u/Big_Eggplant7591

One time I had a coworker who said this to me:

"It seems like you don't act very passionate or enthusiastic about work. Like, you don't talk with enthusiasm, act outgoing, upload a profile picture, or do things like that. Why?".

Then I responded with:

"I just think working at a corporate job is just dumb basically. Like, a bunch of people worry or stress themselves out about getting promotions. Then a bunch of the people who get promotions don't really seem the most qualified. Then companies can lay people off at anytime randomly. Like, I could go to a company bowling event today and get laid off the next day. I just think that's really dumb so I just don't care lol. I guess I just think there's a big world outside of work too. I just kind of care about getting paid and maybe socializing with 3 coworkers. Feeling this way has always let me keep my stress level at work low. It's not that I don't try at work. It's that I just don't let work stress me out"

Then I'm pretty sure I heard her cry some when I said this is a response.

I don't think this is that sad at all. Some people in the world don't have jobs or find it hard to get jobs.

Like as soon as I clock out for the day I shouldn't be thinking about work for even just a minute. Is that good advice?

A coworker I have keeps telling me this. I don't understand it I guess. I literally talk to probably at least 100 people where I work or more lol. I would say I don't hear anyone complaining about my work at all either. I've received multiple awards over the past few years.

Only my one coworker says this. If it matters, I feel like a lot of people where I work find my coworker to be at least somewhat annoying. She's received complaints out loud from like 5 people over the past year.

I feel like one of my coworkers is pretty much always angry. A very common example would be say a program manager forgot to message her something. She'd probably complain about that out loud for like 2 hours in an angry tone.

She's usually not mad at me actually. It's that she's complaining ablout other people or how the company is operating. I kind of just sit mostly in silence on my own in one on one meetings with her.

By social I mean they ask me a bunch of questions about my personal life or try to get me to talk about non work related topics.

I work at a large company in an engineering field.

I'm about a 30 year old guy. About 90% of my coworkers are women who are about age 40.

I'm just not really used to the environment I guess. I'm used to people at work who mainly just work.

Where I work I feel like people do this. I think it's at least a little weird because in a work environment I feel like people should mainly just work. Am I wrong?

Probably about half of the women I interact with I blush. They don't seem to care or say anything negative. Is it fine?

I don't know why I do it. It's just always been a habit I've had. Should I try to find ways to stop doing this?

She's said things to me like this:

- "let me know when you want to join a call so that we can play". She's said this about 10 times probably.

- I feel like I hear her crying on the phone in the background when she talks to me sometimes

- I feel like she asks a lot of questions that aren't work related

- she seems to want to have one on one calls with me often. I don't really feel like thst calls are necessary over half the time. Like, the thoughts could just be typed out instead

- she said "maybe when I leave this place we can set up a date and discuss all the things about this place"

She's about a 60 year old woman. I'm about a 30 year old guy.

Say your manager was basically the friendliest person at your entire company. But, it seems like he/she doesn't know over half of the things required to be a manager. Would you be content with that?

It would basically be like if a manager was your best friend who was always friendly but he/she only knows about 20% of what you're doing.

It's like management mainly hired someone because they're friendly or a good person.

He says in a work environment it shouldn't matter at all how you look in a picture basically. He said that out loud. He says that's why he doesn't have a picture. He's one of the few leaders who doesn't have one.

I was just curious what my takeaway from this should be or if people have thoughts on this.

Like, what if you work at a job as a level 2 software engineer for 15 years? Does anything specific usually happen as a result or no?

It seems like maybe this could be the case for me.

I don't know if I'm acting like a victim but it just sort of seems like my manager sort of brushes me off to the side to have me work in silence.