read right as polite, because they get offended easily.
I’m a male nurse in a predominantly female unit.
How I see a job: I’m there to work and go home and don’t want to socialize. Each of my coworkers is welcomed to talk about work with me, but I don’t disclose my personal life, age or life goals with them. Work and let me work. If you need help, call me, we’ll work together.
How my unit works: there is a group that’s childish and gossipy, don’t know boundaries and act like a clique, but maybe 50% of the unit are people that work and let me work, help me and I help them (with the gossip clique this is not always the case).
I was sick for 4 weeks and I’ve decided this is a good opportunity to establish boundaries, something I’ve never done at my current unit. Why now? Being sick I had time to think what I don’t want in my life: faking interest in the sexual life or my coworkers, knowing who started dating who or what they think of Biden or the second amendment ain’t things I care about. I’ve had a coworker trying to find me a girlfriend a week after knowing me. No thanks.
I’m entertaining other job prospects and I still don’t know if I’m gonna jump ship, so for the time being, I’m here. Where I work I’m forced to eat with the rest of the team, including the gossips, so I’m trapped (because if I don’t eat with them they’ll start asking why I’m so unfriendly or if I’m angry at them and feel offended, they simply cannot understand that sometimes I want time to unwind without them).
What I think I could tell them, next time they start with their inquisitive questions:
‘I’ve worked here for a year already. It should be clear by now that I’m not a talkative person. This is a question I don’t want to answer. And I hope that you respect that.’
‘that I don’t talk doesn’t mean I hate you, it means I have nothing to say’ < I find it ludicrous even having to explain this.
‘I don’t see what that has to do with the job’
‘I don’t talk about religion, politics or my private life with coworkers and I hope you respect that’
should they keep pestering:
‘all right, I need time to unwind, which means today I’ll spend my pause somewhere else.’ and proceed to eat alone somewhere else.
And if they pester yet again:
‘leave me alone’
if by this point some of them start giving me the evil eye and afterwards start ignoring me or treat me differently, time to accelerate my transfer to another unit.
If you like keeping boundaries with your coworkers, what do you tell them that works?
Some people are going to be offended unless you participate in their games. In the army I had someone tell me he was going to punch me if I didn’t drink at a get together. So I drank. I probably would’ve anyway, but he was super weird about it.
Redirect conversation, be noncommittal, let yourself get pulled away by duties, etc. Eventually if you’re lucky you just won’t be in the clique any more. But they’re never going to understand what you’re telling them without offense because they just don’t want to. There is no polite, easy way to do this that isn’t going to upset them. They will feel like you think you’re better than them.
Fuck those kinds of people.
You don’t owe them anything that you aren’t comfortable doing OP.
I would go full chaos route and lie differently to each one. Just so they have no clue what is going on.
They ask about weekend plans. Went to a concert, stayed home doing nothing, went to the beach.
Pester you about relationship status. You have a partner, to just broke up, you have no interest in dating ATM, your divorced.
Throw a wrench at them. Confusing them for entertainment.
while I’m very tempted to follow this route, what do I tell them if 2 of them gang together with the contradictory info I fed them and confront me? ‘I don’t recall ever saying that, please let me work’?
It’s even worse when your supervisor sometimes acts like one of these people.
My whole team and I work remotely, so it’s not the exact same situation as you, but I made a concerted effort from day one to set social boundaries with my colleagues. First week on the job my manager found out I’m single and offered to set me up with people. I acted very weird about it, purposefully exaggerating how uncomfortable the offer made me, and she got the hint. We have a very friendly and cordial working relationship, but she no longer pries into my personal life unless I volunteer information. Been happily working under her for four years now.
That work/life separation quickly filtered down to the rest of my colleagues, to the point where now they act a little weird when a company call starts to get personal. Mission accomplished.
I think the key thing is that you’ll never get through to people if they can’t read social cues. Sounds like your workplace cliques are filled with those types of oblivious folks, so you might just need to be completely explicit about keeping things fully professional. I’m lucky that my manager is emotionally intelligent, but that’s pretty rare these days.
