Facebook and Co-workers ???

[miralys]

Nope. Personal life is personal and professional life is professional. Mixing the two has never led to anything but tears in my experience.

 

[tlbwriter]

This is one reason I'm not on Facebook. I just know someone at work is going to try to friend me and I don't want to come out and say "we're coworkers, not friends" but I also don't want her as a "friend." It's easy to ignore people who you went to high school with and haven't spoken to since then, but I don't want to hurt the feelings of someone I see regularly.

 

[Sorsha]

I am only friends with my work people that I am actually friends with; those I truly enjoy being around and may dine with outside of the office.

I am friends with a few co-workers. We socialize at work and have hung out a few times outside of work so it is no big deal for me to be friends with them at work.

Yes, this.

I work with a group of about 30-ish people. I am not friends with all of them, by a long shot. But I am friends with those that I choose to be "true" friends with. Those are the ones I would go out to dinner with, invite to my house to socialize, go to a movie with, or hit up the Farmer's Market or a Quilt Show with. Out of the women I work with now, and former workers who have left over the years, I have friend-ed about 10 of them.

 

[onelilspark]

I have a separate list for my co-workers and it's limited to what I post. Nothing on my FB is anything that I wouldn't want my grandmother to see anyway, so there's nothing scandalous. But right now we're looking at moving out of the area, I don't really want one of my friends coming and posting that on my page, so I keep it limited to only what I post.

 

[Dax]

I work in a very small office, and I am FB friends with my office mate...but the other people in the office..NO WAY! My office mate and I share our misery, and we are becoming fast friends, so we keep up with each other that way...Otherwise...HELL NO

 

[DWGal210]

I do the same - no work peeps.

Not to friend.

I steer clear of co-workers on my facebook, and I steer clear of drama mamas.

My explanation to those people who are insistent on becoming my "friend" is that I reserve my facebook for only close friends and family.

 

[ckay87]

Everything I post is harmless. Silly even. I manage my FB as if I were publishing a public blog (as IF I were that interesting ), in that I truly do not care who reads it. That way I don't have to get too hung up on security settings, etc.

As for other people's stuff.... I just don't do anything that I'd be embarassed for people to share or tag me on.

People who are interested in me would read it, people who are not interested in me would be bored by it.

So yes, I do friend co-workers who are actual friends of mine.

 

[babyrich]

I am only friends with a few of my co-workers. One of them is my friend outside the office too, the other 2 or 3 and I have similar interests so we became friends. I have several of my co-workers blocked so I dont even get requests.

I would ignore your co-workers request. If she is bold enough to ask why, tell her you dont mix business with pleasure and keep it at that.

 

[ols386]

So I have a question for those of you with Facebook pages...are you friends with your co-workers?

The reason I'm asking is because I have a co-worker who just asked to be my friend and I'm not really comfortable being friends with co-workers on facebook. I work at a large University and just switched departments and she is the first one to ask. So I need to figure out what I'm going to say to her as to why I haven't accepted the request yet.

I just became friends with the group of people from my previous office.

I don't know what it is and DH thinks it's weird but I think that to much trouble could come out of being friends with co-workers. This paticiulary one that asked me is the drama queen/gossip queen of our office. My first week of work she took me aside and started talking smack about everyone on the office very tacky if you ask me.

So what's your opinion? To friend or not to friend?

I think you answered your own question.

I would't want a co-worker like this as one of my FB frends.

I'd just ignore the request.

 

[furb & dez]

same here, i prefer to keep business and my personal life separate. So much easier!

I totally agree.

I don't usually mention work on my FB at all... the most you would ever see is, "today was busy at work; glad to be home!" No one needs to know details, and more importantly, no one really cares.

I'm a particularly fierce advocate of leaving work AT WORK. When I leave the parking structure at the end of the day, I stop thinking about work, and I don't think about it again until I enter the parking structure the next workday. It's so much better for your health and stress level!

While I might mention a busy day at work, one thing that would never happen is mentioning any of my cow-orkers, friends or not. Discussing cow-orkers in a public forum could quite possibly be the stupidest thing one could ever do for the course of your career.

 

[PatsMom]

I am Facebook friends with two of my co-workers but we are quite friendly outside of the office. I would never, ever post anything on Facebook that I would have a problem with anyone reading. It just isn't all that private.

 

[Stacy's a freak]

I never post anything on FB that I wouldn't allow the world to see so it wouldn't matter to me.

Ditto! I have "friends" that I work with/supervise and have had no issues. I do not monitor their pages and they are free to monitor mine as they please as I post nothing of work consequence on FB. I consider FB to be very public even if you have a hidden profile.

 

[fall08CP]

At my old job, we were all the same age (early 20s) and the same level, so yes, we all added each other. We were together all day at work and then went out almost every night together. Was a great group, and we shared photos and events over FB.

Current job, I put all co-workers on limited profile, and they can't see my wall. My supervisors have not tried to add me, so no issues there. It's the people in my same role- we have company rules about discussing politics and religion on Facebook, so I'm very cautious.

 

[maslex]

I only have a handful of co-workers that are on my FB page but I also consider them my friends not just associates.

I do have one co-worker that has sent me a few friend requests and I've always declined them. I don't talk to her at work, don't really like her at all and she's a big snitch and gossip-er, so why would I want to "friend" her??? And truthfully, over the last couple years that she's been trying to be my FB friend, she's never come up to me and ask me why I've denied her. So I'm assuming she just wants to get in on the daily action of people's lives.

We're school bus drivers and she's gone as far as taking pictures with her cell phone (we're not supposed to have our cell phones on during work--hello!!! we're on the road, people!!!) of other bus drivers doing something "wrong". Just recently, some other drivers have caught her boyfriend video-taping busses going by their house and then calling in to the boss to complain of them speeding. Mind you, their house is RIGHT at the railroad tracks and all busses stop at the tracks to check for trains, then cross over them to continue down the road. By the time you get over the tracks and get by their house, you're probably going about 20 mph. How that is speeding is beyond me.

But anyhow, I only have people that I consider friends on my list.

 

[DisneyCher]

No, because the co-workers who I am friends with outside of work are not on FB. Well, one is, but she is friends with some people with extreme views and didn't want to expose me to that side of her.

 

[daisax]

It's not so much what you might write but what an unwise coworker might write that can land you in hot water. A friend of mine unfriended a coworker because she was becoming more and more unprofessional in the way she discussed the company and clients -- within weeks the woman was under investigation for violating company policy, and so were any other employees yucking it up along with her.

Facebook changes its privacy settings so regularly and so predictably in favor of universal access that I would never accept anyone as a friend who had not been to my home (or I to theirs), or who is prone to questionable behavior.

Like other people have said, I have real life friends I am not Facebook friends with because some people in their larger circle of friends are not people I would associate with, and I don't want to cringe at their exchanges.

 

[TDC Nala]

I'm only friends with friends. No family, no co-workers.

 

[njmom47]

Not to friend.

 

[ZephyrHawk]

I do not friend co-workers.

I am, however, FB friends with my boss' eldest daughter. We're quite close in age.

 

[CindyKansas]

I am an advisor at a College and I do have co-workers that are friends on FB. Where I draw my line is I don't friend students.