I've always had good to great co-workers at every job except my short time working part-time at Sprouts. They were mostly bitter and full of themselves while working in a supermarket making jack squat.
I keep in touch with a co-worker and someone who became a great friend from my days as a newspaper pressman from 1981-1987. He and his wife just retired and built their dream home down on a lake in South Carolina. We did a lot of fun things in the 80's and lived in a giant bachelor pad with 2 other guys.
My very good friend from my short time 1987-1988 working at Investors Center, the first place Jordan Belfort of Wolf of Wall Street worked at, will be out here in Tucson AZ next week with his company for a set of meetings. He is Sr VP of a publicly traded company in the financial industry and a great guy. I'll travel down to Tucson to meet him for dinner and maybe a round of golf. He lives in Tampa.
I keep in touch with a female co-worker from my days at Dean Witter brokerage where I worked from 1989-1994. Lisa is a great person and we dated very briefly. She is still in the financial industry and nearing retirement. She is also great friends with my best friend's ex-wife.
I keep in touch with two former colleagues and now friends from my days in China / Hong Kong. 1994-1997. One was a Brit who lived in Beijing and then Shanghai for a total of 27 years and now is back in London area with his 2nd wife and family. He helped me navigate China and saved my ass multiple times. My other buddy, a native Hong Kong citizen still lives there and we connect about once a year to check in on each other.
I had been keeping in touch with several colleagues from a conference producing company I was working at for a year called ICM, International Conference Management in San Fran in 1997-1998. We sold conference attendance to executives. Many of my co-workers were from Australia, Bermuda, England and Ireland. We played golf together often and kept in touch for years. Sadly I've lost touch with each of them over time and it's been around 12 years since I had contact.
1998-2002, 2007-2008, 2018-2019, 2023, 2023-present. I am now working again for my first boss in San Francisco, both becoming a friend and working at multiple companies, this one being number 5. He is Canadian, based in Toronto and the most trust worthy person I know. Never lied to me in 27 years either as my boss or friend. There are a few of those colleagues I still keep in touch with, several in Canada and a couple over in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia, all native Yugoslavian's.
I'm best friends with my partner and co-worker from my hardwood flooring store in New Jersey from 2002-2007. We speak about 5-6 times a week, play golf when together and he shares my passion for food, booze and cigars. He is a former biker and a wild man.
The first company I worked for when I moved from Toronto to Virginia, 2008-2010 dissolved and went out of business. I kept in touch sparingly with a SQL DB guy that had a ton of contacts in the music industry. He was a Texan and was a studio guitarist at times. We haven't spoken in about a year since I left Facebook.
I keep in touch with 90% of my former colleagues at the company I left in Northern Virginia that sold a service to the property management industry. From 2011-2017. Both the owners and co-workers are great people and treated me well.
Lastly, after 3 1/2 years at Amazon, I developed a great friendship with 3 much younger guys that worked with my on a team as 4 equals. I was just out for drinks with the 3 of them last week and we get together all the time. One is 23 and a naive Mormon from Utah, another 34 year old interracial guy from Oakland who just got married after 8 years with his GF and then the last guy is 42 and has his hands full with his wife and her crazy ex-husband.
At my present company, I am developing some great friendships with my colleagues since last May when I joined.
The key to all these lifelong friendships that developed with former coworkers is that I never worked at a company I hated or didn't like the people.
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I've worked at two small companies and one large company.
The small companies tended to have functional people (other than onr massively destructive psychopath at the first one who snuck through the filter), because the people doing the hiring knew that they would have to work with any person who was hired. So they looked for people who weren't nightmares or mutants.
In the large company, the people doing the hiring didn't have to work with the person and would likely never see them again. So they'd hire based on the resume, and then all of a sudden some mutant would appear in the next cubicle over.
So let this be a lesson. If you're a weird mutant person, small companies won't hire you and large companies will. Plan your job search accordingly.
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