When Co-Workers Become Like Family

When I hired in at the non-profit I work for currently, I was a temporary assistant, just for the heat season (which in Michigan was October-April, even though I hired in in December). Our location was housed in an office of another agency and it was just the two of us, everyone else worked for the other agency. I quickly became good friends with my boss, Marilyn. Her daughter was my age, but she was fun and happy and just an all around good person.

I don’t know when it happened that we became such good friends, but one day when I had been working for her for a few months she invited me to her family’s Easter egg hunt with my kiddo and husband. We just seemed to fit right in.

My agency had three people quit at the same time and I quickly applied for one of the positions because I would be getting a promotion to a job equivalent to my boss’ position in another county and it would be permanent. My boss supported me fully, she even recommended me for the position. I was hired right away!

My new county was different, but I was now working in the administration building. It was a big change, being the boss and being in a new county that I had never worked in or lived in.

I started off rocky with my assistant, I felt like she didn’t like me very much; I couldn’t blame her though, I mean, I was only with the agency three and a half months and was her boss after she had been there for three years; not to mention I was younger than her children. My first week, one of the senior workers quit when she only had twenty days left of her working there. My first client yelled at me. I was supposed to oversee three counties and couldn’t connect in two of them. Things were not going all that well.

Through everything, my former boss, Marilyn kept in touch, we saw each other at meetings and she was always just a phone call away. Soon, I started connecting with my other two senior workers and my assistant. I became friends with them all. Working for the same agency, under the same bosses, we started to be able to connect at work. But it suddenly became more than that.

My former boss, my friend, my confidant, Marilyn received a job offer she could not pass up recently and sadly, she put in her two week notice. Today was her last day and I could not help but feel a twinge of pain as she would no longer be my lunch buddy when we had all staff meetings. I am happy for her, I am excited that she is about to start a new chapter in her life though.

Tonight we had dinner together and it felt so final. She will be in my life still, we have become forever friends in the short year and a half that I have been with the agency, but I feel saddened by our loss.

So this leaves me wondering when my coworkers became like family to me? When did I begin to love this woman and feel like she is one of my best friends? When did my assistant grow on me to the point where I feel her pain when she is having a hard time with things? Where I want to defend her when I think our boss has treated her unfairly? When did my senior workers become close enough to me that they offer to loan me money if I need it or a place to sleep if I have a fight with my spouse? When did I become so connected to these people?

In saying goodbye to Marilyn, who had been with the agency almost nine years, I realized that she too had formed these bonds with her coworkers as well. It must be even harder to have these bonds for nine years and have to say goodbye. How am I going to handle it when it happens? My senior workers will be leaving me in a few short months as their contracts will be up and it seems almost impossible to say goodbye to them now.

I have never had a job for that long and the jobs I have had for any length of time, I never really connected the same as I do where I am at now. I mean, I had friends, and some of them are still my friends on social media; but working where I work and doing the job I do, it gives me a lot of time to talk and be personal and make connections on different levels with people, I just feel like the connections are different. Only one time before did I have such a strong familial bond with a boss or coworker and it pained me to say goodbye but overjoys me when I can speak to her on occasion.

So this leads me to question where do these bonds come from? Why do we attach ourselves to others like this? Why is it we can love our coworkers like family and yet some of our family we barely speak to? What is it with our society that we go to work and spend more time with our work family than we do with our regular families?