100 Words, Movies, Uncategorized, work

Work Friends

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Last week was pretty dull for me at work, as two of my favorite floor mates were gone, one to Montana, and one to California.  They are Developmental Disability Case managers, and I have worked with them for 20 years. We tease, laugh, and help each other out. We only see each other at work.  Work is mere drudgery without them. We are all set to retire about the same time, and imagine ourselves waltzing out the door on our last day like Dorothy, the Scare Crow, and the Tin Man.

Tell about your best work buddies. What made them special?

68 thoughts on “Work Friends”

  1. my work world is different these days than in the past

    i see folks and tell them about my new life’s work and it’s fum to play catch up but they are all contemplating retirement and i am excited and hopeful about my new start up.

    i have rich at the warehouse 3 days a week and he’s great. minimalist who hates clutter may not be the perfect match but he understands and helps me with stuff that needs doing there

    marcia is my partner the analytics savant who figures out which idea in front of us is logically the top priority and keeps everything on track. she has a wonderful soul and knows that the team description is pushed to the extreme sometimes but we are joined at the hip and rolling full forward with our new air bnb business geeze it’s fun
    my past contacts who are still on the radar are my former biz contacts and my card playing buddies (first thursday game was last night) and i have a whole bunch of recent newly added folks who i share the startup community ideals and ambitions with as often as i can
    next week is twin cities startup week and i basically take the week off to network and expand my brain my contacts and my horizons with other like minded souls
    great time.
    off to a meeting this morning with our own anna i have been attending for a couple years
    she is really a great team leader

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      1. it’s a group of products developmental folks
        anna and one other former best buy product manager head up a monthly discussion on how to do better on the premise of tech based world with challenges that humans have to sort out. today was empathy at a business level

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  3. Being my own boss has it’s drawback sometimes. 🙂

    One of the nice things about theater and working with so many different creative teams is all the people I get to meet. I click with some more than others but it’s always fun to get to know new people or reconnect with some I haven’t seen in 15 years.
    We’re all working towards the same goal, and if there is that one person I can’t get along with, probably others can’t either. Then we all have the same scapegoat. :-))

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  5. My best work buddy became my best friend. Thirty-five years and counting. We were financial planners so we didn’t work side by side in the office day after day. Just saw each other at meetings.

    But our real connection was tennis. Several times a week, year-round, we attempted to crush each other on the tennis court. No holds barred. If you served up a lollipop lob and got caught at the net, that ball would be overhead smashed right at your midsection. Early on, we’d play best-of-five sets, and that was before tie-breakers came into the game. So we might be on the court for three hours in the summer sun. Great fun.

    We were friends through his divorce, his marriage to an incredible woman (I was his best man), watched their two beautiful daughters grow up into talented, successful young women; shared some memorable BWCA trips with them, and celebrated life and our good fortune and wonderful times together.

    We haven’t lived anywhere near each other for about 25 of those 35 years, but manage to meet once or twice a year. Each time we pick up as if we’d last been together a week ago, not a year ago. He’s a special man and I’m a better man for being his friend most of my life.

    Chris in Owatonna

    *BSP* Deep Valley Book Festival tomorrow in Mankato at the Loose Moose Saloon & Conference Center in downtown Mankato. 10 am- 4 pm. I’ll be on my first mystery writers panel with Allen Eskens, Rhonda Gilliland, Kiersten Hall, & Deborah Stevens!

    And it’s not to early to pick up some unique gifts (books from MN authors) for the holiday seasons. (Sorry to mention that). More than FORTY AUTHORS in a wide variety of genres. Two keynote speakers, the mystery writers panel, kids’ activities, and FREE ADMISSION. I hope to see you there. I’d love to sell you a signed copy of “Castle Danger” and/or “Straight River.”
    – Chris

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    1. Talk about holiday season, yesterday we stopped at Costco on our way home from a short visit to Linda whose husband, Jon, passed away a week ago yesterday. I was aghast to see decorated Christmas trees on display.

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        1. That’s exactly what I thought. Before you know it, those displays will be going up by Labor Day.

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    2. Not to quibble about details, Chris, but either you and your best buddy have been friends longer than thirty-five years, or you weren’t up on the tennis rules. The tie breaker was introduced in the early seventies. I know for certain that it has been in use for as long as I have needed it.

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  6. OT – Richard Shindell at the Ginkgo on Oct. 13th at 7:30 PM.

    This is a rare opportunity to see Richard Shindell in such an intimate setting. Popular as a solo performer, he is also well know as part of the Cry, Cry, Cry tour.

