Yesterday I received a message from my Aunt who was sitting in a physician’s office waiting for her appointment. She said that while she was waiting the office manager approached one of the assistants in the office to let her know that she would need to cover for one of her coworkers while she was out of the office taking her child to an appointment.
To my Aunt’s surprise the assistant told her manager that she would not cover for her coworker because she did not like her. When my Aunt was called back for her appointment the manger was still discussing the situation with this assistant. In the medical office that I work at this would never have happened, and if it ever did, it would be the last time it happened.
When coworker relationships are not good, maybe even are really bad, it not only affects the people who are directly involved, it affects the business as a whole.
A long time ago a good and wise friend of mine told me “you don’t have to like everyone you work with, you just need to be able to work well together.”
I had to think about that for a while. Wouldn’t it be very hard to work well with someone if you did not like them?
According to my friend the answer was no. You were hired for a position to do a certain job. The job did not include that you would have “great relationships” with all of your coworkers.
You need to be able to have an adult working relationship and that does not always mean you are buddy-buddy with your coworkers.
Many years ago I worked for a large corporation and I only established one really good, friendly relationship in the three years I was there. Not that the relationships with other coworkers were terrible, they were just work relationships, where we were kind, courteous, respectful and helpful to each other.
We must understand that we can have good working relationships without really having good personal relationships with our coworkers. We need to remember why we are at work, what we were hired to do and learn to appreciate what our coworkers also do.
We are friendly and nice to people all of the time that we do not know, can’t we do the same with those we work with?
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