My friend Harry gave me a really hard time about not writing for a while…so, here I am. And, boy has it been an interesting few weeks. There have been lots of business-like changes at work. Every day is another experience in living with stress. There’s lots of changes in the wind and no one knows for certain, unless you’re one of the higher-ups, what those changes are going to be. Everyone’s on pins and needles.

To make it even better I’ve been in a shit-storm of my own at work. For all kinds of Human Resource and legal reasons I can’t go into it here. The worst part of it is that friendships have been affected by bullshit. Or, at least, I thought they were friendships. We have a wonderful HR person in our division who has always been able to be something rare in HR, a human being. She and I have always been able to debate different aspects of “corporate life”. Weeks ago she and I got into a debate over relationships with co-workers. She holds fast to the notion that co-workers are only co-workers, nothing more. It was a very interesting debate.

Like a lot in my life, I relate to something from television. In the final episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” Mary Richards says, “Sometimes I wonder if the people you work with are just the people you work with; they’re not family. But then, I wonder, what is family. They’re the people who care about you and make you feel less alone. You are all my family”. Paraphrased, of course, but you get the idea. I grew up with my parents having close friends come from each of their work places. Shared good and bad times together and that closeness with my parents has filtered down to the next generation and even to the grandchild level in some instances. Some of my parents’ good friends/co-workers are also my good friends. They are family. How can you not spend 8-plus hours per day with people and not become involved in their lives? The idea that they are just the people in the cubicle next to mine is impossible to fathom. OK, there are some I wouldn’t want to be part of my life, but those that do come in are as cherished as anyone sharing my last name.

That’s the part that has hurt the most about my recent “episode”. The people affected by this have entered my life. We have shared meals, special occasions, emotionally wrenching times, laughs, tears and every other emotion you can imagine between friends. It’s not the actual incident that upsets me the most, but the fact they believe I would forfeit or betray their friendship in any manner. While I sit here and wonder if I ever really knew these people I also wonder if they ever really knew me not to know that I would never put loyalty to a friendship before any job.

Sometimes I am naive, I admit. I don’t always hear the scuttlebutt going around the office. I don’t catch all the nuances of situations. While, at times, I feel betrayed by the actions of these other people I still give them the benefit of the doubt that they were influenced by others; that they could not have betrayed our friendship either. I do that because I know that’s the way I treat others and expect it in return; you know, “do unto others”. I read that in a book somewhere once.