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How To Distance Yourself From A Coworker Friend

The Ordinary Man
3 min readJan 11, 2022

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Everyone makes mistakes at work. But sometimes those mistakes aren’t work-related, they’re relationship related. You’ve somehow ended up in a friendship with someone that you don’t like or is no good for you.

Work friendships are already awkward and this can be looked at as a good thing. How much more awkward can things get?

So now you have to awkwardly pass someone in the hall, so what? You do that 5 times a day anyway.

Do They Work On The Same Team As You?

The people that you end up getting closest to at work are generally the people that are on the same team as you. But if you’re lucky, then your closest relationship will be with someone on a distance team or someone that moved teams.

Distancing yourself from someone on your team is hard, some might say impossible, as you work directly with each other 5 times a week. In situations like this, you’re going to have to be upfront with them. There’s no way around it.

If you’re not upfront then you’re just going to be stuck in this awkward state of purgatory.

If they’re on a different team you can gradually phase them out like you would any other fringe friend.

Do You Have To Interact With Them To Do…

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