separation of work and personal life

[Deleted]

How do you completely do it?  I spend most of my waking hours with these people - unless I completely hated them, it would be hard in my office to totally wall myself off from everyone else.

[Miss Tequila]

I don't.  Work blends into my personal life and my personal life blends into work. 

[thyme4change]

I don't see any reason to keep my general self from my co-workers.  I mean, they know I have a husband and kids.  It isn't like I go in and detail out our sex life.  Just the "public" stuff - like little Thyme's soccer game, or my latest home improvement project.

[sheilaincali]

I work for two smallish companies that my dad owns (total of about 50 employees between them).  It is impossible to keep things totally seperate in my situation.  There are a few employees that I know by sight only because they haven't worked here long, there are others that I have known for 10 plus years.  At the other company (my primary one) I know all of the guys and are on good terms with them.  There are a few that I socialize with outside of work and that I am facebook friends with them and their spouses. 

In reality we are a pretty neopotism heavy company. 
Company A- (my primary)
My Dad- President
Me - Vice President
A- Superintendant
M- foreman (A's son)
J- QC lady who is enganged to B at Company B.
AF- Maintenance Supervisor- close friends with him and his wife

Company B-
Dad- President
Mom- Payroll Clerk
Me- Bookkeeper, Office Manager
Idiot Brother- Operations Manager
J- Dispatcher (in a 10+ year relationship with my BIL's mom)
L- Foreman who's two sons previously worked here
B- engaged to J from Company A
M- close friend of my BIL's, his sister is my sister's BFF and his parents are my nephew's godparents

I could go on but you get the picture.  When we had my son's family part of his birthday party this weekend My dad was obviously there along with J from Company B.   M from Company B is at every family event that my sister has (Christmas, Bday Parties, and so forth). 

DH works at a small brach of a large company.  His branch has like 7 full time people.  When I threw DH's surprise 40th party I invited them all and the all came along with their spouses and children.  Oddly enough my company hires his company to do work for us so I know all of his co-workers on a professional level too.

[midjd]

I'm pretty close with my boss - he invites DH and me over to go swimming, we go out to lunch, etc. He is a really nice guy so I enjoy spending time with him outside of work. Other than that, I have a cordial relationship wtih my coworkers and they know the basics about me (my husband's name, my hobbies, etc.) but we don't socialize outside of work. Living an hour away and not running into them around town helps. And the hour drive lets me decompress enough so that when I get home, I've completely forgotten about work. I usually use the drive in to plan my day.

We've 'tested' working from home several times now and I know that some people do it successfully, but I had a very difficult time separating work life from home life in that situation. I don't mind checking my email after hours, or working on a specific project, but being required to be on the clock from 8:30 - 4:30 while in my own home kind of bothered me.

[cronewitch]

I don't know or care about coworkers personal life except a couple of woman. Mostly I don't know if people are married or have kids even after working with them 10 years. I know my boss has a son and daughter and I have seen two grand kids but I don't know the names and the only picture is probably 20 years old. I knew when his wife died and he has a girl friend but I don't know anything about her.

Stuff just doesn't come up about personal stuff.

[Deleted]

i follow a few simple rules

work is work

and friends are friends

and never shall they meet

i have had to fire/layoff too many people i cared about over my 25+ years in management

we do social events like bdays in office...and i even get my wife's bakery chef to prepare cakes

but....i try to keep out of office socializing to a minimum

i find it easier to maintain the professional distance that way....

[thyme4change]

What, exactly, are you trying to keep separate?  Are you trying to keep your mind from processing work problems while at home, or trying to avoid checking your email or phone for work tasks while at home?  Or are you trying to avoid telling people at work about your personal life?  

Certainly, there was one point where I stopped socializing with people at work.  I always had other plans when they were going for happy hour.  I would only do lunch occasionally with them.  I didn't invite them to my house, and I avoided invitations to their house.  If we did have an event that had a social aspect, I didn't drink (or only drank 1) or let my guard down.  I did stay friendly, and as I said, made a "public personality" that humanized me, but avoided delving into any real feelings or emotions about my personal life.  That period was weird for me, but after that, I was viewed much more professionally by the people I worked with.  Even now, people think they know a lot about my personal life, but it is all pretty shallow stuff.

