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[verbena]

Bottom line: colleagues are NOT your friends.

I'm sorry to hear that your colleagues were not your friends, but that's just not true for everyone. 

Some of my closest friends are my colleagues at my current institution. Some are more senior than I, some more junior. I'm friends with some of the staff as well. I'm sure there are lots of people who think this is not possible, but the fact is, I'm friends -- in general -- with people I like who also like me. Some of them I meet through work. 

As for this line about inviting people for lunch and not really meaning it, that can be true all over the world. It says nothing about U.S. culture. And in any case Merce is from the U.S.A., right?

In general I'm not so fond of generalizations.

[alleyoxenfree]

I'm of no use to them, and they've only got so much time.

This is the essence of most academic and work relationships I have experienced.  If I'm of use, they're friendly.  And when I'm not, suddenly they're not.  I have gone way out on limbs for work friends on multiple occasions, only to find that that friendship meets no reciprocity.  Be friendly back, but don't invest heavily. 

[buglet]

I'm of no use to them, and they've only got so much time.

This is the essence of most academic and work relationships I have experienced.  If I'm of use, they're friendly.  And when I'm not, suddenly they're not.  I have gone way out on limbs for work friends on multiple occasions, only to find that that friendship meets no reciprocity.  Be friendly back, but don't invest heavily. 

Chime. And being "of use" generally means to be so in the next few months or so.  Doesn't matter if you were of great use in the past, if you aren't exploitable now, they don't know you.   Also, it is often more to your advantage if you let people do things for you, rather than the other way around.   People who know they "owe you" for multiple favours tend to avoid you like the plague.

That's why my real friends now are outside of work.  The most I'll do with work colleagues is have a coffee or lunch.  Friendly, but not really friends.  And, that seems appropriate.

[tolerantly]

All of this is why I love to work part-time. You never become involved in the politics because you aren't there enough, and haven't enough stake or ambition, to be useful to whoever's trying to push an agenda.  People need someone disinterested to vent to, and they'll be genuine with you if you have absolutely no power and appear uninterested in acquiring any.  You don't gossip about staplers and moved cheese because you genuinely don't give a rat's ass. A few months or years later, you leave, and they remember you fondly ever after.

[sunny_side_up]

Friendly with colleagues is good, being friends is not so good. I had to learn this the hard way as well. In grad school things were different. We were all in the same boat. And although we were competitive we were not back-stabbing competitive. Now, I have to be very careful about what I tell colleagues because it will be used against me. Let's say, you talk about your long-distance SO and colleague will tell everybody that you won't stay in your job anyway. Let's say, you talk about a health concern and colleague will tell everybody that you will be a liability for the department and will not be able to stay productive, etc. It influences the way people see you at work. If your "friend" is someone you can't talk to about stuff they are not really friends.

[merce]

... Let's say, you talk about your long-distance SO and colleague will tell everybody that you won't stay in your job anyway. ...

This is a perfect example.

This happened to a friend of mine at her U.  Someone she thought was a friend went in to see the chair and casually dropped that my friend probably wouldn't be staying around since her S.O. was long-distance. Which was not at all true. The chair took it very seriously and my friend ended up really having to work hard to prove her commitment to the place.

[verbena]

... Let's say, you talk about your long-distance SO and colleague will tell everybody that you won't stay in your job anyway. ...

This is a perfect example.

This happened to a friend of mine at her U.  Someone she thought was a friend went in to see the chair and casually dropped that my friend probably wouldn't be staying around since her S.O. was long-distance. Which was not at all true. The chair took it very seriously and my friend ended up really having to work hard to prove her commitment to the place.

Or it could work the other way. There have been rumors about my commitment to my own institution since the week I was hired. My colleagues, dean, dept chair when I had one--I mean before I became one--ask me at least annually about whether I'll stay on. I'm sure there are all sorts of rumors, some of which might even be true. As far as I can tell, they've all worked in my favor as much as anything else.

People talk. Friends talk. Sometimes it's terrible, and sometimes it's actually beneficial. Merce, for all you know your friend would have had to "prove her commitment to the place" even if no one had told the chair about the long-distance love. You sound a bit as if you're casting about looking for validation for something you very much want to believe about "colleagues" so that you don't have to think too much about your own responsibility for the disintegration of your friendship.

As my dean once very wisely said to me, "faculty turnover can be a good thing for an institution." This idea that institutions will see departure, or thoughts of a departure, as a betrayal -- well, that's not always true.

