My Work Family
“Everyone knows that we spend more time with our work family than our biological one. So, if we will spend endless hours with these people, shouldn’t we really make it mean something? ”
The Story Behind This Story
I worked for the same company with many of the same people for 15+ years. I saw much more of them than I did my own family. It was a precious time that I will always remember.
Dirt Farmer Maggie, March 2021
My Work Family
There is a saying, “you can’t pick your family” – and that’s true. Families are put together, by in large, without any majority vote. You basically get to choose one person, your spouse, and even then, sometimes it takes a couple of rounds to get that one right!
In this regard, the workplace is a lot like a family. You are thrown together with a group of vastly different people and expected to not only cooperate and work together but to like it in the process. Everyone knows that we spend more time with our work family than our biological one. So, if we will spend endless hours with these people, shouldn’t we really make it mean something? So that in the end, we don’t look back on the 30-40 years the average person spends earning a living, and feel like we wasted it all?
“We come alongside one another, these strange bedfellows; people we would not have chosen for friends, yet we are sharing the majority of our lives with. I am challenged, from this day forward, to make each day count. ”
When I think of the menagerie of human beings that I’ve been joined to in the workplace, I find a tenderness comes into my heart – really – even for those I complain about. Because, for better or worse, we have a history. We stood together in horror as we watched the Twin Towers fall on television in the break room and it was with them I cried, not my blood relatives. We’ve shared in the joy of births and the sadness of deaths, the agony of divorce or betrayal and the unbelievable hurt endured when a child rebels. We come alongside one another, these strange bedfellows; people we would not have chosen for friends, yet we are sharing the majority of our lives with. I am challenged, from this day forward, to make each day count. To touch the heart of at least one member of my work family every day and to remember that each of them were strategically placed into my life for me to learn from and for them to gain, in some way, from me as well. I am richer for knowing each of them.
They say you can’t pick your family – and thank God – how boring and mundane life would be if we could!
