I (briefly) worked for a company back in the mid 90s where pretty much any form of non-work interaction was frowned upon. Having spent a couple of months in on

I (briefly) worked for a company back in the mid 90s where pretty much any form of non-work interaction was frowned upon. Having spent a couple of months in one of their offices where things weren't too bad, I was then relocated to a new team in their head office. On my first morning, I thought I'd be friendly and said hello to my new colleagues and asked how their weekends had been. I got a couple of brief "it was OK" type responses from them and they immediately put their heads back down into their work. In the two weeks that I managed there before upping sticks and heading back to a previous company, that was probably the closest I got to a real conversation from anyone. It was the most soul destroying couple of weeks of my working life, and from the body language of the others there, I strongly suspect they felt the same about their job. When I handed my notice in, I finally got several people commenting on how lucky I was to be getting out. I told them that there were plenty of jobs out there, and they were almost certainly better than this one. I don't know whether it was connected, but in the months following my resignation, about half the team quit as well, prompting the CEO to start organising lunch sessions to find out why. One person told him honestly, and was promptly suspended.