Someone abroad has created a picture: in the middle of the vast and boundless ocean, there are countless men and women in suits and leather shoes or professional skirts, and there is only a small piece of land under their feet, which is not connected to each other. A metaphor for interpersonal relationships in the workplace, which Thoreau called “cheap social interaction”, which seems to be closely integrated on the surface, but in fact everyone is a barren island.
Workplace friendship is the most complex and mysterious form of interpersonal relationships. Everyone can not avoid it, but it is not the friend who chooses to interact with. Forging friendship in this fully competitive open environment is like building a house of cards. . However, as Stanford University professor Jenny Odell said in “Idle”, modern people live in a culture that values communication and constant connection, and people who don’t fit in can be seen as losers, eccentrics, or emotionally incompetent. Therefore, the plastic friendship like “plastic flowers, especially fake, but never wither”, has become a realistic tolerance for each other’s differences.
Workplace study is a prominent study in today’s world. Bookstores are prominently displayed in large stacks of popular books on various workplace survival rules. With countless successes or failures, they summarize experiences and lessons, and teach people how to maintain plastic friendships. The minimum consumption in the workplace social mode. In various short videos on the online platform, the anchors also recite those proverbs and witticisms with strong market wisdom, advocating that one does not need to be morally perfect, but also to be an excellent workplace person.
However, if you think that with the same script, you can lead everyone into the play, it is too easy to think. Different people join the workplace, just like flying chess and throwing dice, they are thrown into a chessboard that is not under their control. No matter how hard they work, they will always encounter some villains who lack empathy. In the Northern Song Dynasty, Liu Shuo made fun of Cai Que, a colleague who had just entered the workplace, and nicknamed him “Clam Upside Down” in front of everyone. Cai Que is from Fujian, Fujian calls clams “shell vegetables”, which in turn means the homophonic Cai Que. Cai Que felt hatred in his heart, but as a junior, he didn’t dare to protest, and it was not until he became prime minister many years later that he took revenge on the opponent.
A psychologist found that financial leaders on Wall Street scored highly on the Psychopathic Index, while having below-average emotional intelligence. In other words, many psychologically dark people are more likely to be in high positions in the workplace. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Yuan Shikai and Zhang Jian both served under the command of Wu Changqing, a famous general of the Huai Army. Zhang Jian was 6 years older than Yuan Shikai, and he was also a champion. Yuan Shikai always called himself a student and respected Zhang Jian as his master. Yuan later became the governor of Shandong, and changed his name to Zhang Jian as Mr. Afterwards, he went a step further and became the governor of Zhili, and began to call Zhang Jian a dear brother and self-proclaimed foolish brother.
Zhang Jian couldn’t stand this kind of plastic friendship, so he wrote letters to ridicule Yuan Shikai. Every time he was promoted, my status declined. If you are promoted to another level in the future, I don’t know what to call me – for those who are skilled in the workplace It is not easy to maintain a plastic friendship, because your existence is just a stepping stone used by others to achieve their goals.
Thoreau argued early on that when people live too congested, they fail to appreciate each other’s worth. Plastic friendship may be the price that modern people have to bear in the fierce professional competition, because no one can bear too much truth.
