Friends

Lovely gift from one of my besties from the Firm

Last week I met our team's former intern. She left in March to take on her first permanent job that was advertised with a fancy title and really interesting sounding description. Truth be told, I almost envied her, it sounded so cool. I was really happy for her to have landed such a great position. Two months on, she is quite desillusioned and told me that she was little more than a glorified admin and afraid she would gradually forget everything she had learnt at our company. She was not even sure if there was a silver lining on the horizon and she should stick it out much longer. My first question was "But the people there are nice, aren't they?" (For the record: they are). This really shows my personal priorities: I could pretty much work in a coalmine or a chain gang and would be willing to bear it, just as long as I had nice colleagues. This was the case at Household Name from the very beginning - the fact that this lovely intern messaged me to say she missed me is evidence enough and I get on well with every one of my team mates, continuing to bake for them just like I had done for my previous colleagues and all that. 

Even so, it has mainly been a strictly-work relationship and I sometimes miss the after work socialising I had enjoyed with colleagues from the Firm. Funnily enough, when I first started there, I was not quite prepared to erase the boundary between colleagues and friends quite so vehemently and sometimes felt like I was a member of a cult of some sort. Fast forward 10 years and it really struck me that the division between work and life was once more very clear now that I was the new kid on the block. Just as I had almost resigned myself to the fact that it might stay like this forever, I began hanging out with a colleague (not in my immediate team) who in fact started the same week I did and whom I had hit it off with immediately, outside work. It really makes me happy to have a friend and confidant at work...and somebody to tell my friends and family about. A few months ago my mother quite probingly asked what my colleagues were like, adding "Dad also said to me that he found it strange that you don't talk about your colleagues any more. We felt we knew all those people from the Firm just from your stories".  

I know quite a few people who actually prefer to keep their business and private personas separate and like to keep a distance to work mates. I am SO not one of them and once more got proof that my appreciation of my workplace exponentially increases when I find a true friend there.