good things that came from socializing with coworkers: jobs offers, knitting, mac and cheese, and more

Last week we talked about good things that came from socializing with coworkers, and you shared so many great stories that I had to break up my favorites into two parts! Part one was Monday, and here’s part two.

1. The monthly knitting lunches

Early in my career I noticed that the people who went to monthly knitting lunches also talked about work during them. The knitting group crossed team and department boundaries. I joined and learned to knit, and it was one of the best things I’ve done in my career. Connecting with the people who wanted to make things led me to so many interesting work relationships and genuine friendships. And it also brought my creative side back to life and nurtured my ability to balance my data focused job and my love of the visual arts, which I’d given up after high school.

2. The intimidating coworker

I had a coworker I was super intimidated by at first. She’s actually a lovely person, just very assertive and direct, but I was coming off a pretty toxic workplace and to me that just read as “scary.” Work lunches were where I got to know her well enough to recognize her vibe and not be anxious every time I talked to her.

3. The monthly happy hours

My job is managing regulatory compliance, which can sometimes make me “the bad guy” since I’m telling people what they can and can’t do. I started going to a monthly happy hour with folks from the operations group I work with and I can definitely tell it’s helped our work interactions for them to know me as a person and not just the coworker who gives them extra work. They feel more comfortable asking me questions and bringing me potential problems before they become an issue.

4. The Dungeons and Dragons group

Early in my career (around 7-8 years ago?), I joined a weekly after-work Dungeons and Dragons game with coworkers across the organization. I can’t really understate the impact that’s had on my life, personally and professionally!

Professionally, these friends have helped me get jobs at other organizations (and vice versa), helped get intel on different areas of organizations, and generally just been an incredibly effective network that has helped all of us move up in our careers.

Personally, I’ve become close with 3-4 of them from the original group. We help each other move, we dog-sit, we still play DnD together, and we’ve also had the opportunity to help support the original dungeon master from the group in a combination broken leg and cancer situation (it’s a long story, but he’s gonna be okay). Our own social networks have been expanded by meeting other people’s friends. There’s more than I can really list here that I’ve benefitted from!

We all agree that it was SUCH a positive and life changing experience to just join the weekly DnD group at the diner a couple blocks away.

5. The bird-watching

One of my coworkers used to lead birding walks at lunch. I got hooked, and now I’m a birdwatcher.

6. The insight

I hosted an event, and when it was over, a couple of people stayed late to help put the furniture back in order, and we were chatting. One of them, a woman, was swearing a lot. The other, a man, commented on how much she was swearing. That led to a deep conversation about why she was swearing so much (because it gains her traction in our very male-dominated industry) and I co-signed that I know lots of women who do that. His perspective on women who swear generally, and what it’s like for women in our industry, completely changed, and he became an active voice for inclusion from them on.

7. The new hire

Our organization has two huge social events each year: a holiday party and an “autumn celebration.” We used to have a “summer celebration” but too many people were off on holidays so they moved it to the beginning of September when a lot of people were relived that school was back in session.

Anyway, I hate these things. I like my departement, though! We have smaller events and lunches that I genuinely enjoy. I am happy to attend those. But these big, huge, all-company events are meant so you can network and socialize and meet people you don’t normally work with and all that jazz, and I am not a very extroverted person.

I know I still have to play the game, however, so I make myself go to the holiday party but I let myself skip the fall one. One year I had a new coworker join us two days before our fall party. On our immediate team, it’s just me and her, plus our manager. She’s quite young, probably at least two decades younger than me (I’m 54).

Personally, I couldn’t think of anything worse than going to a giant, 400-person social party when I’d only been somewhere for two days, so I bit the bullet and went, just so that our new employee wouldn’t feel totally alone. It turned out she is as introverted as I am. She stuck close to me, I could point out the important execs to her, we had a couple drinks, and I taught her how best to “be seen” by the higher-ups and then sneak out early.

I hated every single minute of it. But afterwards, our working relationship was SO GOOD. It wasn’t rough before at all (again, she’d only been here two days), but I really think going there to be her Friendly Face Party Companion went a long way to making her feel welcome at a new place, and built a really solid foundation for an excellent work relationship.

8. The cooking hobby

Back in the day (1990’s), we had lots of company potlucks.

One guy was very into cooking. Brought some really good food every time. In addition, every day he brought some very interesting lunch fare he’d cooked himself. Sometimes he’d bring in an experiment – like using five spice powder in gingerbread cake instead of ginger. It was pretty good!

This got me interested in cooking.

He’d recommend cookbooks or hacks. (Ever make Kraft mac & cheese with yogurt instead of butter? Very good!) We’d read all sorts of cooking magazines and discuss recipes, ingredients or techniques. I enjoyed these conversations very much!

I cook for myself to this day.

9. The bond

I had a colleague once who actively disliked me (she told me to my face she considered me uppity and overconfident, so, okay, whatever). But when I mentioned to her at a social function that my son had a disability, her entire demeanor changed. Turns out she was the primary caregiver to a sibling with a disability, and suddenly she saw me differently – instead of “uppity” she saw me as “fellow caregiver.” Her approach to me was completely different after that day.