    Originally from New York, now dividing his time between Buenos Aires, Argentina and New York’s Hudson Valley, Richard Shindell is a writer whose songs paint pictures, tell stories, juxtapose ideas and images, inhabit characters, vividly evoking entire worlds along the way and expanding our sense of just what it is a song may be. From his first record, Sparrow’s Point(1992) to his current release, Careless (September 2016), Shindell has explored the possibilities offered by this most elastic and variable of cultural confections: the song.

    If you know Richard Shindell’s music and performances, then you know you shouldn’t miss this. If not, check him out at richardshindell.com

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      1. I’m on the Ginkgo’s mailing list. I also am “friends” with any number of artists so I get their announcements of tours in this area. Lastly, several of my local friends are musicians and heavily into music, so news of performances trickle through regularly.

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  7. OT, but today would have been my mom’s 95th birthday. She passed away on Tuesday. You wouldn’t need to know this, except that her funeral/memorial is scheduled for the exact day and time that I am supposed to host BBC, October 13 at 2:00. Can someone host for me, or could we reschedule for the following Sunday?

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      1. Usually I would have volunteered to do it, but I am really not going to be at enough capacity to host it, and we have some other things scheduled that weekend.

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    5. Oh, Caroline, I wondered where you had been and I had thought about your mom and step-father. I know they have had so many health issues that required your attention. I am glad your mom had such a long life. I am sending you sympathy vibes.

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  8. This is a great topic that I could go on and on about. Because as I look back over all of my life and my best friend’s, almost all of them started as work-related. Unfortunately right now at work I don’t have any close friends, the last two that I did have retired last summer.

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  9. Sarah. BFF. Met at B Dalton, April 16th 1983 which also happens to David Shepherd day. Whole ‘nother story. Kind. generous, wicked sense of humor ,loves cats. She is YA’s godmother.

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  10. Deana. Met at Old Piper Inn in Northfield in 1976. My oldest (as in most long-standing friend). She is a collector of people. Kind, generous, wicked sense of humor. I have a feeling these words are going to be repeated often

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  11. Schmuck. Yes that’s really her name. Met her at B Dalton as well in 1984, also a collector of people. And all the other things I value.

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  12. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    I have had many work-related friendships that have been both long standing, and short. Renee, I can see why you feel bored and a bit lost at work—those friendships are the oil that make the jobs bearable, quite often. Now I am working with a work friend that I made 25 years ago. As often happens, you can never clearly foresee what those friendships will bring. I certainly never saw my friend having the kind of struggles with her family that she has encountered with her daughter’s fragile health and her spouse’s inability to cope. While I am so glad I can be present and assist her, it is so painful to watch. While I have been recovering from surgery and rehabbing my knee, she has brought food, chocolate covered strawberries, and a balloon to the house.

    I was overjoyed 3 years ago ago while in AZ, to reconnect with such a friend from the beginning of my career. When we met again we sat down, started talking, and we did not really stop for days. And it was as if no time had passed at all. We still email and chat on the phone a bit—and I do not like to talk on the phone much. But for him I will do it.

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    1. The weather changes have brought about a big change in barometric pressure, rendering me a mess—every joint hurts, including my knee. I have a migraine which has left me jumbled, so I missed my PT appointment this morning. Some days just suck and this is one of them.

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      1. Sorry to hear this, Jacque. Having suffered migraines throughout most of my life until age fifty-two, I know how incapacitating they can be. About your arthritis joint pain, I can empathize as well. I’m surprised that your knee pain from the surgery is still ongoing. I don’t recall mine lasting that long, although I wouldn’t rule out that’s due to faulty memory, but I really don’t think so. I take it that your doctor seems to think what you’re experiencing is normal and doesn’t offer any remedy?

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        1. I don’t think the knee pain is due to the surgery—it is due to the weather change. During PT when she really works to flex the knee that hurts, but it is predictable and it is why people don’t like this procedure and rehab. I cannot use Ibuprofen right now to address the issues due to the other meds I am on during rehab, so it is just a tough day.

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        2. I will attest to the weather changes and knees; today mine are killing me with an ache rating about 8 of 10. Normally, that means rain in 36 hours. But they hurt like this two days ago too and I don’t know what that had to do with anything. I guess there was a mist yesterday morning.
          Hope you’re up and doing jumping jacks soon Jacque!

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      2. While I’ve had lots of friendly relationships with people I’ve worked with, very few have become actual friends. By that I mean, people I hang out with in my spare time pursuing shared interests like skiing, camping, dining out or cooking together, attending concerts, and the like. Perhaps that’s a function of most of my positions having been managerial, and you have to be very careful to not create the perception that you’re favoring one coworker over another.

