Is this a unique work experience?
My coworker likes me. Not romantically, I hope. But she really enjoys being my coworker and I think when I was hired, she was excited to meet someone who she has so much in common with. The problem is, I don't come to work to make friends. I'm here to get a paycheck, that's it.
When I first got here, she made a few remarks about how she had seen on my social media that I liked things she also likes (due to the nature of the job, my social media was disclosed in my background check, but she was not the person conducting that check so she searched me of her own accord). I blocked her. One day, I’m told she’s made a remark about me spending too much time on a SM acct that’s public but she doesn’t follow me on. I delete that profile. Sometime la, I’m sent a screenshot of her posting a meme to her SM about blocking coworkers, but how she time, she’s the one being blocked by a coworker (I’m her only coworker).
Eventually, I’m told that she thinks I hate her. She hasn’t said shit to me about it. Frankly, I should have let it be, but I have a chat with her to clear the air and any possible tension. She’s since found my other SM acct and became an active and dedicated follower, always liking and commenting, and then quoting me at work. I deleted that acct too.
I’m tired of being social, and now I’m keeping my distance. I have very few SM pages now, and the ones I do are not easy to find or public. I don’t answer questions about my plans for weekends or holidays with anything other than nothing or I don’t know. I don’t like the ability of my personal life details being repeated. What I post online, I know has the ability to be seen by a billion eyes including family, friends, coworkers, and potential employers. But it would be weird if the neighbor you don’t speak much to beyond hi and the weather suddenly says how much they loved your crotchet video on YouTube the other day. It just feels weird.
I’ve been burned by making friends at work in the past, I’m not doing it again unless we don’t discuss work and we don’t work directly with each other. A friend of mine refers to her as my own personal Baby Reindeer, it would be funny if it wasn’t weird. Like had a conversation with her neighbors about me only to find out that one of them works with my husband weird. Because that would mean you mentioned my last name. I don’t know, this was already a lot and there’s a frightful lot more.