Has anyone else noticed that their co-workers seem to not separate work and personal life very well? From asking potential employees details of their married or single life, housing situation, etc., to spending a lot of time outside work with co-workers, it seems to be commonplace here. It could be because of the fact that I am working at a new company in a small town, so everyone is getting to know each other, but it is strange to me.

In the US, my personal life and work life were two totally different things. No one at work even knew if I was dating anyone special, who my friends were, etc., unless I purposely put it into conversation. Here it seems everyone knows all the details about everyone's life, and it makes me sort of uncomfortable!

Well, depends on where you work.
Where I work there are several colleagues who have pratically grow up together and therefore, after 30 years working together, they spend most of their days with the colleagues rather than the family. It is not so uncommon that they exchange suggestion on restaurants, so why don't take the wives out to dinner altogether? Some even go on holidays together!

Besides, there are some other people, especially the bosses, who does not meet outside the place of work, neither among them. There might be a work dinner together once (or less) per year, but without family.

I think it depends on where you work, both because of the place (small town vs big city, grew there or moved), the role you play (boss vs. employee). The smaller the company and the town, the more intertwined life and work become.

Anyway, it is up to you to decide whether to share with your colleagues your private life. My colleagues are happy to do it, but we do nothing together because they're 25 years older than me! I am always hearing of their stories together, when they went fishing, hunting for mushrooms, eating to a certain place, made a grill on the backyard, etc

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Pola,

I agree with Paola. I worked for a small association in S.F. (60 employees) and everyone knew practically all the details of everyone else's personal life. However, we did not socialize much outside the office. My experience in Italy has been much the same, a few official lunches and dinners, but I could have told you who everyone was dating or married to, and who wasn't getting along with their significant other and why.
Probably best just to go with the flow and contribute whatever personal info you want, and change the subject if someone gets too personal. I am not sure saying, "I'm not comfortable talking about this" would go over well with Italians (my opinion, feel free to correct me).

I think that company workers seem to separate their roles very well once they're outside the office. I remember going out for lunch many times with the department boss and the department secretary among the lunch crowd. Once away from their desks, they'd happily argue / discuss any subject on a perfectly equal footing. Once back in the office they'd just as easily resume their work roles. It made for interesting lunches!

quote:

Originally posted by Vicky:

Probably best just to go with the flow and contribute whatever personal info you want, and change the subject if someone gets too personal. I am not sure saying, "I'm not comfortable talking about this" would go over well with Italians (my opinion, feel free to correct me).

I would never say that anyway, even in English, I would just skirt the issue somehow. The more I think about the more it is probably a virtue of the small town we are in, which I think in a couple weeks I'm moving out of anyway. I was out in town last night and saw 5 or 6 people I knew, even an American tourist I had met already. And I've only been here a few weeks!

I like having places where "everybody knows your name" so to speak, and I had those in NYC too, but if it's every single place, I am going to feel majorly suffocated.

I think it is just the fact that you are in a small town. I've had the opposite experience. In New York, almost all of my best friends worked in my same field and I was always very close with my co-workers. I think it was the fact that we worked so much, spent so much time together and had the same interests. Here in the last place I worked, I also worked a ton but despite spending 12 hours a day with the people in my office, we never got on friendly terms. Even in August when people would go on vacation, nobody would ever ask what each other's plans were. I found it very bizarre and was sad to not have made many friends there. I also found it difficult to relate to people my age who still lived with their parents and hadn't had much life experience. At lunch they'd all talk about what their moms made for dinner the night before and what mamma had packed them for lunch that day. I also found that since people had grown up in and always lived in the same city, they had the same friends from elementary school and were not necessarily looking to meet new people.
Michelle

Sounds like small town life everywhere. I know my OH has told me some pretty funny stories about the village he grew up in the Netherlands. His parents actually peek from behind the curtains every time an unknown car drives up their street (or, since this is Holland, an unknown bicyclist bicycles up their street.) And they all dislike the "city folk" who have moved to their town to escape high rents.

One memorable night we were waiting for our food to be ready in the local Chinese (ie Indonesian) restaurant and OH told me later that the people there were talking in dialect about how much they hate people from Rotterdam right in front of this one guy who had a Rotterdam accent and had no idea they were slagging him off. Nice!

Al this reminds me of something the 'Bard' wrote...

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts..."


But then to counter that Paul Beatty said

"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door."

That's how we must all feel sometimes

quote:

In the US, my personal life and work life were two totally different things. No one at work even knew if I was dating anyone special, who my friends were, etc., unless I purposely put it into conversation. Here it seems everyone knows all the details about everyone's life, and it makes me sort of uncomfortable!

I think you had a unique situation in the US. As I recall a high precentage of dating and marriage takes place between coworkers. When one is stuck with the same people 8 to 12 hours a day it would seem odd that they never discussed personal matters, ask questions about kids, homelife etc.

Very long work hours can make it difficult to have much of a social life out of work. There's either not much time left or you're so tired that you stay in.

quote:

In the US, my personal life and work life were two totally different things. No one at work even knew if I was dating anyone special, who my friends were, etc., unless I purposely put it into conversation. Here it seems everyone knows all the details about everyone's life, and it makes me sort of uncomfortable!

I too like to keep work and home separate, but the Italians can get a bit offended if you keep shunning their pizza evenings. Going out to dinner with the people you work with seems a bit exaggerated to add on top of a 40 hour week!

One trick is to never give your phone number to anyone. Take theirs, but don't give yours. This only works for so long.

Of course, the next trick is to tell everyone you never answer your phone, and then they won't be hurt when you ignore their call.

quote:

One trick is to never give your phone number to anyone. Take theirs, but don't give yours. This only works for so long.

