When at work, you’re spending up to eight hours in close company with your colleagues and coworkers. Because of this proximity, it’s easy for friendships to arise, so workers can go from colleagues to besties. However, that isn’t always the case.
These Nigerian workers share the incident that made them realise that not all office buddies are real friends.
“He tried to throw me under the bus” — Anita*, (29), F
Anita thought she and her co-worker had a close friendship, but that all changed when he tried to pin a big mistake on her.
“When I started working at my former workplace, my coworker, who was my seat partner, took me around the office and showed me the ropes. We gisted over lunch a lot and I assumed that meant we were friends.
Then a few months later, we were both working on a big client project with a tight deadline. He made a huge mistake and printed flyers with the wrong event date on them. At the next meeting, he tried to tell the higher-ups that I had sent him the wrong dates and it was my fault. The only thing that saved me was that we’d had the conversation on WhatsApp where I clearly shared the correct dates. After we left that meeting, he tried to act like we were chums, but I made sure to put a lot of distance between us. It was so clear that he was not my guy.”
“He said he doesn’t like doing personal favours for coworkers” — Kelechi*, 30, M
Kelechi thought he and Fred* were the work besties. However, he found out that wasn’t the case when he asked for a simple favour from him.
“People at the office used to call Fred and me besties, so of course I thought I had built a solid friendship with him. We went home together, ate lunch together and gisted a lot. He’d also ask me to cover for him whenever he couldn’t make his shifts. I did that happily because I saw him as a friend. One day, I needed him to swap shifts with me because of a personal emergency. He looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘Ah, I don’t like to do personal favours for work people, o. It complicates things.’ I almost laughed out loud. After all the favours I had done for him, that’s what he had to say? That was all the clarity I needed about where I stood in his life, and I started focusing on my own work. After all, that’s what “work people” should do, right?”
“He reported me to the person I was venting to him about” — Tolani*, (26), F
Tolani thought her team lead’s warm demeanour meant she could confide in him about her issues with a coworker. She quickly found out that was the wrong move.
“I used to work as a community manager, and the designer on my team gave me a lot of issues. If I wasn’t chasing him for an asset, I was begging him to correct a mistake he made before the deadline.
I got fed up at some point and vented about the whole situation to my team lead. I felt comfortable doing this because my team lead gave the impression that he was very kind and willing to hear me out if I ever came to him with a problem.
The next time I went to meet the designer for some work, he asked why I reported him to my team lead. He also mentioned how my team lead said I was a problematic co worker. I felt really hurt because it branded me as the “complaining teammate” and it became hard for me to express any issues I had with the designer from then on. I just jejely started looking for other work opportunities and left their office for them.”
“She lied about applying for a job” — Aisha*, (30), F
Aisha realised her coworker wasn’t her buddy after she lied that she was applying for a new job, but was really applying for an in-house promotion.
“There was a vacant role at the office where I worked. Getting that role would have meant a promotion. I shared my excitement with the coworker I was closest to. I told her I was going to go to management to ask for the role, but she quickly said she heard from our HR person that they’d hired a new person for it. I was disappointed, but I let it go. She said she was disappointed, too, and was actively applying to other jobs because she didn’t like how our workplace was run.
It was a shock a few weeks later when she was announced as the choice for the role. Apparently, she had gone to ask management for the role and lied about the new hire to discourage me from doing the same thing.
I congratulated her politely, but deep down, I told myself that the “friendship” was over. That was the moment I stopped confusing office laughs for friendship.”
“He exposed my job interview lie” — Tunde*, (31), M
Tunde thought his colleague was his guy because they bonded over football and jokes, but when he showed his real colours, Tunde had to accept they were never friends.
“I once called in sick at work to go for an interview. The only person I told was my guy at the office. The next day, when I came in, my boss asked, ‘How was your interview?’ My heart nearly dropped.
It turns out my colleague told my boss about my interview and tried to paint me as a disloyal employee. Thankfully, I got the new job and switched offices a month later, but that was the day I locked my mouth. After that, he never heard anything personal from me again.”
“He tried to deny what he told me” — Tomi*, (29), F
Tomi realised that office friendships were shallow after her office friend tried to implicate her by secretly recording their conversations.
“When I started working at a consulting firm, I used to face my work: no office gist or friendships. After a few months there, I started warming up to my coworkers because my boss had called me aside to say that some of them said I was unfriendly and kept to myself.
However, I distanced myself from my closest work friend when he tried to deny the information he had given me. My only saving grace was that I had recorded our conversation, or I would have gotten in big trouble with our boss. It was an eye-opening experience.”
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