Friends at Work

How many friends do you have? Not acquaintances. Or spacebook pals. But proper mates: people who would still come to visit if you swapped trading exotic derivatives in the City for a part-time job flogging hot tubs in Wolverhampton.

It’s a question we all ask ourselves periodically – usually at 3am, after a bottle of Bombay Sapphire – though when I considered it recently I was taken aback by the answer. Not because the number was so low. At eight mates, I have, according to a recent survey, the average number for someone just out of their twenties. But because several people who would have made the cut last year – colleagues at my then employer I regarded as pals for life – no longer did so.

The revelation made me feel guilty until a conversation with some new colleagues made it evident that shedding workfriends was par for the course. One said he had accumulated just two lasting mates over nine years at two preceding workplaces. Another said she had not retained a single real friend over eight years at four preceding workplaces. It seems friendship is eternal, unless you meet at work, in which case it lasts until the moment you are escorted out of the building by security.

Why is this the case?

Read atTimes Online