        Most of my close friends are people I’ve met through other friends, or I’ve hooked up with them doing volunteer work. For instance, my year as a volunteer counselor at Face to Face resulted in a large group of friends who enjoyed skiing, camping, cooking, dining, music, and more. For years I was in regular contact with one or more of them. Several of them have moved out of state (all to the same area in Washington state), and we’ve gradually lost touch. Marriages and divorces have also played a role in these friendships. I consider myself lucky to have a core of solid friendships in my neighborhood, while I also maintain contact with a few friends from my high school days, college friends, old neighbors, and a few old co-workers.

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  13. So many others. I probably shouldn’t do one post for every single close friend of mine that I met at work at some point. But there’s Alan, Pat, Laura, Jeanne, Leann, Gerry and Peter, Sheri, Jennifer, Brenda, lots and lots and lots.

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  14. I’ve flailed at connecting with this question. I worked at home for many years., Before that I had coworkers who were not colleagues. If I push back all the way to 1969, I had a colleague then. She was a wonderful woman who became the person I wrote a letter to every morning. Because she is about twenty years older than I, she was refreshingly different from coworkers who were my age.

    Sorry, Caroline. Sorry, Jacque. Sending warm friendly wishes to you both.

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  15. justin is my buddy from grade 7
    joe from grade 10
    mary from grade 2
    bob with joe from grade 10

    that’s it
    i am a take no prisoners kind of guy i guess and we either get along ok or not

    baboons are my kind of people
    turns out most of the folks i thought were on my team were not
    the last fistful of years gave me that sad realization

    so thanks to the trail and i really value justin joe mary and bob

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  16. My next door office buddy is a ball of energy with ADHD. She also has MS and bad heart valves, but she let’s nothing slow her down. She is the one who has arguments with her Boxer dog. Her latest adventure involved helping an elderly uncle in California clear out the house after the death of his hoarder wife. 5000 expired boxes of jello were tossed, and they also found 3000+ skeins of yarn. That was just the beginning. She bops into my office many times a day, and I into hers to discuss mutual cases, discuss our children and families, share jokes. She is a devout Catholic and the most foul mouthed person I know.

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  17. Fern and I taught in the same school in Half Moon Bay, but I met her when I was returning Former Boyfriend’s stuff to him, and here she was sitting by his fireplace. We talked for a while, and both ended up thinking – “Hmmm, he has good taste in (girl)friends)”. We’ve kept in touch with each other all these decades, and get together whenever possible.

    I met Rose when we were working at a window shutter place called Pinecrest, my first job in Mpls. Ended up marrying her brother, so she’s now both a friend and a relative.

    Diana and Patrick were one family in our rotating pre-school playgroup when we returned to Mpls. I ended up having a little book business within Diana’s shop… Later, when Patrick’s consulting business needed an Admin. Asst., I was hired, and became good friends with him and another co-worker Barbara, who is a musician and leader of songs that I have learned much from.

    All of these people have been not only friends, but mentors in some aspect of my life. I could go on for a long time here, but will stop for now.

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  18. I have made a few good friends through work – the pal that tim referred to who I co-lead a meetup group, another pal that convinced me to start a podcast with her, a few others… a more recent add is my friend John. He works on the team that sits next to mine and we have worked on a few internal conference and demo events together. He and I share a passion for making sure everyone has a chance to show off what they know and what they have built. And he convinced me to give an entire presentation at work in a Batman mask and cape…

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  19. Over 34 years of hospital nursing, I worked with a ton of people. Although I casually socialized with many of them through the years, only a handful became true friends. My best friends are from high school/college. We only see each other a few times a year (for a number of reasons) but when we do, we just pick up from where we left off as if no time has passed. These are the best kinds of friends to have. I also have three friends whom I travel with. They live in AZ and NM so we see each other infrequently but again, we pick up right where we left off. And tomorrow we are off to Morocco for a couple of weeks!

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  20. My other work friend is very artsy, and does stained glass work. I have a bedroom lamp with a stained glass shade , and it needed some repairs and my friend soldered and strengthened the weak sections.

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  21. Mountains 9/19/19
    I just miss her so much – Noemi..
    My thoughts written out for the dingy speaks in my head
    A letter to Julie Andrews,
    War hero
    Movements; just hold them near by
    Solders peek pie
    A coded catastrophic letter
    World war 2 happens like a genocide
    Allies remember shes not just a dirty Jew
    Saved my life one-gone
    Hates evil game take away
    I once peed,
    Pour I say
    Talents drink..

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