[steph08]

Like Mid, I live an hour from where I work while everybody else lives within a 5-10 mile radius of the office. Plus they are all 15+ years older than I am so we don't have a lot in common. They have kids/teens in activities and school together, I don't have kids, etc.

I socialize with them at work and at work parties if we have one, but I don't have their cell phone numbers or hang out with them on the weekend. They know I'm married, my hobbies, and what TV shows I watch (because I talk to one coworker a lot about TV), but that is about it.  I did invite them to my wedding - some came, some didn't. 

I like my coworkers, and I miss them sometimes when I work from home (two days/week) because it is nice to talk to people, but my work life and personal life isn't really interwoven.

[vonna]

I am pretty reserved, so I really never shared that much with coworkers. I also didn't bring family pictures in to put on my desk. My husband, on the other hand, asked for a picture of me to put on his desk when we got engaged, and was a bit miffed when he asked if I was going to put one of him on my desk, and I told him I wasn't going to. We had to discuss our viewpoints for awhile, and he was surprised I didn't have pictures of my DS, or DS's artwork on display either. We realized it was personality differences, and he displayed a picture of me, I did not put one up of him!

I just liked keeping those two areas of my life as separate as possible. Don't judge!!

[giramomma]

Over the years, I've kept more and more of my personal life personal at work.

I'd rather get my work done at work and leave early, than chit chat with people and stay in the office 8 hours, just to say I was in the office 8 hours.  But, that's because my time after my day job is very precious.

I don't have much to chat about. Most of the people in my dept are 20-30 years older than I am. Different places in life. I also don't have hobbies most other folks have. I haven't watched tv in almost a week. So, I don't even have that to talk about with others.

If I'm not working, most of my time is dealing with my kids. I don't really like to hear people drone on and on about their kids. I'm guessing, they don't want to hear me drone about mine, even if my kids are awesome.

I pretty much only let people know of big personal issues..like when I was getting fertility treatments. I had to be out of the office alot for that, and that's something that can't be scheduled weeks/months in advanced.

Now, we do hang out with coworkers after work sometimes. Then we'll talk personal stuff.

[imawino]

Why do you feel you need to completely separate the two?  What's the goal here, MJ?   I think it's fine to be social with work people, though I would draw the line at socializing much with subordinates.  But anyway, I don't think you're going to get a good answer without people understanding what you are trying to accomplish - whether it's to not let work creep in on your home time, or you feel you're not being perceived as professional enough at work, or something else entirely.

[Deleted]

What do you mean by keep them separate. In my office we all know what is going on each other's lives and once in while we do stuff together. But mostly I feel 40 hours a week is more than enough time spent with anyone.

[Deleted]

I'm not trying to separate anything, I was just curious what others think/do.  Following the whole NCG debaucle, I am more careful about getting sucked into certain situations, but overall I am comfortable with my relative lack of separation between my work and personal life. 

[raeoflyte]

My coworkers know way too much about me and vice versa, but the core group has been together for over a decade during very trying times professionally so it just happened. We are friends so usually I'm ok with how its all worked out.

[Deleted]

When I say separate work and personal life it means I won't let chaos at home disrupt my job performance. I can't use personal challenges as an excuse for subpar work performance or unprofessional behaviour.

[Bob Ross]

Coworkers are evil.  If you don't know this, then you are one of the evil coworkers.

[happyhoix]

I don't share much at work, so that isn't a problem.

My problem is finding a switch to stop thinking about work problems when I go home. I don't like thinking about work to eat into my personal time. Sometimes work is crazy busy, and multiple fires go off, and I would like to just stop thinking about all of that as soon as I get into my car when I go home.

DH has a switch in his head so that when his head hits the pillow, he's asleep. I don't have that. On good nights, it takes a while, on bad nights, it takes a long while, because work events keep clicking along through my head, rolling over and over.

