Today is the last day at work for a co-worker of mine. Around lunchtime this afternoon, I realized that about seven of my colleagues weren’t in their offices, including all five of my colleagues who are in my age range. I soon figured out that they had all gone out to lunch together.
Nobody ever tells me when these things happen. Nobody stops in my office to invite me along. I always have to make the effort myself.
When I first started this job three years ago, I realized that lunchtime was the main time when people got together. For a few months I joined everyone in the small lunch room, eating my lunch with them, males and females alike. But although they were very nice people, I was never very into the conversations, most of which revolved around work, or pop culture, or sports, or whatnot. I also tend to be an introvert, which doesn’t help. After a few months I finally gave up and started having my lunch by myself, usually in my office, while either surfing the web or reading a book. That was fine with me.
Unfortunately, when you do that, you miss out on the group dynamic. Whenever you do try to hang out with the other folks, you’re behind on what’s been happening, and it’s hard to catch up without spending time with them regularly.
I don’t really want to hang out with them outside of work or anything — not because of any faults in them, but just because it’s the way I am. But I don’t like being left out, either.
This is so reminiscent of past social situations in my life. Law school, college, high school, middle school, summer camp: I’ve never been good at hanging out with the cool kids. It makes me nervous, and I’m not all that interested in it anyway. But on the other hand, I don’t like the consequences of being antisocial (e.g. feeling left out). Socialization with certain groups of people often feels like a duty — something I do to avoid negative consequences — rather than something that flows naturally out of my personality.
I want to be liked without having to put in the time required, and it doesn’t really work that way.
In most of the places I’ve worked, an e-mail would go out to the entire department/floor/firm/whatever announcing that this was Harry’s last day and that Harry was being taken to lunch or being given a cake in the conference room and inviting everyone who’d like to say goodbye to join in.
But in your case it sounds like your co-workers don’t know you very well and may not be sure how to approach you or have no idea that you’d even be interested in the occasional social function. You may simply be the quiet guy down the hall who keeps to himself. And it’s easier for them to “forget” you rather than risking the potential embarrassment of you saying thanks, but no thanks.
You should probably loudly exclaim in the hallway at some point “OH, I had no idea Harry was leaving last week; I wish I’d had a chance to say goodbye.
Try hanging out in the lunchroom maybe one or two days a weeks and saying hi to people. Or if your office has one usual suspect event planner, make sure he or she knows that you’d like to included in such things.
They’re probably just as scared of you as you are of them.
Community is a two-way street. I bet if you invested one lunch a week with them things would change. After all, you can’t expect anything in return without putting something in first.
rob@egoz.org
I’m an introvert too. When it came to coworkers/strangers/etc I often felt most comfortable with women. Maybe you could start there. As long as they know that you’re gay, they would likely be the easiest ones to connect to.
And I agree that one group lunch per week, maybe Fridays, couldn’t hurt.
Maybe you can make an effort to introduce yourself early on to this guy’s replacement and invite them out to lunch or something.