Work friends: gone but not forgotten

The other day in The Boston Globe there was a sweet piece by Beth Teitell, Where Have All the Work Friends Gone?

Good question.

It's been a long time since I went into the office, but one of the few things I miss about it was the work friends. 

Not the friend-friends. But the work friends.

I have a number of friend-friends, some of my dearest life friends, that I made at work. (Hi, V!) Right before the pandemic hit, I lost one of them. Nanni and I had been close friends for nearly forty years. She was old enough to be my mother, but we'd forged a friendship at work that stood the test of time. I'm eternally grateful for her friendship, and my friendships with other colleagues who've become friends over the years. Some I get together with regularly - or did, pre-COVID - others I see or email or text or call every once in a while. But there's no doubt in my mind that I'll cherish these friendships until I'm in my grave.

Even after these friends, like Nanni, are gone.

2019 and 2020 were tough years for true friends I made at work.

I wasn't as close to Scott as I was to Nanni, but we stayed in close-enough touch over the years, and when we would get together, we would be on the floor laughing about the crazy place we worked together. Scott was in sales and I was in marketing, and we had our share of adventures. What a good guy. We had been planning to get together for lunch that he had had to keep postponing. Multiple myeloma. Stem cell transplant. Didn't make it. He died right after the lockdown, so no wake, no funeral, no sharing laughs with the other colleagues, work friends, who would have been there. 

And lest I forget: I met my husband at work forty-five years ago (yikes!).

But there's another layer of work friends, and that's who Beth Teitell was talking about in her sweet piece: the folks you see regularly while you work together who make work a far more enjoyable and interesting place to be.

How many early evening hours, when every once else had pretty much gone home, did I spend hanging out chatting with Frank? He was one of the smartest and nicest guys I ever 
worked with, and we spent an awful lot of time chewing the work fat and just generally. I really enjoyed working with Frank although, in truth, it's been so long since I've seen him that I only barely remember what he looked like. Glasses, dirty blond hair... 

Paul had the office after mine, and for years he hosted an informal salon on Friday's at 5 p.m., where a bunch of us directors and VPs would gather to catchup and trade rumors.

And Ed. He was a wild man, but, boy, was he fun to work with. 

Tony was another one. Hysterically funny, right down to the Venus fly trap he kept in his office. 

Tom. Jon. Joe. Kevin.

Folks I enjoyed shooting the shit with, having lunch with. 

I liked hearing about their wives, their kids, their families, their new house, their old car, their vacation plans, their tennis game...

If it sounds like I was just work buds with guys, that's not the case. But I worked in tech, and men outnumbered women by a long shot.

Still, plenty of my work friends were women.

I haven't heard from Joan in years, but while we worked together, we had a cup of tea together pretty much every morning. We were both early-to-workers, and it was very pleasant to sit in her office of mine, at 7:30 a.m., before anyone else showed up, sipping our tea and catching up.

Donna. I miss Donna. Noelle. Susan. Liz. Christina. And Cathy. Cathy and I worked together at Wang and at lunch each day we took a long walk, airing our work grievances and yucking up a storm about how awful Wang was. One day, we even found ourselves lost and had to flag down a police car to guide us back to the Wang Towers. 

And my work husbands. 

Like many women I know, I always had one guy I was particularly tight with Bill. George. Ted. Steve.

George I'm still friendly with. But not as friendly as when we began each day on the phone, me at work, him calling from his commute. He even called me from the hospital when his wife was in labor. I told him to get back to his wife and hung up on him.

But Bill? Ted? Steve? I lost track of them years ago.

Work friends - the ones you chat with, lunch with, walk with, hang out at corporate meetings with, eat sheet cake with, roll your eyes at the same stupid things with, just get it. You can talk to them about things that have no meaning to outsiders: the idiot decisions made, the sneaky co-workers, the office politics, the fiascos. Your spouse, your family, your non-work friends really don't want to hear about the moronic email your boss just sent out, the blowup between the crazy VP and the not-so-crazy VP, the big win (or the big loss), the missed (or hit) deadline. 

You work friends are there for the scuttlebutt. And it's more than that. In the process of scuttlebutting, you learn about people's pasts, present, and future. 

No doubt about it, work friends make work a lot more enjoyable. And apparently, all those work friendships have a corporate upside. 

Studies show that people who have friends at work make more loyal and engaged employees. In human resources circles, friendship is considered an important retention factor. 

I know that work friends are seeing each other for Zoom meetings. They're texting each other. They may be enjoying a virtual Happy Hour. 

But it's not the same.

Post-pandemic, the work world will look like a different place, and word is that an awful lot of workers won't be going back to the office full-time. But if work becomes all virtual, there'll be something missing. And that's work friends. Hope it never happens.