I need a cut off switch, like you have when your computer misbehaves and you have to reboot it.

[kgb18]

I don't.  Work blends into my personal life and my personal life blends into work.

Same here. DH and I have different jobs that happen to intersect. We know all of the same people. We sometimes see each other at work. We end up talking about work or people we know from work all the time. We're friends with our coworkers outside of work. I keep tabs on work stuff even when I'm not at work.

And, honestly, my job is so much a part of who I am. Part of how I identify and define myself is by my work.

[quince]

I'm an extreme introvert. It's really easy.

[toomuchreality]

Once I was training a girl who just wasn't getting it. At the end of day 4 approximately, I snapped at her. The following morning I felt kind of bad, so I apologized, saying that my DH and I were having some issues at home, which was not true. I was trying to save her some embarrassment. She went to our boss and complained that I was taking my personal life to work and it was interfering. Pissed me off! Never again did I do anything to try and help her. What a b****.

[Sum Dum Gai]

I worked with the same team for 5 years.  They could tell you that I was married.  They could probably tell you that I had two daughters.  I doubt they'd have been able to tell you how old they were with any certainty.  They wouldn't have been able to tell you the name of the wife or the kids.  I knew a little more about them, but not much.  I wrote their performance reviews so I purposely didn't hang out with them outside of work, and I made no effort to socialize at work either.  I wasn't rude about it or anything, but I didn't chit chat at work.

It was one of the first things I learned in the military when I became an NCO.  You can be buddies, you can supervise, trying to do both at the same time gets you in trouble.

I plan to be the same way with any employees at the toy store, but we'll see how that works out.

[Deleted]

I don't really like any of the people I work with so it is easy.

[teen persuasion]

Home and work are barely separated at all.  The library is our second home .  

In a small village, everyone knows everyone else, and is connected in 3 or more ways usually (school, church, sports, musical, volunteering, etc.)  The library is walking distance from the MS & HS, so my kids regularly walk over after practices for a ride home w/ me, and most of the kids that hang out at the library get to know me as E's or L's or X's or... mom.  When I'm at HS plays or musicals, I find myself scouting out the younger kids that I don't already know, for recruiting into the library drama club to replace graduating seniors.  For library events that need volunteers, my family are automatically "volunteered", and I have my kids pass the word along to their friends that might need PIG points or NHS hours.

[Shooby]

 I don't necessarily separate them.  We all chat about our lives during down time and there is nothing wrong with that.  And, there are people at work whom i am personal friends with.  So, i don't have some strict wall.  When at work , I primarily focus on my work.  But that doesn't mean i won't look at a coworker's baby pics and make small talk. 

[Deleted]

May 3, 2013 0:04:19 GMT -5 Sum Dum Gai said:

I worked with the same team for 5 years.  They could tell you that I was married.  They could probably tell you that I had two daughters.  I doubt they'd have been able to tell you how old they were with any certainty.  They wouldn't have been able to tell you the name of the wife or the kids.  I knew a little more about them, but not much.  I wrote their performance reviews so I purposely didn't hang out with them outside of work, and I made no effort to socialize at work either.  I wasn't rude about it or anything, but I didn't chit chat at work.

It was one of the first things I learned in the military when I became an NCO.  You can be buddies, you can supervise, trying to do both at the same time gets you in trouble.

I plan to be the same way with any employees at the toy store, but we'll see how that works out.

I'm sooo gonna start calling you Geppetto... or Comic Book Guy.

[tloonya]

May 2, 2013 14:11:02 GMT -5 thyme4change said:

What, exactly, are you trying to keep separate?  

Sometimes you just want to make post and you have nothing! Nothing to talk about. So you look around your office and BOOM! 'separation of work and personal life' happenning. 
Am I right, Jenny-the-poo?

[thyme4change]

Loony - is there a pill or something you can take to make you less mean?

[Deleted]

I agree, Thyme, that Loony was just being mean.  I thought it was a fair question.  But even if it wasn't, Loony should skip the ones she doesn't want to reply to.