10. The bowling conversation

Had a job in my 20s where we had fairly regular, optional happy hours that were attended by a small, rotating group. Having this opportunity for casual conversations with my coworkers and some managers helped me form connections that improved our working relationships. It also led to some more candid conversations about personalities, expectations, and politics than I would’ve been brave enough to broach in a more professional setting.

The best thing that happened was that once while bowling, a manager on another team asked me where I saw my career going. She had an opening on her team that I secretly wanted but didn’t think I would be a strong enough candidate for. I told her as much (probably only because I had been drinking!) and she encouraged me to apply. I ended up getting it and it was the exact career pivot from one niche in our field to another that I had been looking for. Every positive thing in my career journey I can basically tie back to that conversation.

11. The discoveries

I really enjoy socializing with my coworkers. Frankly, they’re one of the best things about my job: bright, hardworking, friendly, collaborative, pleasantly geeky, and fun. Even if I don’t sit with the people I’m closest to at a work event, I can always find something to chat about with the folks I’m sitting with. I’ve picked up recommendations for books, movies, TV shows, restaurants, and makeup more times than I can count. I’ve also had so many opportunities to learn things about the jobs of people not on my own team, helping me to better understand the big picture of our department’s work. I’ve even found out that frustrating things that I thought I was stuck with could actually be fixed or changed quite easily if I just asked!

12. The realization

I worked for a company for about a year as a contractor. The company itself was staffed almost entirely by freelancers (most of whom had been working for the 1 or more years) and everyone worked fully remote, so asides from seeing a few faces in the odd meeting, I generally didn’t know anyone else working there except for my boss.

About six months after I started, the company decided they wanted to have an away day for two days so we could all get to know each other better and find ways of working more effectively as a team/company. The first night was great and everyone was getting along super well, but the real bonding began on night two when all the bosses/directors (i.e., full-time staff) went out for a fancy dinner and the rest of us freelancers were left to do our own thing. We all went to a local bar, and without the bosses around we quickly started talking about what we really thought of working there. Over the course of the evening, we uncovered that some people were being underpaid, most of us were having issues being paid on time, and we had issues surrounding contracts and some fairly poor behavior from management. So many of these issues were things we had felt were just affecting us, and suddenly by talking with each other we realized that it was a much more widespread problem and that the company culture was actually a lot more toxic than we realized. It was such an eye-opening moment.

Needless to say none of us work there any more but we do have an amazing supportive group chat (made in that same bar on the away day) and we still regularly meet for lunch.

13. The job offer

I had recently graduated from a professional program and was attending an event for people in the field hosted by one of my clinical sites. When people found out I was actively seeking employment, I got two interviews, one of which ended with a job offer. I start next month!

14. The nature path

We would have health hikes occasionally at my call center and discovered a nature path behind the building, which I was unaware. I have seen deer, ducks and a fox back there, and it helped to calm my mind. This got me into geocaching and exploring more urban areas, and parks and woods.

15. The move

At a holiday party, where my Big Boss had flown in, we started talking, and I mentioned (after a few drinks) that I wouldn’t mind moving if a position opened up. A few months later, when an opportunity with a new client opened up, he remembered our conversation and asked me to be part of the team. The company paid for my move. This really changed my life.

16. The impact

This isn’t related to one specific socializing event but it’s often easier to remember my coworkers are people if we’ve had a little social interaction. If I’ve only ever seen a coworker as a square on a video call, that can be a little dehumanizing. I noticed the difference when working with a coworker who was making mistakes, but also regularly ate lunch with the group of people in-office on a specific day, and I noticed that it made me much less frustrated with them than I felt in similar circumstances with people I had no connection with. (Or, like, I’d head to lunch annoyed with this co-worker and over the course of lunch I was just reminded that they’re a person, not just an invisible entity on the other side of the screen.) It’s hard to put words to but I do think it’s valuable.

17. The mentor

One of my first “career” jobs was as a lowly, grant-funded support role at the local public school district doing administrative tasks for the district-wide afterschool program. The director of that program had recruited me from a nonprofit where I was providing afterschool programming (and didn’t have health insurance, paid time off, or retirement benefits), so even though my salary didn’t move up, my quality of life did.

This director was my first and most pivotal mentor. She treated everyone with respect, except for leaders at the school district who couldn’t or wouldn’t do their jobs. She would occasionally (once every other month or so) take the team of 2-3 admin workers out for “team building meetings,” aka happy hour at the pub down the street. We’d have a beer and an app and shoot the shit – sometimes about work, sometimes about life. Through these occasional gatherings, I learned a bit more about navigating multiple layers of bureaucracy, how to be friendly but not too intimate with coworkers, and how to live a fulfilled and balanced life as a childfree adult.

Now that I’m almost the age she was when she hired me, I try to model her mentorship, kindness, and friendliness with my early career compatriots. She passed away rather suddenly almost a decade ago and I still think about her and miss her. The world is a worse place without her in it.

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