Coworkers: Don't Trust Em'

People usually say that your manager can make or break your career. Well, here's some news for you. If you aren't careful, your coworkers can hold that same power over you.

Part of the excitement of a new job is the idea of meeting new people and making new friends, right? Work just isn't fun if you don't have a few close friends on your team, right? We all need a "best friend" at the office, right? WARNING: Friends you meet at work (especially if they are on your team) are COWORKERS first, friends second.

Hmmm... What exactly does that mean? There is a big difference between coworkers and friends. Friends are excited when you get a big raise or promotion. Coworkers (especially if they are your peers) can be bitter, jealous and may secretly feel that your glaring incompetence/kissing up/manager's delusions of your grandeur render such rewards as totally undeserved. If a manager has a $10,000 budget to give three people bonuses and you get half of that (even if it was well deserved), the other two coworkers are going to feel jilted because you got twice as much as they did. In a way, you "stole"/cheated them out of or deprived them of that money. This is exactly why you keep your mouth shut when your "friends" ask you how much of a bonus or raise you got.

The average, normal person will get over it and won't do anything crazy except curse your name at Happy Hour that night and have a few bad dreams where you stole their pony and made them cry.

However. Everyone wants to be the one who gets the big piece of the pie and everyone is delusional enough to believe that they are "better than the average person". Therefore, everyone believes that they deserve the big rewards over everyone else. No one is happy when that little dream gets crushed. When was the last time you heard someone say, "I don't really deserve a merit increase this year, even if they didn't notice that I spent 35 hours a week on Full Tilt Poker."

If there is one thing people are massively protective of, it's money. If you deprive someone of a dollar, they're going to be bitter on some level.

So... In order to protect their money/chances of additional income/job, people may do weird things. If they truly do think you are incompetent or undeserving of advancement, they may do passive aggressive things to undermine you behind your back. "Innocent" comments or vague "concerns" may get expressed to the manager or other influential people. They may say nothing (or worse, gladly contribute) to circulating gossip about you. Remember that in order for someone to "win", someone else has to lose. The more desperate someone is to win (either for the money itself, or psychological peace of mind or to feed their ego), the crazier they may get to secure the win.

I've actually had employees who were "friends" come visit me separately with the sole intention of tipping me off so that the other person would get fired. But in that department, everyone claimed that these two got along fabulously well. And yet, both of them sat in my office and said things like , "I like Bob, but... I think he's using FedEx to mail stuff to his parents in Switzerland" or "I love Susie, but... she can be so moody, almost like she's on drugs". No joke. Those conversations actually happen. A lot. By people YOU probably think of as friends.

So what's the point? Be friendly with people, but withhold certain kinds of information. Don't tell others how much you make, how much you get in bonuses, increases, perks, etc. If you NEED to share that info or really want to know what others are getting, check out some of the online sites where you can anonymously share that info (www.glassdoor.com is one of them).

And if you find yourself asking your coworkers if they got a 2% raise too, don't be surprised if later on you find yourself sitting in HR's office making vague comments like, "Bob's always talking about guns... It kind of freaks me out.... I think he brought one into work the other day..."