[Joof]

Relationships are really important outside the business setting too. Often much more important.

Something that a lot of people in the business setting don't seem to understand.

My work friends are just that... work friends. I have to hide large swaths of my personal life from them and they don't usually stick around outside work. Work relationships suck.

[abalashov]

Sure. OTOH, you don’t have to be either an Aspie or a Business A-Player Career Superhero to give a pragmatic nod to the fact that work is where many people, perhaps most, spend their waking hours. It’s only natural and eminently human that for a lot of them, that’s where their friendships and relationships will form and play out.

In my opinion, it’s all the more so if they live in one of the many nondescript suburban places of which Middle America comprises. Having little to come home to or go out to, with our bankrupt concept of civic space and the public realm, it’s all the more likely many of us will unconsciously look to work as the locus of social possibility. It’s not because we want to, it’s just the shape of the situation.