Are your Workmates your Mates?

A deep dive into task-oriented friendship

*I wrote this 5 years ago from a soul-sapping, chair-spinning office job. Today, I’m privileged to work with mates and workmates I truly look forward to seeing (some of whom I count among my subscribers!). Obviously, I would say that, wouldn’t I? But it is, indeed, true.

There are those mates we would happily spend the rest of our days with, and there are those other mates we will contractually spend the rest of our days with: workmates.

The Work-Friend Zone

Most of us have to slip on a spotless personality as part of our uniform. Work is the world’s most popular and least interesting role-playing game.

In work-mandated friendship, the faint threat of joblessness means nobody can afford to behave completely naturally. All jokes, stories, personal information and opinions are scanned for appropriateness before they enter the workplace. We skim pleasantly along the surface of who we really are, making sure to not risk straying too deep. 

Task-oriented homies can take some of the piss out of each other, but have to pull back before the catheter is brimming with the satisfaction of true friendship. 

Departmentalised Banter

Just like any other unfunded friendship, workmates have those inside jokes that nobody else would get, but only because the humour is so bleakly role-specific.

With mate-mates laughter might erupt out of a treasured similarity, or reconnecting with a fond, long-lost reference or a butthole. On the clock, a few routine ‘ha’s’ are forced from the driest cracks in the human experience. Jokes that slip out of alphabetised filing cabinets and auto-populate in Excel spreadsheets. 

Try relaying that cutting zinger to anyone lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the deep-rooted inefficiencies of your Customer Relationship Management system – let me know how it goes.

Away from our desk, these jokes have all the crackling levity of a workplace health and safety video.

Work Drinks and Works Meals with Work Mates

There’s only so many times you can cunningly excuse yourself from work drinks, before colleagues will start to get the correct idea that you don’t want to hang out for free - better septuple-confirm your workmate is coming, then.

Remember, the evening sinks or drowns on the slapdash seating arrangements, so grab a workmate and take a seat – by any means necessary.

Or politely dither and get boxed in between straight-up everyday tea-break-tarnishing colleagues. To the left: a still-fun new-mum tweaking out on a speedball of sleep deprivation and relief. To the right: a devoted berk whose entire identity is replacing the words ‘glasses’, ‘drinks’ and ‘piss’ with ‘receptacles’, ‘beverages’ and ‘urinate’, like there lies the three founding pillars of wit.

While we are still mindful our actions could have a bit of a knock-on effect on the food and shelter of our families, a half-drawn unveiling of our after-hours personalities isn’t so bad.

A buttoned-down colleague might reveal some serious workmate potential, without a double Windsor cutting off the joy that circulates within. Who knows, a pair of longstanding workmates could break free from the work-friend zone, by entrusting each other with a risque anecdote or a sackable wisecrack.

Although, with every passing second of mandatory fun, everyone can feel work wondering if it could just touch base with the convo a sec. When a chronic colleague does circle back to our one shared pastime, there’s a shift in tone, as everybody remembers enjoying each other’s company is company policy. 

Work Mates Off the Clock

Is the majority of our waking life spent together not enough? Unless it's with a whole-mate homeslice, lunching or travelling with workmates is not that dissimilar from unpaid work. 

Sometimes, it's nice to knock back a meal deal in peace, without struggling through an exhaustive countdown of crisp preference for politeness’ sake. Let’s not attempt to stretch an already day-long chat over a tired commute, with no keyboards to turn to when subjects get thin. 

Outside of work, nobody wants to break the spell and acknowledge that this friendship turns to dust at the stroke of 5 o’clock. For this reason, bumping into a workmate at lunch can be a potent diuretic, or a timely reminder of that bloody thing that had to be done - alone, in a place, not this. 

Hopefully, both work friends are comfortable enough with colleagueship that an open and closed acknowledgement will do. Or agree not to notice each other in a lift, which was rammed close to the brink of its 5-man capacity. 

Workmates might even bring up the mutual snubbing. Apologising, with an exchange of empty platitudes that amount to - sorry about earlier, it’s just that we just don’t quite like each other enough yet…

Over days, weeks, months and years of mild, semi-supervised chats that trail on and off into productivity, it’s possible to build a real-world friendship.

As the shifts and strains of daily life tug you out of contact with all but a few transplant-worthy pals, and a redundancy relocates you to some unstirring satellite town or another, one much-needed work drinks away from the kids the realisation hits – these workmates are the only mates I’ve got.