Talking at work

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How much money has been stolen off you for things like birthday whip-rounds, baby showers, leaving-dos, etc... No bloke would ever organise these kind of things!

Aha aye man, too many bloody times! They know when to spring it on you too, right around pay day so you've got no excuse :/
 
Soldato
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Depending on the type of industry, i'd bet there's plenty more in a similar situation as you.

Unfortunately there will always be some people who think they're better than everyone else.

I work for a large software dev company, and everyone in the R&D organisation has a degree of some sort, and fits a fairly typical person profile. There's a range of personalities, and ages etc so it's nothing like discrimination, but you can usually tell if you're amongst like-minded people. Anyway we have a couple of guys who look after the data center, replacing failed components in servers, re-racking, connecting to network etc, and they're nothing like the "typical people" who works on the software dev side, but i've always had a good laugh with them over the years and would never consider yourself better than them, at the end of the day if the hardware goes **** up, then you can't do your job and so you do rely on them.

It's no different to the cleaning and catering team who look after the office building, they're contracted out by someone like G4S. But you see them day-in and day-out, so it's always polite and friendly to say hello and ask how their weekends have gone etc.
 
Soldato
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Aha aye man, too many bloody times! They know when to spring it on you too, right around pay day so you've got no excuse :/

Haha i can imagine! Thankfully i work in an office with about 90% blokes, so a birthday normally means the birthday boy/girl brings a cake in for everyone to stuff their faces with.

My missus used to sort out birthday whip-rounds for the girls in the office she works at, which was fine at the start when there was only about 8 of them, but it got a bit awkward when the team grew a bit, as you could hardly ask someone who only started a week ago to chip-in, and then what do you do when it's her birthday and she's technically not 'chipped in' to everyone else's.
 
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Depends where I'm working, If I have to travel it can be difficult as there are no other IT staff in our other offices, just normies.

No problems at my main place of work though, IT peeps generally like the same things. so there it's easy most of the time.
 
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It would be a bit boring day if I didn't. However how much and subject depends entirely on who I'm working with, how I feel, how much sleep I've had etc.
It can range from sparse meaningless idle chit to break up the day, to proper deep indepth debates and putting the World to rights. Some conversations would probably get us locked up/put on watch lists...:eek:

10-15 years ago I'd struggle to converse with even my closest friends, but I made a conscious decision back then to improve my confidence and social skills and made life so much less of a drag.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still firmly comfortable in silence and my own company and still prefer it at times, but I'm equally as happy in social situations and conversing with both friends, colleagues and strangers alike.
 
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Work is not a social gathering, its work.
i did not go to work to listen to inane drivel about someone elses life.
the women in the sales deptarment were the worst, just constant chat about holidays and grandchildren. Before i,m accused of complete sexism, thats not all women_i,ve worked with and under (no pun) and they have been top notch, and incases far better than me.
I think men had far less to chat about, certaibly in my day.
I tolerated the dreaded christmas 'do' but it was a total farce everytime. Basically like being in work but in casual clothes.It generally consisted of me and 2other guys from my dept getter drunk with the sales reps and havind a laugh,whilst everyone else sucked up to the bosses and pretended that was the real them.
Its farcical to try and mix the 2 environments
 
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Depending on the type of industry, i'd bet there's plenty more in a similar situation as you.

Unfortunately there will always be some people who think they're better than everyone else.

I work for a large software dev company, and everyone in the R&D organisation has a degree of some sort, and fits a fairly typical person profile. There's a range of personalities, and ages etc so it's nothing like discrimination, but you can usually tell if you're amongst like-minded people. Anyway we have a couple of guys who look after the data center, replacing failed components in servers, re-racking, connecting to network etc, and they're nothing like the "typical people" who works on the software dev side, but i've always had a good laugh with them over the years and would never consider yourself better than them, at the end of the day if the hardware goes **** up, then you can't do your job and so you do rely on them.

It's no different to the cleaning and catering team who look after the office building, they're contracted out by someone like G4S. But you see them day-in and day-out, so it's always polite and friendly to say hello and ask how their weekends have gone etc.

You're not wrong there.

Interesting that you mention the cleaning staff. I actually get on quite well with our building cleaners, and always respect them, as should everyone as they do a vital job that in all likelihood nobody else would ever want to do, but some of the people in here treat them like they're a piece of muck on their shoe. Makes me sick to be honest, I have no desire to be friends with anyone like that. I have no doubt that a few people in here think like that about me, but ultimately, most of them are usually nice enough to my face (when it suits), mainly I suspect because they want me to fix their problem for them.
 
