Friends at work

Not having friends at work is wearing me down. There aren’t very many people with whom I’d enjoy spending lunch. The ones I would enjoy having lunch with, they have very hectic schedules and not much time to eat as it is.

Having a group of friends that work at another company together and seem to neglect inviting me out to lunch any more is also wearing me down.  Especially after I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion that I miss the lunches we used to have together.  I’d like to think that it’s not on purpose, but knowing that my friends have gone out to lunch with another mutual friend that doesn’t work with them makes me feel hurt when I’m not invited as well. I think I’ve become oversensitive to it because of the fact I spend my days in an office that is a shell of what it used to be and that I don’t get to see my friends at work like they do.  In fact, they get to see the same friends after work. But all of this is another rant.

Where I work used to be fun. There used to be over 40 people in my department alone and we were all friends. Almost all of us had been to a happy hour together a time or two and most of us even more so. And it wasn’t just people in my department we were friends with.  Every department had its people with whom we’d all hang out (and some of us do more than just hang out). We formed flag football tournaments. We’d have house parties. We’d go clubbing on Thursdays, stay after-hours, sleep in our cars in the office parking lot, and go back to work at 7am wearing the same clothes we had on the night before (at least until we realized it was going to happen frequently and left spare clothes in our cars). It was fun to go into work.

Unfortunately, after a company spin-off and major layoffs, that changed the dynamic of a lot of things.  People move on and grow apart when they’re no longer working together and have other things entering their lives (like marriage, children, moving out of state, etc.).

I know it’s called “work” for a reason, but I miss when my office place was fun. I long for a workplace like that again. If not for the extreme flexibility I have where I’m at now and the pay I get, I think I’d be hard pressed to look for another job. Perhaps I should anyway and deal with the pay cut. At least maybe I’d make some new friends—ones that want to go to lunch with me; ones with whom I’d enjoy having lunch. I need social interaction!