It's a Jungle out there!

A workplace can become an interesting battle of give and take. So what happens when your work life becomes your social life. How do we cope when we become the talking point of the rumor in question. 

When your work life becomes your social life, things can get a little hazy. It's like your names pulled out of a hat and your thrust directly into the stage lights of a brand new production, its opening night and your audience, becomes your review. So who are the greatest critics?  How do we deal with the stresses of being in the social limelight after a night out with the work mates, or when you've been dating a colleague you work with. In the workplace, rumors and social situations alike between staff members spread like wildfire.  If your well-liked around the workplace, other staff are most likely rooting for you. But one small judgment (which come on, somebody always has an opinion about you) that's when the rumors begin, and the truth becomes completely twisted. It's a battle between the truth, fiction and conflicting personalities.

The workplace is interchangeable and quite often lacks compassion, empathy and caring. In daily situations, can you put the feelings of others before yourself? Not many people can answer that honestly. Sure, people bring to the workplace their daily struggles and strains, and everyone's problem should be treated as individual. Do you as a colleague or, a decent human being, offer caring, or do you think their problem is nothing compared to yours? Be honest, how many times do you think to yourself, "that's nothing, they should get a life." 

It's funny to note how judgmental people can be, and for those who are so extremely taken back by people judging others, aren't we supposed to treat people how we would like to be treated ourselves?  When you judge another, you do not define them but yourself. Somehow, our opinions always seem to get in the way. Think about it. Judging someone else and saying one thing or another about that person before getting to know them and their history, you're simply demonstrating to others what sort of a person you are, and your values or maybe lack of them. Interpersonal skills represent the ability to communicate with others and build, and also maintain effective working relationships. Co-operation tends to make this happen, but what happens when a social night out with your colleagues turns into a workplace nightmare of skewed convictions. Its like a game of mercy. Your either in all the way, or your out at the first sign of pressure.


In a company with numerous numbers of departments and staff members, relationships are bound to happen between colleagues. Two people meet, get together and become fond of one another. In large workplaces both people may have dated others from the same workplace beforehand. Does it really matter who dates who? Two peoples relationships of the past shouldn't affect their relationships of today. They should be left alone to do their own thing and build something together. If it works, great, if not, everyone needs to 'live with it' as they say, or in this case, 'work' with it. How do you feel when something you've said gets turned around into something completely different to what actually came from your mouth? It becomes a game of 'he said', 'she said' and people put up walls because they don't want to hurt peoples feelings and so on. Sometimes, people just want to be on the 'good' side of everyone and they can't admit to saying something wrong or not knowing the complete story. They are the kinds of people who want everyone to like them and dig themselves a hole so deep they can't even climb their way out of it. Unfortunately, they are easily caught out of their own game, they become flustered and their story runs in circles. Manipulative? Definitely.

A workplace should be exactly that, your place of work. Friends come and go, work mates are simply your work mates. On a daily basis, however, everyone needs to look out for another and work as a team. Be empathetic, compassionate and understand we all come from different backgrounds so instead of creating unwanted tension, just work together. The meaning of 'empathy' is putting yourself in someone else shoes and trying to think of what its like for them while they're going through their struggle, or trying to deal with some sort of pain and so on. Be supportive, because you never know when you might find yourself in that situation.