Caution Required

A colleague at work wanted to chat about my weekend.  I didn’t. But we’re friends, that’s what friends do, they share stuff about their lives, right?
We’re not friends.  We work for the same employer.  We are friend-ly, in the sense of getting along at work, but we don’t go to dinner at each other’s houses, birthday parties, bowling league. We’re “work friends” but not “real friends.”
And honestly, I don’t want to be.  I suspect my work-friend’s political leanings do not accord with mine so the conversations I carefully avoid at work are landmines waiting to explode an after-work friendship.  Depending on the work-friend’s level of butthurt, it could affect our work relationship and that might drag in HR, who nobody wants to see, ever, for any reason.
Does that make me stand-offish?  Cold?  Yep.  Also wary, defensive, and suspicious. That’s life in the SJW workplace.  There are no real friends.  Only work-friends.
Joe Doakes

Sometime when I have the mental energy, I need to start writing the tales of the SJW workplace.

10 thoughts on “Caution Required

  1. Ha! My sentiments exactly, JD!

    That said, when I started with my current employer about 5 years ago, I was pleasantly surprised to find so many conservatives working there. In fact, one woman even campaigned for both Dave Thompson and John Kline. Although I don’t hang out with them outside of the occasional happy hour gathering, it’s nice to not have to worry about butt hurting anyone.

    I also want to point out that one of those colleagues is a gay man, that is married to his partner, but he is a really good guy. I learned that his political leanings are strongly Libertarian, but he’s not a Trump hater. Like many of us that do support him, he likes many things that Trump is doing, but wishes that he would think before he Tweets. He also despises radical gays, saying that those people are very detrimental to the LGQBT community.

  2. I have an outsepoken annoying leftist coworker (shes 40 has a bunch of pets and no kids or husband, yes insert joke here) and I never comment on politics unless she goes on a rant then I say something but I never, ever volunteer my opinion. Im still debating if I should wear a keep America great hat next year just to see if I can get a rise out of her and others.

  3. My career path (or lack thereof) has lead me to working in environments where I dare not discuss politics or society in any way, shape or form.

    Human Resources departments are like Cops and Lawyers. You can admire the job they do, but be happy if you can get through life without needing to deal with any of them.

  4. Human Resources in my experience (mostly Fortune 500) are most closely an analogue to the East German Stasi and leftists in the office/workplace relay heavily on them for doctrine/policy enforcement and intelligence gathering. An example: myself and a colleague, at lunch in the company cafeteria, were discussing the interference of a teacher’s union in attempts of his PTA to rid a school of a bad teacher. Someone overheard snatches of and within a couple of days we were both interviewed by HR about our “Union organizing“.

  5. What Dave says. I remember finding it appropriate at a couple of employers I’ve had when HR actually has their offices behind locked doors. Now granted, part of it is because they’re just doing what the executives say and they’re getting blamed for it, but then again, part of it derives from being at times like the Stasi. You don’t want to be seen as such, give people accused of things a chance to defend themselves and give them the benefit of the doubt. I’ve got a few stories….

  6. I was at a conference recently where national pundit Geoff Colvin said that since 2000, researchers have been testing incoming college freshman for empathy, and have found that the scores have gone down every year. It is a major issue for companies such as Google, Apple and others that stress innovation through a collaborative culture (apparently “diversity” is only good when people get out of their silos). “Human skills” and “story-telling” are what these employers are looking for today, and what they are focusing their training on. (Interestingly enough, the leader in this area is the U.S. Army.)

    I don’t think college kids have any less inherent empathy than previous students and generations, but our high-tech, high-connect environment reinforces echo chambers and walls, rather than breaking them down. Today’s young folks simply aren’t getting the real world training of having to deal with “diverse” behavior in face-to-face interactions in homes, schools, sports and work environments that we had growing up. (Some call it “socialization”, others simply call it “manners”. Some of the remedial work these companies are doing is pretty interesting.

  7. I don’t talk about politics in the workplace, or on FB. I just don’t. My blog hides in plain sight, but for the most part all the lefties I’ve had lose interest eventually. I comment here and a few other places, but nowhere that uses a FB commenting interface. Life is easier that way.

  8. One of the first questions a prospective engineer gets asked during an interview at my place of employment is “What kinds of guns do you own, other than a shotgun of course?”

    That’s no joke. We guard the henhouse pretty tightly.

  9. Guns? Why, none, of course. Guns frighten me. I wouldn’t have them in the house, not since that freak canoe accident two summers ago where they all fell in the deepest part of Mille Lacs lake. Such a shame.

    But if I DID have any guns, they’d include the following makes, models and calibers . . . .

  10. It’s funny how being right leaning these days is equatable to being a Christian always. In my work place (very large company for last 7 years and recently much smaller) I do not go out of my way to express my fiscal and social conservatism, but when prompted I do not shy away from explaining I’m a Christian or a conservative because it is more important to me than what my coworker feels. Never had to walk to HR, but I’m not a jerk about it either.

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