Friendly

      I was having lunch with a friend the other day, and she was telling me how her boss hadn't bent the rules for her. The infraction was minor, but she felt he should have given her some leeway because she and her husband and her boss and his wife had gone to several social occasions together, including a couple of trips to the lake.
      "I thought we were friends," she said. "But now I can see what his friendship is worth."
      Because she is my friend and she wasn't asking for advice, I didn't point out a few things that I personally believe about the boss-employee relationship. I just sympathized.
      But I learned a long time ago that rarely is your boss your friend. It's a hard thing for some people, but let's look at it for a few moments.
      Your boss -- if he's doing what he is supposed to be doing -- is trying to make money for your company. Ultimately what he does impacts the bottom line. I have a jaded view of businesses -- particularly corporations -- and I believe a corporation would cheerfully sell your bones to a fertilizer company if they could get away with it. They exist to make money and to grow. If they demonstrate caring about their employees, it's because having their employees happy and sane usually means their employees are working harder for the company. (There are many companies that run counter to this stark view, but we're going to deal with the basics on this.) My point is that your boss has to follow the rules or he won't be your boss very long. He has a different set of priorities than you.
      We'd all like to believe that our bosses support us and would go to the wall for us. Sometimes they do. But to expect as a condition of the boss-employee relationship is a mistake. I've had more than one boss who would leave his/her employees hanging in the wind to protect himself/herself. I don't expect anything else now and make sure that I cover my butt as much as possible. That's the way of the modern corporation. To expect otherwise is to endow capitalism with virtues that only naive people give it. Capitalism is not about charity or compassion. It does what it does and it does it well. It does what it's supposed to do.
      It may be impossible to be truly be friends with anyone who has a superior or inferior position to you. Lord Bacon said that true friendship is only possible between equals. Despite being named after the delicious portion of a pig, he has something there. Naturally I'm over-simplifying things, but I think it's hard for unequals to be friends.
      This applies to money, too. I'm friends with a person who has quite a bit more money than I have. He is totally baffled by my computer budget woes. He doesn't understand why I don't just go and buy one. He doesn't understand being broke. So sometimes that puts a strain on our relationship. He's a good guy and he does try to be sensitive to my budget constraints usually or we wouldn't be friends at all. But the money gulf between us does cause strain on our relationship at times.
      Basically I approach the boss-employee relationship as follows:
      1. I resolve to be friendly to my boss and to my employees. Being pleasant and polite is simply good business sense.
      2. I don’t make the mistake, though, of thinking that being friendly is the same as being friends.
      3. I don’t presume that a relationship outside the office will translate into any advantages in the office. I don’t expect favors nor grant them. I know that office politics often makes this impossible, but our work life would be better if cronyism was a thing of the past.
      4. My personal life is just that: My personal life. I don’t want to mix the two. What goes on in my life outside the office isn’t anyone’s business in the office unless I have a relationship with them outside the office.
      I know this sounds like I favor a cold, impersonal office environment. That’s not true. But I think there has to be a clear-cut line between your personal life and your office life. I also think that if your office life is your personal life … well, you’ve got a big problem because jobs will come and go. You need a life and identity separate from your job. Otherwise, someday you’d going to be fired, laid off, downsized or retired, and then where will you be?