Good luck!!
Edit: queues to cues
I did the same, I’m polite, helpful and pleasant to be around. I also keep everyone at arms length and am very careful with how I phrase stuff, people in the office love me and understand I won’t be sharing personal stuff and I’m not interested in their personal stuff. If they wanna talk weather, TV shows or games I’m fine with that.
I was always polite and vague with how I declined their questions early on and eventually they got the hints.
am very careful with how I phrase stuff
I was always polite and vague with how I declined their questions early on
would you write some examples for me to use?
Someone mentioned it down the thread but I say non committal stuff like ‘I’ll have to sit on it’ ‘it be that way sometimes’ ‘that’s interesting’ ‘I don’t know much about that’ ‘not sure to be honest’ ‘oh yea?’ ‘I hear ya’ ‘if it makes them happy’ ‘that’s how some people like it’ ‘I haven’t looked into it’ ‘I haven’t considered it’ ‘that’s what I hear’
It all depends on context but I use these replies to let them know I hear them without picking a side if that makes sense. It’s best to act like you aren’t sure or don’t know when they ask about stuff.
Here’s an example from yesterday from the trump Biden debate.
They asked me if I was gonna watch and I just said I don’t know maybe, I was gonna leave it at that but they kept trying to sports team for Trump and pushing me to answer what I thought about them sitting so close. I took that chance to say I don’t really talk about politics at work, all the while typing away and working. That seemed to work and they took the hint and stopped.
It helps if you always act like you don’t know/aren’t sure about things.
Humans are social animals, you’re the odd one out here from a social perspective, not that you’re not entitled to that choice but choices have consequences.
I’d suggest just ignoring them. You aren’t going to find a better work environment anywhere else unless you literally have no coworkers.
I sympathize with OP. I’m an introvert and have never felt even the slightest motivation to be friends with my coworkers. I don’t care about any of them. I just want to do my job. I understand how I may be the minority in these situations. It’s frustrating but I understand why it happens. It’s tough.
Well working remotely helps, ha. But I do have to be on calls constantly with my manager and others. But before when i was office based, it was hard. I had the same struggles at OP. I often just didn’t have the emotional capacity to eat lunch with my team and to engage in bullshit small talk conversations for an hour. It was always the same conversations over and over again. One guy would talk about his kids and complain about his mean wife. Another guy would argue politics. One woman would just talk about other boring bullshit and she was incredibly judgemental whenever I’d talk about my life. The worst was when the COO would sit with us and just straight up brag about the expensive things he owned. No joke. This happened a ton.
I’d eat at my desk a lot. And you can bet your ass that people noticed and some even gave me shit for it to my face.
I may need to clarify this. I didn’t mean to say that I don’t want to speak to anyone at all. That’s just not realistic with most jobs. I just mean that I don’t feel the need to be friends with them, and I’m not interested in getting to know anyone outside of the immediate professional duties we have to perform. I don’t care about their personal opinions or their families. I just don’t fucking care. In fact, I actively don’t want to know about anyone at work. I just want to do my job and leave/sign off and talk to my actual friends/family. I have no room for work relationships. I only have a finite amount of energy and I rather just put that into my work.
The only one of those responses you listed that might not make people upset is this one:
‘I don’t talk about religion, politics or my private life with coworkers and I hope you respect that’
All of the others are going to go over poorly, if you are concerned about that.
You absolutely can go have lunch elsewhere. I’ve been in similar situation. If asked, you can simply tell them, I enjoy having lunch by myself, it helps me recharge. Also, most of the time, boundaries are set through action not only words. Just do what you prefer without the concern of what others will think or feel, while being polite with your words. Most people will pick up on you actions and eventually leave up be. I’ve had serious boundary issues in my family and I’ve had to learn quite a bit about forming proper sustainable boundaries.
