My friend came to me with a real conundrum yesterday: she’s been asked by her boss to help recruit for a new position in her office. She knows someone that would be perfect for the job, but it’s someone who studied with us and she had a fling with him that ended a bit uncomfortably. I said she should be fair and tell him about the position… but she is worried it will make the atmosphere in her office tense, and she’ll have to deal with it every day. Everyone knows that mixing business and friendship can be difficult. Does that makes mixing business and relationships-that-went-sour a definite No-No?

What’s the right thing to do??

What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

No point making herself uncomfortable for the sake of this guy.

Thanks for your input Laurel I guess what you’re saying is that I should be making my friend’s well-being a priority? That makes sense. Although, in this economic climate, I feel bad for not helping my old classmates find employment…

Jerushah the way I see it is - at the end of the day if she likes her job and does it well etc bringing someone into the mix with whom there is known tension cannot be good for general company moral or even for her as it could affect her job! At the end of the day why should she risk her job for someone that means next to nothing you know?

I can see why you feel bad for him, but would he do the same for her?

Good question Judging from the way their fling ended, I guess he would probably not offer her the job if it were the other way around.

I’ve been doing a bit of reading on the subject and it certainly seems as if it’s not wise to work with friends. One expert even goes as far to say that it’s probably not a good idea to create strong friendships with your colleagues either!

She says that an argument that takes place outside of the office can negatively impact your professional relationship with that person, leading to a negative atmosphere in the office and even a loss of productivity.

I was wondering whether anyone on this site has experienced this? I always thought that striking up friendships with colleagues was good for office morale!!!

Jerushah although I understand where this woman is coming from in her article I think it would be very hard to follow the advice she is giving as you can’t help but get to know people on a more intimate level at work - people come in and talk about thier home life etc etc and you become closer through association, it can’t be helped can it really?

I tend to make close friends with at least one person in each of my jobs - maybe its not a good thing but it cannot be helped!

LOL I suppose it would be pretty miserable if you went to work everyday and tried NOT to make friends with your colleagues. I have to admit, I have also ended up making friendships with one or two of my co-workers at every job I’ve worked in. Because after all, you have many of the same interests - being in the same industry and all.

But while friendships in the office make the days more enjoyable, friends can also distract you from your work! If you add up all those water cooler conversations, coffee breaks and smoke breaks, you’d find hours and hours of wasted time

Yeah I see what your saying but being able to work straight through with no small talk is not what I am capable of! I tend to be able to work and talk at the same time hehe! type and talk lol! Easy peezy!

Standing around gassing for ages is however another issue and should be dealt with!

Wow, I’m impressed! I’ve never been able to master the typing whilst talking thing. I’m the kind of person who can only focus on the job at hand -and everything else gets blanked out.

I think most people are good at multi-tasking these days though. Although I read about an interesting study which found that people who can watch TV, surf the internet and chat on the phone at the same time actually score low in multi-tasking tests! Strange, isn’t it?

Hehe I read the article and don’t get it - What is a “low” or a “high” multi tasker exactly? How do they define this?

I know that as part of my job I am required to multi-task big time and am always switching between things, but do make sure everything gets done????

lol I think I’m a low multi-tasker! Being the kind of person who can only concentrate on one thing at a time properly, I often feel like I am a real slow poke. Most employers expect you to work on a multitude of projects at once these days, it’s the only way to deal with increasing workloads! And a lot of people seem to enjoy the buzz they get from jumping from one project to the next - but don’t you think this increases our stress levels?

Totally yes if not dealt with properly!

I am more than capable of jumping from one thing to the next and getting things done - the stress comes in when everyone is snapping at your heels wanting it all done now and you have to try and fit it all in! Never happens so really you just get stressed and so do the people who were being demanding in the first place!

I think multi tasking is fine as long as the company that expects you to do it allocates enough time to you to deal with each thing! It isn’t fair otherwise!