Three reasons why you and your best friend shouldn’t work in same office

“Best friends are the people in your life who make you laugh louder, smile brighter and live better.”

Hmm, the above quote is quite true, best friends make life merrier, their smiles make our day, and just knowing that we have that one person or small group of people whom we are confident have our back leaves us with an amazing feeling of warmth in the pit of our tummies.

However, when it comes to the workplace, your best friend might not necessarily be part of the picture-perfect work environment you dream of.

In simpler terms, your best friend shouldn’t be working in the same office as you and here are three reasons why I think so:

• Overfarmiliartity Will Cause You Two To Underperform

Come on! You do not expect to be productive around your bestie who knows everything there is to know about you. Your closeness will definitely find its way into both your responsibilities.

For instance, if you are put in charge of a team of which your bestie is part off because your bestie is familiar with you too well, they may most likely not take your instructions too seriously. After all, they might think to themselves, it’s only this best friend of mine.

Reconciling where your friendship ends and where professionalism begins, might not be easily achievable hence, causing you both to underperform in your various roles.

• The Chances Of Conflict Will Increase

Since you both know yourselves too well, there are higher chances of getting into conflicts with your bestie at the office. And these conflicts could be triggered by the slightest things.

Because you’re both friends and have emotional attachments, offences, or wrong sides on each other could easily escalate comparatively to any regular colleague.

Of course, to make things worse, when these conflicts arise, you’d have to face your friend outside of the office environment and this could lead to prolonged conflicts, and keeping grudges. Yeah, not a boat you want to be on with your best friend.

• You’ll Have No Chance Of Making New Friends or Acquaintances

Of course, it’s expected that working at the same office as your best friends would mean always pairing up with them. You’d probably always eat lunch together, commute to work and back home together, and always be in each other’s offices.

While this might seem like the ideal setting and the best thing, this could cost both of you your social lives. This is because always being together would mean you two never have time to mingle with other colleagues and your social network might dwindle, limiting you to only your bestie.

Of course, I’m almost certain there are friends out there who have cracked this particular code and work together with their bestie peacefully. However, I can bet it was never an easy feat.

I guess if two friends are considering working together, the most important thing is understanding and weighing the pros against the cons of working in the same office as your bestie. Once you do this, you could get a general sense of what works for you two. Additionally, speaking about the plus and minus of working together with your best friend can give a clearer sense of the next steps to take.