Talking at work

I'm one of those annoying people who acts the same in work as I do out of work. If you don't like it then that's your problem not mine.

We spend so many hours of our lives in a working environment, sometimes as much as 12 hours a day. I feel like it would stunt my own personality if I was forced to act or conduct myself in a way that was restricting. Screw that, it would change someone into a boring old sod that is more likely to act like they have been forced to at work out of work.

Saying that I have just come out of employment in an office doing analytic technical support and now I'm a self employed Carpenter.

No HR personality curbing documents to sign
 
Thankfully we are all 25-38 age range, and can generally talk about whatever, even with it being 80% female.
 
The trick to these interactions is using them as an opportunity to make common ground. Or something which will allow a follow up conversation. This then opens people up to talking about things that are of interest and you move from small talk into good conversation.

Ultimately if you have nothing to talk about, don’t force yourself to be ‘nice’ and create conversation. I’m my team is too large to know everyone really well and I’m on a mission to waste less energy by ‘being nice’ anyway.

Even something as frank as “man, I am really bored!” can open people up.
 
When I was younger and in a working environment I would listen to what people liked talking about, usually something on tv, then go watch it and look up some information, then join in the conversation.

Though it was easier for me as it was all males, so the subject was football.

As yourself, how can I become more relatable?
 
I've been here for 6 years so lots of my colleagues are good friends too. I don't always have anything to say to them, as usually happens when you spend loads of time around people, but when I see them I've no problem having a chat. Personally, I'm not a fan of small talk so I hope it's normally a meaningful conversation!
 
I try to avoid most people day to day. I can't be arsed with the brown nosing done by most, so I know I'd never climb the ladder as I'm just not down for that crap. Headphones on, smash out work.
 
Just to point out that (in my view) this is nothing to do with "climbing the corporate ladder" or "schmoozing with the boss" or whatever. It's just average, normal, day to day conversations. I work in a company of less than 20 people, there's no ladder to be climbed.
 
Rroff said:
I've rarely found common ground with anyone socially. Fortunately most of the people I work with are easy going so we kind of drift in and out of conversation without there being anything awkward, etc.

One thing I find a bit problematic is that even today so much conversation revolves around what is on TV and pretty much my whole life I couldn't care less what is on TV especially these days of on demand and so much of it I find garbage anyhow.
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You just brought back memories of a place I worked at during the nineties.

Friends was all the rage at work amongst other TV programmes.

Guess who had never watched Friends at all (or like yourself) pretty much zero TV either.
 
Kelt said:
Friends
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Ah yeah :| I can't even describe how little interest I have in Friends but for awhile it was all more than half of work at the time would talk about :|

(To be fair I did/do watch Top Gear which some find utterly tripe as well hah).
 
flibbage0 said:
Anyone here struggle to find common ground with people at work?

I don't work at one fixed place, but to be honest most of my work colleagues are middle aged women and as nice as they are, I struggle to find anything in common to talk about other than asking where they're going on holiday

Normally it wouldn't bother me but it makes it extremely boring and now I rarely talk to anyone

Anyone else share a similar issue?
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I take it you don't like food?

Tbh it sounds like you are the issue here not them.

A lot of work conversations revolve around. What we are doing at the weekend, holidays, what we had for dinner last night or making tonight. What we have in for lunch. What new series they can recommend, etc. The football if it's the guys. Gin if it's women.

Basically anything and everything.

If you are struggling to talk to people it sounds like you have social issues tbh. You could stick me in a room with randoms and I'll chat to them. I traveled 4 hours to a job interview last month and i started chatting to the staff there as well as the other candidates, etc.
 
Mr.Shabz said:
Open office, hot-desking and skeleton staff left after redundancies, means you could be sat on your own all day if no one comes in to the office, so always grateful of any kind of chat.
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Similar my side. There are lots of people here but most are from other teams of onshored people. So I don't work directly with them and a lot don't speak English around me. Most of my old team have been made redundant. Add hot desking into the mix and socially it's a horrible place to work. It's a shame because it used to be great socially and we work in the middle of a lot of bars and restaurants.

I have considered leaving recently as I do prefer a more social workplace.
 
your first mistake is thinking you need things in common to talk to people about, you don't, you just need to ask questions, listen and ask questions again.

If you don't know about a topic, use it as an excuse to learn about it. The more you know about them the easier the small talk gets.

I struggle with small talk, spent 10 years in warehousing working with Polish lads and they don't chit chat. You learn not to talk or miss it.

Now, I work in a small team. One lad likes to talk about work, cars and family. The other 2 team members talk about all sorts of things even if I know nothing about it so I just let them talk.

90% of my chat would be classed as fake, I don't really care but showing an interest is all that matters. Most of it would be forgotten within months if not weeks of walking away from them, hell, most people will tell you the same thing multiple times as though it's the first, if they can't remember what they've said why should we :D
 
Lopéz said:
No. I can talk to pretty much anyone about anything, regardless of whether it's something I'm particularly well versed on or interested in.
In work, at home, in the pub, whatever - it's all the same.
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I'm much the same, I'm easy going and can talk to anyone. Rather fun hearing people's stories and lives.

Once got stuck in a car share with a bloke for 9 hours, never met him before, regularly out for a drink now whenever I'm over in Hamburg.
 
Where I currently work is exactly the same, it's a very small family run business (I am the only outsider of the family in the office) and we have zero common interests, it's crap, they like rugby, i like football, they don't talk about TV shows or anything, there is zero chit chat going on to even begin a benign conversation.

Last place i worked was amazing, lots of people with common ground, and made a lot of friends there.

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This made me laugh lol
 
@ttaskmaster completey disagree! Being frank allows people to express what they are actually thinking about work, rather than trite conversation.

In some contexts it could be totally pointless though, sure!

All too nuanced to be detailed in a few forum posts of course :)
 
Some years ago, while helping an organisation to develop a management training scheme I attended a course called "Putting People First". The lecturer on this course said that if you wanted to, you could ALWAYS find a topic about which a person was passionate and happy to discuss.

If you couldn't the problem was with you, not them. I have never forgotten this lesson.
 
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