a half back, I wasn’t looking to make friends. As you grow older, making friends becomes more difficult, I reasoned to myself. Also, I am going in to make money, not like carefree college days filled with friendships and nonsense laughter, I chided myself.
The workplace is all about finding mentors, sponsors, coaches, or a combination of the three. No one ever tells us, “Find your work friend. It is important”.
No one told me at least.
But, a friend might literally be the most important work relationship ever. Who else will relate to your everyday context filled with tough clients, quirky bosses, and backstabbing colleagues? Who else will understand immediately when you say, “Doesn’t this whole process sound silly and pointlessly defeatist?” Not your childhood friend living a thousand miles away nor your best friend from college on a different career path.
Unintentionally first and intentionally later, I found them. My circles of trust. They were there to celebrate my joys and share my grief. But, more importantly, they were there to knock sense into my head when I was thinking something wrong, to give me a heads up when there was a chance I could turn things my way.
Ah well. I know what you are thinking. It isn’t hunky dory. It isn’t easy to trust and make friends at the workplace. I have no pointed bullets of self help on this one, for, making friends is an art unlike prescriptively talking about how to run meetings.
Just like any other personal relationship, it involves trial and error, some elimination, some wrong moves, why, even heartbreak at not having chosen a true friend. But, when it works out, it is worth it.
For, what could be a better bonus to a life filled with work, than a bunch of friends to retire with, laughing over how stupid you were to get stressed about that one number in that one Excel in that one project, that the company eventually decided to shelve anyway.
P. S. Views strictly personal. Post doesn’t refer to any organisation that I am currently associated with.