[merce]

Oh, I have no worries about my not playing a significant role in the "disintegration" of the 2 friendships in question.  Besides, it is irrelevant to the question. I'm just curious.


My question was prompted by the remark of a foreign academic at another institution who said one shouldn't expect friendship from or attempt to befriend colleagues. 

I'm just curious as to whether others feel the same. 


I don't expect scientific data, only opinions that will have been arrived at through personal anecdotes (the anecdotes are just interesting and not necessary to answering the question). 

The anecdote I just cited is not a "maybe" she had to work harder, her chair consistently asked her if she would be leaving to be with her S.O. point blank and asked her to prove this point blank on various occasions.

[verbena]

The anecdote I just cited is not a "maybe" she had to work harder, her chair consistently asked her if she would be leaving to be with her S.O. point blank and asked her to prove this point blank on various occasions.

I was asked that too, once, by a senior colleague, in a roundabout way. On the other hand, I've been granted a great deal of extra leeway because of my ... commitments elsewhere. So I guess I'm just saying -- sorry, repeating -- that while I'm sure you'll find lots of evidence to support the claim of the foreign scholar at the other institution, you could also find evidence of quite the opposite if you looked for it.

[kedves]

I think there are some features of academic life--including the competitive structure of jobs,  the long duration of people in the jobs, ideas about the relative positions of people in the jobs, and the personalities of people who tend to become academics--that make forming and maintaining close friendships more difficult than in some other work settings.  At least that's been my experience, thinking about my pre-academic career vs. grad-school vs. academic phases.  It is possible and worth trying.  It doesn't and can't happen easily or quickly, though, and might not happen at all.  It's certainly safer to focus elsewhere, if risk is a concern.

[ideagirl]

I'm a true nerd.
My discipline prompts some weird looks when I tell people what I do and my field even weirder remarks.
I've been a nerd forever and in academia all my life in a sense.

Grad school was like coming home, finding a family and my program (probably because of my discipline) was a safe, healthy place to make friends and truly share life's experiences and personal feelings....

My cohort seemed like a family until a few months into our first year (last year) with a first weird mix of someone's home life creating feelings of awkwardness, then another's, then my own. Then twice now I've had colleagues privilege their desire for a relationship with someone I introduced them to over our friendship and/or our position of having to work together. 

Can you be more specific without risking your anonymity? It's hard to provide advice based on such abstractions. What does it mean to "privilege their desire for a relationship with someone I introduced them to over our friendship and/or our position of having to work together"? For example, do you mean you've twice introduced a colleague to someone else and then the colleague started going out with that person and having less time for you? If so, that's perfectly normal--a single person likely has more time for you than someone who's in the thrall of a new relationship. If not... well, I can't offer any advice without having a better sense of what actually happened.

A former colleague new to US Academia said I made the mistake of believing I could have true relationships with colleagues and that in this country one gets the impression people want to be your friend when in fact they are only cultivating a colleague.

How sad.
Truly depressing.

Your former colleague echoes some Europeans I've known who, after a brief and relatively superficial experience of the US, come to kind of stupid conclusions. Yes, it's true that it's part of our culture to act friendly, to a degree that in Europe (and many other places) interpret as either being insincere or as meaning something that it doesn't mean (case in point: French men very often feel like they're being hit on constantly, simply because French women don't smile anywhere near as much as American women do). But to go from there to a sweeping conclusion that it's impossible to have true relationships with colleagues...?!? That's just stupid, seriously.

[sunny_side_up]

Actually, it might not matter if your chair sees it as an advantage or a disadvantage. The thing is, it bothers me if a "friend" tries to get an advantage over me by telling personal information about me that he only has access to because we are "friends". If he is successful in undermining me at work is secondary.

... Let's say, you talk about your long-distance SO and colleague will tell everybody that you won't stay in your job anyway. ...

This is a perfect example.

This happened to a friend of mine at her U.  Someone she thought was a friend went in to see the chair and casually dropped that my friend probably wouldn't be staying around since her S.O. was long-distance. Which was not at all true. The chair took it very seriously and my friend ended up really having to work hard to prove her commitment to the place.

Or it could work the other way. There have been rumors about my commitment to my own institution since the week I was hired. My colleagues, dean, dept chair when I had one--I mean before I became one--ask me at least annually about whether I'll stay on. I'm sure there are all sorts of rumors, some of which might even be true. As far as I can tell, they've all worked in my favor as much as anything else.

