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> People do make friends at work, and that's a good thing. But it should never be your primary place of making friends. Yeah... good luck with that. Not to sa
by ravenstine 4y ago
> People do make friends at work, and that's a good thing. But it should never be your primary place of making friends.
Yeah... good luck with that.
Not to say that people don't make friends outside work, but there are many variables involved with that.
But just use Meetup.com, right? Sure, if you want to spend a few hours with people of retirement age, not if there's anything wrong with that.
Not having friends is just the surface level of the issue. If all you want is friends and friends alone, then that really isn't that hard to arrange.
If the use of "friends", however, is those who are in your age cohort as well as romantic possibilities, that's an entirely different beast that can be ironically difficult to conquer once college life has been long since left in the dust.
For many, if not most, the office was the deciding factor as to whom you would associate with in adulthood. Plenty of people have met long time friends as well as their husbands and wives at the office. With remote work, this is extremely difficult to pull off. I've been fortunate to have made one or two good friends through my years of remote work, but I had 100x more social opportunities back when I worked in a physical office. I miss the fact that I could have a best work friend kind of like how I usually had a best school friend as a child. But it's usually impractical to make such connections when all you have is Slack and Zoom, neither of which are good for shared 1-on-1 experiences. There's no chance to say "Hey, wanna run to Starbucks with me?"
I wouldn't give up remote work entirely, but I'm finding there's a lot left to be desired that would be met in an office. The office is the missing variable that gets people to spend sufficient amount of time together on shared goals. That's not easily going to be replicated by introducing yourself to random people in town.
- barefeg 4y agoCompletely understand your point of view. In my case, growing up I was interested in computers, and back then (late 90’ early 00’) kids my age were not into that. So after school I would roam forums. I would some times exchange IM with people I shared interests with, and chat with them every day. Most of them were adults and young adults, I didn’t know where they lived, how they looked, or their names. However I never felt the need to meet them in person. And my interactions felt as real (or even more) than interactions in the physical world. Fast forwarding to now, I find myself mentally fine when working from home. Of course things are different since I have family to interact with at home, but for me, not engaging with colleagues about non-work related things is what makes remote work not as fun as the olden times. This is also harder to arrange because my colleagues would rather go out or do something else rather that keep chatting with me about something else.
- scrollaway 4y agoMeetup works great in many cities and plenty of young people use it. If you’re joining a tricot or bingo group though don’t be surprised at finding yourself surrounded with “retirement age” members. In some cities it’s unused though. When I lived in Athens it was terrible, just crypto groups used it.
- ravenstine 4y agoThat has not been my experience in the LA region for many years. Some get some RSVPs, but be prepared for everyone to drop out the very last minute or not show up. Long ago, it was pretty great.
- scrollaway 4y agoI'm sorry to hear that. FWIW I've also seen a decline in quality post-COVID (especially of events), but Meetup has remained an incredible source of friendships, social events, and great intros in Belgium.
- op00to 4y agoI make friends with parents of my kids classmates, neighbors, people of similar interests that I run into at the cafe. I started a new job and I’m not bummed that I don’t have any “friends” there yet.
- JohnFen 4y ago> Yeah... good luck with that. I have had very good luck with that, thank you. That doesn't work for you -- you find friendships in the workplace. That's great, too. Clearly, neither approach is the right one for everybody.