Oh man, I feel this one. After a bad experience I stopped sharing ANYTHING about my private life and my coworkers would bust my balls about that, until I snapped and shouted “None of your fucking business”. They leave me alone now, so mission accomplished, I guess.
>spend 8 hours a day, minimum, sitting next to some guy
>try to make small talk to break up the monotony of wage slavery
>guy doesn’t even respond, or gives short answers at best
>damn, he must either not like me or isn’t a very sociable person
This is meme has a bad implied advise. You have to interact with your coworkers in so far as you build working relationship to trust each other, because teamwork and professionalism is required in most jobs. Also, building a work friendly relationship with coworkers will pay off when you want to get promotion or recognition, because you will get good word of mouth from colleagues and thus build a good reputation.
I understand where people are coming from with this, but one has to balance knowing when to recognise if your workmates can be trusted and become good friends, or knowing how to keep professional but friendly distance. Unless you work in an environment where teamwork has less importance, or you don’t plan to move up the corporate ladder which requires good reputation, or really don’t want to make friends with colleagues because they are toxic, then by all means be “rude”.
I fall into “rude coworker” territory, but have managed to do really well in my career. Different groups at my company have requested me to move to them, was just promoted to Expert in my software product, and actually just got offered a job with a 30% raise by one of the clients I work with (which I ultimately accepted and start next month).
My secret is that I’m a hard worker and I’m very thorough with everything I do. I take mentoring others seriously, and although I’m not naturally a very patient person, I am always patient with my coworkers and clients.
You don’t have to be good at socializing to climb your way up, but you do have to make up for it by actually being good at your job.
