I work in a busy medical adjacent job. Salaried, work very long hours (especially compared to a lot on this sub!), but I love my career. What I can’t stand is the pressure to participate in social events with coworkers. Many of them are young graduate students with no nearby family or significant others. I never feel like I fit in at work. I don’t drink, enjoy loud music, or going out late and doing stuff. I’m very much a homebody, go for a walk with a friend, movies at home kinda person. I feel like a bad person saying no, and like it doesn’t help with the social politics at work. I will participate at events during the work day, but I feel like my limited free time is my “me” time, and I hate the pressure to treat these people like my work family/friends. I will occasionally participate in after hours events, but since I am pretty introverted and skip a lot of the social stuff, it can be pretty lonely and always spirals to make me resent it more. I don’t want a bad reputation at work, because I do have some ambitions and want to keep my career options, and I want to be a team player- granted, during work hours. I also don’t have a significant other nearby, and people always think it’s weird since I don’t usually have a good “excuse” to avoid participating. People also treat my real family and friends as bad excuses, as if phone calls and virtual hanging out don’t count? (I sometimes travel to do in person, but not during COVID)
The pressure hasn’t lessened much with COVID either- they want to do social distancing parties in backyards or other stuff I feel even less comfortable with in the current climate.
Any advice on dealing with this?
Submitted August 09, 2020 at 11:47PM by asoncewewere https://ift.tt/3kvSrzJ