Of course, the next trick is to tell everyone you never answer your phone, and then they won't be hurt when you ignore their call.

Cell phones are so cheap that you can easily have two of them. One number is given only to relatives and persons you really need to speak with. The other one is given as a general public contact. The trick is turning it on only few minutes every day. If you never turn it on, you do not even have to explain that you are ignoring calls

I agree with Ramona's assessment about the nosey thing being universal in small towns. I lived in a small town out West for a brief stint and people were always seeming to marvel at the weirdness of my life. My first few weeks everyone except for my 2 bordering neighbors were very distant but curious. Guess they didn't know what to make of me. Took a while for them to warm up.

I lived in a 3 story 150-yr. old house that once was a train-station in the Styx. The house had thick slate shingles on the roof (part of the original architecture and STILL leak-proof). The exterior was made from heavy oak boards lapped over one another and had dozens of layers of whitewash paint peeling off everywhere. To say it was "weathered" would be an understatement. The townsfolk seemed to take alot of interest in my cleaning up the yard which was overgrown and filled with debris. By the time I got to the house exterior the neighbors in every direction seemed to make a sport of sitting on their porches watching me bring the old eyesore back to life. I tore down a collapsing "shed" on the property that was made from 2-inch thick roughcut pine and heavy framing timbers and turned it into makeshift scaffolding. I actually still have it and use it to this day ~ looks like a medieval siege machine but it has alot more character than the metal stuff. By the time I was finished, I had sanded enough of the surface of the wood to bring out a rich reddish and white oak color to the surface which looked like a million bucks when I repaired it all and stained it.

One day, my dog pulled a Yoga-master maneuver when he spotted a roving band of neighborhood mutts (including females in heat). He slipped his big bulbous pitbull head out from his collar leaving it and the chain connecting him to a tree in the dust (I was on the scaffolding and couldn't stop him). I had to run through the neighborhood and about a dozen people's yards for 15 minutes till I caught up with him. He was a holy terror jumping fences and zooming through thickets. Met alot of people from this lil escapade. Eventually all my neighbors would start stopping by and getting into all the details of my life over beer and a burger (have grill, will travel).

They'd start by complimenting me on the progress of the renovations and usually invite me over for lunch, dinner, or whatever. Nice people but the downside is once every couple days someone was bugging me to borrow a piece of my equipment or some tool (I have some very exotic stuff ~ something for everything).

-Danse

PS ~ Long have I wished for a time when I could use the word "townsfolke" in a sentence. Now I can die a happy and content man.

X-tra PS ~ The house was haunted. I was a man of science who was eternally skeptical of such things but that place changed my mind for sure.

Eh I get creepy goosebumps just thinking about it.

All these anti social attitudes are giving me creepy goosebumps.

I thought one reason people liked Italy was for it's open friendly people.

quote:

I thought one reason people liked Italy was for it's open friendly people.

Of course! But we all have different ideas as to *how* open and friendly we'd like others to be with us--and it's not the same for everyone.

I find it really intrusive, in fact, for people to just stop by my house in the middle of the day, especially since I work at home. I have no problem if someone calls me and wants to get a coffee or even calls before they're coming, but admittedly, this issue has to do a lot with the fact that many people around here simply can't wrap their heads around the fact that when I'm home, I'm probably working (or doing other household work like cooking or cleaning when I also prefer not to be interrupted because I'm a filthy mess).

But this is off-topic as it's not about separating work and personal life--just wanted to point out that I don't think it's necessarily antisocial to want to have some privacy and not be at everyone's beck and call when they need something (although some Italians I've come across certainly do consider this antisocial).

Lucky for me and my relationship, my OH isn't one of them

quote:

I have no problem if someone calls me and wants to get a coffee or even calls before they're coming

I don't disagree with that, and since you work at home, so do we, I think you are still on topic. Maybe you and others would agree more with the attitude around here - the North. No one almost ever just stops by. And people rarely invite you into their houses. It's just those rascals from the South who think if we come by to pick up our kids from a play date that we ought to just stay for dinner. Darn that overly social Southern behaviour. Really gets on the nerves.

Here it depends how close you are to the other person. When we first were looking at our house, my neighbor walked in without knocking (not knowing we were there) because she had done this with the prior occupants for decades. Now she knocks first, but she doesn't call first for permission. I knock at their door before entering, but I also do not call first for permission.

If we were going to visit someone we weren't very close to, we would call first.

quote:

Originally posted by jhelm:
All these anti social attitudes are giving me creepy goosebumps.

I thought one reason people liked Italy was for it's open friendly people.

Let me assure you that in Genova the people are not particularly friendly and far from open! ;o)

That said, once you make a friend here, you'll get 10 calls a week asking when you want to catch up. I love my time alone, and don't like it interrupted. Fortunately so does my wife!

Jhelm not sure if you're referring to my bit about being aggravated when people ask to borrow my stuff as being "anti social" but let me assure you.. I'm a generous guy and I frequently do loan my stuff out but that's wear and tear on my gear. I keep my tools and equipment in immaculate shape, others are rarely even the basic-most respectful of my stuff. 90 percent of the time I have to chase down my property because the borrower will keep it forever if I don't go get it. I have a huge library of technical books and I used to let friends liberally borrow things. I've lost dozens of prized books that way and almost always had to hassle them to get them returned.

It's not anti social. That's reality.

-Danse

Danse,

I think JHelm was referring to the original poster.

Dennis, not referring to you at all really you seem like a totally social person and not wanting to loan out expensive books and tools has nothing to do with being social. We used to loan our architecture books to clients but found them not getting returned so we made a policy that they could look at them in the office anytime they wanted but not take them home.

I just liked your creepy goosebumps expression so I copied it.