Abnormal psychology.

I find it hard to develop meaningful friendships with people I work with. Mostly, I think it's better to maintain a professional working relationship, sans all the personal obligations and emotional ambiguities muddying corporate responsibilities. And sometimes, I observe things about a person at work, which I find hard to accept in a friend. To other people, these same things are easily redeemable with a "...BUT, she's really a nice person..." - the person being the one "OUTSIDE of work".

Are we only cogs in a system, stripped of self-awareness and autonomy, the moment we step into our workplaces? When we spend a third to almost half of our lives at the workplace, how much of our real selves can be kept separate from our work personalities?

While a co-worker may not necessarily be the same person outside of office hours, certain types of behaviour do reflect on the real person, like stealing from the coffers and being plain nasty. I could concede that slacking is merely an unfortunate job mismatch that results in lack of motivation in one's work; not everyone can land their dream job, for many reasons. Although, having good work ethics says a lot about the person too. After all, in life, you don't get to eat your cake all the time; and when you don't, you deal with it.

It is also true that pressures of the workplace can cause people to behave in ways that they normally would not. However, a statistical anomaly is no less significant or real than the majority; rarity of a behaviour does not mean it doesn't exist - it just means that certain situations don't present themselves on a routine basis. Moreover, if people respond differently to the same situation, what is it then, that makes a person behave in a certain way? What makes Person A recognise and accept responsibility for her mistake, and move on, while Person B attempts to salvage her bruised ego by conjuring a shortcoming in her superior and then pointing it out to the latter in a self-righteous tone so that she can feel better about herself? What makes Person C relook her time management to keep up with her new boss's scorching pace of work, while Person D hands in her resignation because she doesn't think she can keep up, even before she has tried.

When push comes to shove, what are you made of? Really.