The Corporate Illusion of Friendship
You don't have friends in your office. That's a bitter pill to swallow. You cannot be friends with someone you're competing against. There's no such thing as healthy competition. Wherever competition exists, one-upmanship follows. You have to withhold information from them. You have to resist the urge to overshare. You cannot, therefore, be completely honest with them. And without honesty, there can never be genuine friendship.
Corporations condition you to believe this is your best career path, that this is how your life will be shaped: by gaining that extra percentage in your yearly review. Even if it costs you a relationship. Even if you have to gossip about someone you once called a friend. Even if you have to sacrifice every bond to climb that ladder. They make the ladder the most important thing in your life.
This is an illusion. The ladder is worthless. It doesn't matter how many rungs you climb if there's no one there to celebrate with you. The best moments are the ones where someone stands beside you in your success. The best moments are spent drunk, or laughing over something trivial. Never the promotion itself. I have yet to meet a person who narrates their promotion story from five years ago with any real joy. It's always about the people.
But corporations reward sycophancy. That's how they keep you tethered to their goals instead of your own. So they blindside you into believing that the more ruthless you are, the more efficient you'll be considered. They convince you that caring about results matters more than caring about the path you took to get there.
Look at the leaders they reward. There's a reason bosses are so often despised. It's by design. Corporations reward that very behavior. To a corporate organization, you don't matter.
The system is so warped that whatever relationships you form will inevitably curdle into competition. The people you're close to will eventually resent you. The ones you spend time with will eventually gossip about you. That doesn't mean there are no good relationships to be found in the office. You can find friends there too, but there's a catch.
When your goals diverge, when your progress doesn't threaten theirs, there's a real chance of forming a genuine bond. In fact, that's the only way lasting friendships take root, because there's no room for competition. Which means you can be completely honest with each other. That honesty is the ultimate bedrock of any relationship.
If you're loyal to your organization, if you believe you have reliable colleagues, look again at the whole dynamic. There are no real friends in the corporate world when your success can threaten theirs. Corporations don't want you forming friendships. They want you fighting, so they can win in the end.