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I never felt close to most work colleagues. With different colleagues every workday, my role is a lonely role. Yes, I do agree that friendship is less about the quantity but the quality of time spent. But again, it is a very simple statement. Life is normally not that simple. It’s complicated.
Putting in the mix of hierarchical titles and a tight ship to sail, the moments of high stress and problems are met sooner than friendships being nurtured. Before we get to know the person, quick judgments and wrong choice of words are typically being said already.
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At times, with no understanding being nurtured, I feel my colleagues see me as a stranger. Understandably, this is true. Like strangers on the streets, we don’t know each other and we have yet to make each other acquainted. With that, it is no wonder that we can sometimes see and treat each other more like a company asset than humans. The ‘you can be gone the next day and no one will miss you’ kinda asset.
And it sure doesn’t make one feel good about it. Like the saying by Maya Angelou, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
So, I am guarded as I work. And I do my best to help those who fall off the bandwagon too. Not to lie, they provide me with much companionship and solace as one could hope for. So with the months and years that passed, I never felt close to most colleagues. And I thought the situation would never change.
Until Covid 19 happened and we lost most of our work. With months of free time, my company took the opportunity to schedule zoom classes for everyone. This made me uncomfortable. This is because I would possibly be facing the kind of colleagues that could very well replicate the uncomfortable environment that I work in.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on perspective, the tables were turned. Or they changed. For starters, we are not doing our usual work for a change. We lost most of our superficial makeup and persona. And, we are actually learning new information together. The seniors are more in need of help and assistance because technology was used. Game changer, honestly. Seniors became vulnerable. Juniors have to step up.
The hierarchy system is still there. But everyone can’t turn to the hierarchy for answers or decision-making anymore. Everyone is a blank piece of paper. We have to work as a team. With that, there is an acknowledgment of one another importance as we did group projects.
I had seen familiar faces that had put cuts on me before. Be it words or a look of repulse, I weathered through. I never once thought that I could turn those bad memories around. But with the zoom classes, I saw and spoken to them again.
They mellowed. They talked about their difficulties in understanding the class. And I, along with many others, talked to them reassuringly. Not that I was any better, but I believed we can get through with it together. And we laughed.
It was not a situation where hierarchy mattered. There are no issues where ‘you’ are excluded. ‘You’ are a part of it. It was truly beautiful.
I saw the human side of my colleagues. And we connected with kindness and understanding for one another. I am deeply heartened to have stayed in my job for so long to have experienced this.
Originally published at http://thepeajournal.wordpress.com on November 14, 2020.