Soldato
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Work is not a social gathering, its work.
i did not go to work to listen to inane drivel about someone elses life.
the women in the sales deptarment were the worst, just constant chat about holidays and grandchildren. Before i,m accused of complete sexism, thats not all women_i,ve worked with and under (no pun) and they have been top notch, and incases far better than me.
I think men had far less to chat about, certaibly in my day.
I tolerated the dreaded christmas 'do' but it was a total farce everytime. Basically like being in work but in casual clothes.It generally consisted of me and 2other guys from my dept getter drunk with the sales reps and havind a laugh,whilst everyone else sucked up to the bosses and pretended that was the real them.
Its farcical to try and mix the 2 environments

Our Christmas do = buy a van load of food and booze, invite the whole site to our office lol. Weirdly it's the one annual event everyone turns up for...

Work totally is a social event, we spend most of our time there. I put effort in to this job because we get to also have fun, I didn't put effort in to the boring jobs I've had. Just bare minimum and then go home.
 
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Associate
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You spend a significant amount of time at work, just sat their in abject silence sounds horrible, I am more than happy for my social life and work life to cross over, some folk are really against this though, so i just ignore them, life is far to short to be miserable at work.
Just because some people prefer to keep work/social life seperate doesnt mean they are miserable, far from it. When im at work I prefer to just focus on work, I tend to wear headphones and avoid the netflix/work social event chat etc but im happy to get involved in work discussions and help others out with technical issues. It seems to be the case that people I work with who love to mix work/social life always revert to calling anyone else miserable/boring etc the irony is i have far more hobbies and interests than them outside of work.
 
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Ottakring, Vienna.
Work is not a social gathering, its work.
i did not go to work to listen to inane drivel about someone elses life.
the women in the sales deptarment were the worst, just constant chat about holidays and grandchildren. Before i,m accused of complete sexism, thats not all women_i,ve worked with and under (no pun) and they have been top notch, and incases far better than me.
I think men had far less to chat about, certaibly in my day.
I tolerated the dreaded christmas 'do' but it was a total farce everytime. Basically like being in work but in casual clothes.It generally consisted of me and 2other guys from my dept getter drunk with the sales reps and havind a laugh,whilst everyone else sucked up to the bosses and pretended that was the real them.
Its farcical to try and mix the 2 environments
I understand that you don't wish to mix the two environments, but why would you consider it "farcical" to do so? You use the word farce twice in your post, so it seems your opinions are quite strong on this.
 
Soldato
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North Essex
I work in a production line... Monotonous physical work.. Talking to my team mates either side of me makes the day bearable. On 1 side I have a younger lad who is well into football and gaming so we have that in common. On the other side someone into cars/food and also a father so we have a good chat about those sorts of things.
Our line is also better performing(and because of that - paid) than the line next to us that barely says a word to eachother all day.
 
Associate
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Bournemouth
I can relate, and I struggle with it terribly, because someone can say something to me, then i'm fighting in my head what I should say, or when the moment has passed I think of things I could have said.
I'm currently a delivery driver for a big car parts company, most of my time is spent on the road, but there is the time in the morning, and a small amount of time I spend in the warehouse in between my runs and the talk that goes on does not interest me whatsoever. I work with a mixture of people, old, young, male and female and mixed race.
Its either what they saw on TV, sport, an outing to "town", mugging each other off, swearing at each other, talking explicitly about someone of the opposite sex, drugs, etc, all the things that have no relevance to me, so I usually just smile and agree.
Then when I meet the people at the other end of where I am delivering, to the other branches, I usually say good morning and hello through out the day, hows things, and then its just people complaining about their jobs, and then I feel even more awkward when I say hello or see you again and I get no response! I just seem to get odd looks when I'm greeting people!
 

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Soldato
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Just because some people prefer to keep work/social life seperate doesnt mean they are miserable, far from it. When im at work I prefer to just focus on work, I tend to wear headphones and avoid the netflix/work social event chat etc but im happy to get involved in work discussions and help others out with technical issues. It seems to be the case that people I work with who love to mix work/social life always revert to calling anyone else miserable/boring etc the irony is i have far more hobbies and interests than them outside of work.

As i said, i just ignore them, and get on with life. If folk want to sit and be quiet go for it. Why should it stop everyone else chatting about pretty much everything.
 
Soldato
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Haha i can imagine! Thankfully i work in an office with about 90% blokes, so a birthday normally means the birthday boy/girl brings a cake in for everyone to stuff their faces with.

My missus used to sort out birthday whip-rounds for the girls in the office she works at, which was fine at the start when there was only about 8 of them, but it got a bit awkward when the team grew a bit, as you could hardly ask someone who only started a week ago to chip-in, and then what do you do when it's her birthday and she's technically not 'chipped in' to everyone else's.

Tell your Mrs that whilst Sharon and Sandra may enjoy forking out, getting food in the keyboard, greasy prints on the monitor, Bob and Mike do not. Tell her it's a place of work and to shove her collection envelope up her a$$.
 
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