How common is it to have friends from work, hang out with them after work, on weekends and help them out with personal stuff?

26 comments

1. Very rarely the company will sponsor an activity outside of business hours.

   But none of my colleagues are personal friends. And in those events, a lot of the focus of conversation is what we all have in common: our employment at the same company.

2. Like in a TV show when their entire world revolves around The Office and because the show doesn’t want to build a world of 100 actors? Never.

   Making a friend at work? Fairly common.

3. Pretty common imo. At least for people in their 20s

4. My company does sponsor outside of work activities. As far as hanging out with coworkers on weekends, for me it is very limited. I try to avoid my professional relationships from becoming personal but there are a few people I do see occasionally.

5. Common when you’re younger, but when you’re in your 30s and have a family and already more friends than you have time to regularly see, less common.

6. Really depends on the job. If you have a case knit group at work you’re likely to do stuff outside work. We play poker with my husband’s work friends.

7. Depends on the culture.

   I’ve worked at horrible companies where people don’t want to do anything that reminds them of work.

   My current employer is very different. We all genuinely like each other. The company sponsors events regularly. We add fun things to our regular meetings. I’ll go grab dinner with colleagues outside of dinner.

8. I’m friendly with coworkers, but I wouldn’t call them friends. I hangout with people I knew in college/people from church. But other coworkers are definitely friends and hangout with each other outside the office

9. I have one close friend from work that I hang out with regularly. That’s the exception, most people never have too strong of a connection to their coworkers even if they get along well.

10. Hanging out with people after work and hanging out with them on weekends are two vastly different things IMO.

    I’ve gone out with tons of people for lunch or for drinks immediately after work. A very tiny percentage of those people have I done anything with at a time that’s not associated with work, ie a weekend or even hanging with someone after you’ve left that job.

    There’s kind of a hump you have to get over from being a work friend to being a real friend. You have to trust the person and let your guard down a bit and do and say things you wouldn’t around work friends.

    Generally, only real friends would come help you with personal stuff, or do stuff with you on weekends. As others have pointed out, the older you get, the less likely someone new will covert from a work friend to a real friend.

11. The job I just left very common, I was there for 5 years. It was a wide age range but less than 30 employees so we all knew each other very well. Celebrated birthdays and would have occasional dinners

12. Even my strongest work friends never become real friends. The last thing I would do is hang out with someone from work.

13. I have gone through periods in my career where I had a work “group.” Then someone moves on, responsibilities change, and that ends. I had one leading into the pandemic. Everyone from that group (except me,) has changed jobs.

    When they happen, it’s fun, and when they don’t, I’m just working with my colleagues.

    Actually, the older I get, the more I start to think that I don’t want to cross that boundary again. There’s a benefit to keeping work and life separate.

14. I used to work at a small town hospital and many of us from different departments would get together outside of work for various activities (dinner, tubing/kayaking, painting, pottery making, etc).

    I moved to the main hospital in our health system and the people there are so miserable and want no part of even getting to know most people they work with.

    I miss the comraderie and friendliness of my previous workplace.

15. Common everywhere I’ve worked, I’m in my early 30s for context.

16. I’m in my 40s. I’d say about half the friends I have made and kept since college were from work. Some of my closest friends are from old jobs. You spend 8-10 hours a day with people for months/years you’re bound to develop a relationship with some of them.

17. It depends on the work culture. I’m lucky to work with people I do indeed consider friends, and when we were in the same office we’d often go out after work or help each other with personal projects.

    I’m no longer in the same office (I work from home in a state none of them reside), but we still hang out on Zoom to watch movies or play games together. It’s really no different from my other long distance friends.

18. I have had some extremely good friends at work.

    I still hang out with and talk to my former supervisor. He will try to recruit me back to my old job every now and then but he’s a good friend.

    My dad works at a smallish surgery center with 11 partners that own it. Some of his colleagues are some of our closest long term family friends. I have been to their houses for Christmas and Hanukkah parties, summertime get togethers, and played with their kids growing up. When my dads mentor passed away we all went to his funeral.

    Making friends from work is extremely common. I know some people that like to keep their work separate from their social life but I think that is a minority view. There’s also a gradient. A lot of people will go out for lunch or after dinner drinks with colleagues but don’t make friends with them to the point of having them over on the weekends.

19. Some of the best friends I’ve made were through work and continued being good friends after we left for other opportunities. But that was mostly when I was younger. As I get older it’s less common and I just want to go home to my wife and kid.

20. Depends on the workplace and the people who work there.

    Some jobs a lot of us would hangout after work or grill on a weekend or two a month.

    Some jobs hell no.

21. Never in my workplace. Even for team building planned happy hour almost nobody goes.

22. It depends on the work culture as well as the individual person. Pre-pandemic, I worked for some companies where employee bonding was encouraged through company-sponsored events like happy hours and (on several occasions) weekend trips to all-inclusive resorts. The result was that employees would develop some strong friendships, and I’ve even been to some of their weddings before.

    On the other hand, some companies don’t have any of that going on. Usually they are companies where the workforce is has higher turnover and there isnt an expectation that most people will still work there in a year or 2, but even some companies with low turnover can still have dead employee culture if the company puts no effort into it.

    Of course, some individuals don’t care to bond with their colleagues in such a way, and that’s fine too.

23. Almost all of my adult friends are people I met through work. Taking the step into friendship outside of work can be hard, but it’s lead to some great relationships.

24. My colleagues are nice, but I want nothing to do with them after hours.

25. Been there, tried that, it’s s TERRIBLE decision. I actively avoid mixing my personal and work lives.

26. Extremely common if you are younger. Actually I would say that most people do if they works with others around their age.
     

    As you get older the weekend parties and stuff just are not as common.