People talk. Friends talk. Sometimes it's terrible, and sometimes it's actually beneficial. Merce, for all you know your friend would have had to "prove her commitment to the place" even if no one had told the chair about the long-distance love. You sound a bit as if you're casting about looking for validation for something you very much want to believe about "colleagues" so that you don't have to think too much about your own responsibility for the disintegration of your friendship.

As my dean once very wisely said to me, "faculty turnover can be a good thing for an institution." This idea that institutions will see departure, or thoughts of a departure, as a betrayal -- well, that's not always true.

[bud04]

Competitiveness may well be a part of the problem. But in my experience, the biggest problem is your own expectations. If you don't have expectations that these people will be real friends then you will not be hurt. I unfortunately have learned this the hard way. I thought someone was a real friend in my department and enjoyed hu's friendship so much, that I dropped my guard and treated hu as a real friend and expected that hu really cared about me too. It turned out as so many of you also learned the hard way, that hu was just using me for what I could do for hu (which was a great deal). It has taken me years to learn to deal with this person. So yes, befriending colleagues can be dangerous. You must very carefully assess the person to see if they deserve your friendship. If not, just be polite to them and treat them as people you work with and nothing more. You may find friendship with individuals from other departments but even there be careful if you work at a small school. And yes, this is very sad but unfortunately is reality as is reflected in many of the other posts here. It just takes one wrong friend to really hurt or sabotage your career.

[bud04]

lizzy what a very good question. I am afraid that I am very much like you when it comes to hu. I don't want to be around hu unless it is absolutely necessary and many times I withdraw if I know hu is involved in an activity so I don't have to be around hu or see hu. But where the difference is and where I have a way to deal with hu is in four ways:

(1) I am a full Professor and tenured and hu isn't. You would think hu might think about hu's actions around me but hu doesn't.

(2) I know hu will leave eventually. I will do nothing to stand in the way of hu leaving. In fact, I will help hu if I can so hu can leave faster.

(3) Hu thinks hu is smarter than hu is. Hu also thinks that all like hu. Hu is deluded. Hu will be shown this year to all to be who hu really is. So I just have to wait hu out. Hu is self-destructing.

(4) I know karma really happens to people. I have seen it. You just have to be patient. Bad karma is coming for hu.

So hang in there lizzy. Hopefully your hu will end up where my hu ends up and they can screw each other over! Until then, stay away from hu and focus on yourself and your own career.     

[bud04]

Dear All,
         My post from yesterday afternoon has weighed heavily on my mind since I wrote it. I think it is a great example of the problems inherent with becoming friends with a colleague. There are those who have written who have found great happiness and the joys of friendship with some of their colleagues. I too count myself lucky in that regard. However the relationship that I referred to above is indeed a cautionary tale of what can happen when such relationships go wrong. I don't think that having friendhips with colleagues is wrong----indeed----they can be very healthy and wonderful in the workplace. But it is the individuals who use the context of friendship for other purposes who are dangerous in the workplace. Too many people (including myself) have been used by individuals who don't value the relationship known as "friendship" but use it as a means for their own ambitions, entitlements, amusement, etc. It is this betrayal that can be so harmful not only to the people involved but to a whole department who can see what is happening. The betrayal and the resulting loss of trust is what is so harmful. And the effects of this betrayal and loss of trust last for years as you can ascertain from so many of the posts above including mine and lizzy's. These are the colleagues you must not befriend because they can hurt you deeply and also cause harm to your career as well as your relationships with others in your workplace.

      I wish I could say that I know how to identify easily who these people are who will betray you but I can't. Some individuals are so good at hiding their true identities and characters. Because of this, all of us must be careful--- as we must be in life as well--- so we are not hurt. And if we do offer friendship to someone that betrays us, then we must be prepared to move on with our shattered hearts and try to find a way to deal with that person as well as the hurt and pain they leave behind in our hearts and souls. It won't be easy as lizzy and I have stated above since you don't even want to be around the person. But you must since you work with them. Also be prepared because once you have unmasked these people and seen them for who they really are, they can become more dangerous to you because many will try to continue to hurt and discredit you. They are even more dangerous because they know you know their authentic selves as well as they know too much about you.

      So please be careful who you befriend at work. Real friendship is such a wonderful relationship and a gift we can give to others. Don't waste it on people who are not deserving of such a gift from you.

A much wiser but still hurt Bud