#WorkFriends
It was more than 5 years ago that I read a quote by Madeleine Albright, ‘There is a special place in hell for women that don’t help other women’. I had just started a new job and the quote made me look around wondering if I would find a sisterhood there, a group of women with which I could debate with, compete with, work with and rely on. This sort of thinking would come to be termed as me ‘voyage-ing’, pronounced in the French context. It referred to my tendency to dream up scenarios that had little chance of ever existing. Ironically the term was coined by the very group of girls that made it come true.
I’ve never considered myself a girl’s girl. I didn’t have a best girlfriend growing up and was far from the most popular girl in my convent school. Armed with a small but strong foundation of friends post college, I was young enough to assume that I was old enough to have found my companionship for life. However half a decade into working and I wondered if it was possible to have friends at work. All the American TV shows seemed to manage it. Work was becoming where I spent a majority of my day and it would be nice to have someone to navigate career ambitions with or just to have a relaxed lunch with.
A handful of women I would meet over the next 5 years enriched my professional and personal life in ways I had never imagined possible. Our lunches became an oasis of joy in stressful work days where we debated politics, work, gossip and men. They advised me on my best interests in professional situations from a perspective only someone from the inside could have. There were times that I did not respectfully disagree with them on a work issue, but I was able to sound out concerns, they accepted my apology and we moved on. I remember hearing that we were referred to as a ‘gang’, which amused me because, in my mid-thirties it would be the first time in my life I was part of one.
I have to admit that I am guilty of not always extending such support to all my colleagues. But I’m learning from a very good life lesson. What our friendship showed me was that there are ways to get ahead while helping each other. In an often situation where bets on human resources are hedged, colleagues can look out for each other. Maybe the world is big enough and there’s enough of the professional pie that we all get what we want without dragging someone else down while at it. Men and women both. You’d say I’m ‘voyage-ing’ again. But hey, it happened once, it could happen again.
