read right as polite, because they get offended easily.
I’m a male nurse in a predominantly female unit.
How I see a job: I’m there to work and go home and don’t want to socialize. Each of my coworkers is welcomed to talk about work with me, but I don’t disclose my personal life, age or life goals with them. Work and let me work. If you need help, call me, we’ll work together.
How my unit works: there is a group that’s childish and gossipy, don’t know boundaries and act like a clique, but maybe 50% of the unit are people that work and let me work, help me and I help them (with the gossip clique this is not always the case).
I was sick for 4 weeks and I’ve decided this is a good opportunity to establish boundaries, something I’ve never done at my current unit. Why now? Being sick I had time to think what I don’t want in my life: faking interest in the sexual life or my coworkers, knowing who started dating who or what they think of Biden or the second amendment ain’t things I care about. I’ve had a coworker trying to find me a girlfriend a week after knowing me. No thanks.
I’m entertaining other job prospects and I still don’t know if I’m gonna jump ship, so for the time being, I’m here. Where I work I’m forced to eat with the rest of the team, including the gossips, so I’m trapped (because if I don’t eat with them they’ll start asking why I’m so unfriendly or if I’m angry at them and feel offended, they simply cannot understand that sometimes I want time to unwind without them).
What I think I could tell them, next time they start with their inquisitive questions:
‘I’ve worked here for a year already. It should be clear by now that I’m not a talkative person. This is a question I don’t want to answer. And I hope that you respect that.’
‘that I don’t talk doesn’t mean I hate you, it means I have nothing to say’ < I find it ludicrous even having to explain this.
‘I don’t see what that has to do with the job’
‘I don’t talk about religion, politics or my private life with coworkers and I hope you respect that’
should they keep pestering:
‘all right, I need time to unwind, which means today I’ll spend my pause somewhere else.’ and proceed to eat alone somewhere else.
And if they pester yet again:
‘leave me alone’
if by this point some of them start giving me the evil eye and afterwards start ignoring me or treat me differently, time to accelerate my transfer to another unit.
If you like keeping boundaries with your coworkers, what do you tell them that works?
You’ll likely run in to a little bit of trouble because you’re having to make explicit what would have been better for them to have inferred and when it’s made explicit like that, it will come across as very weird to people and they’ll probably have some trouble not taking it personally (even if they shouldn’t).
Some understanding of the general tenor of how this group talks would make for better ways to communicate what you want to say but as general advice, your proposed ways of addressing this seem like they’re on the right track in spirit but you’re phrasing them in ways that imply a note of contempt.
This is probably because you really do harbour some contempt for these guys given the way you described them, like calling them childish for example. If you actually want to express some of that animosity then your suggestions are probably fine but if you’re concerned about the “right” way to set these boundaries you might want to try and keep it neutral. This is also good if you don’t want to earn their contempt either which is probably advisable even if you don’t like them very much since you have to work with them and if they feel offended and hold a grudge it could risk spilling over in to the actual work.
I like your idea of saying outright that you’re not a talkative person, hopefully they’ll feel a little guilty about having forced you in to having to say that and will not try to drag you in to the conversation so much from then on. The additional bits around that concept don’t seem advisable, you don’t have to chastise them for not realising you don’t want to talk, that’s likely to be unproductive, the point is you don’t want to talk. Similarly the “and I hope you respect that” addition is good for being firm but also comes across a little aggressive, best deployed only if you’ve already made your wishes explicit and they’re clearly not respecting that.
Eating elsewhere, if that’s an option is great, it you can already opt for that do it, you can avoid even having to bring anything up and the physical separation makes questioning you about it really inconvenient. If they ask you about it later that’s when you can say you need time to unwind and that’s also by far the most socially acceptable and understandable reason that people are less likely to take personally. I don’t know if you resent the idea that your reasons have to be socially acceptable to these guys or should have to be massaged to avoid them taking things personally, but ask yourself this: do you want to teach them a lesson and demonstrate your contempt for them, or do you want to just be left alone to work and to continue to work effectively with them? Pragmatism over principle would make sense here.
If it gets to the point where you have to actually say to another adult, in a work environment, “leave me alone” then odds are it probably won’t even work and your coworkers are complete idiots that need to be fired. However if that’s really the case, saying that, even if it doesn’t work is probably good since at that point things are probably going to escalate and at least no one can say you did or said anything inappropriate.
In short, take the easiest route if possible and just eat somewhere else at lunch and redirect the conversation back to work if they keep talking to you during work. If you end up somehow having absolutely no other remaining options but to explicitly tell them you don’t want to talk be careful to communicate in a way so you only express this simple desire and don’t imply some sort of judgement or contempt towards them. Try to be nice about it.
thank you for your detailed answer.
my reasons have to be acceptable to them, because otherwise, they’ll feel offended. And this is not a group of adults capable of separating work from personal life, they perceive slights very easily and once they feel offended, they lash out and use any pretext to not help with patients and suddenly, I’m the only one catering to patients while they sit and talk.
I just want to work until I find another workplace. I don’t believe it makes sense to work with them long term.
I cannot eat lunch alone because I have to be on call, even when I’m doing my pause. As a matter of fact, I don’t have a pause. At other units, employees take turns to pause and the ones on duty, work, so each of us gets 30 minutes of peace. This doesn’t happen where I work because for whatever reason, manager wants us to eat all together and feels offended if somebody chooses not to eat with them. They feel offended even for this. If I choose eating elsewhere, manager will order me with her fake politeness to eat with them, because I have to be there, should a patient need me.
What about this: I’m there, eating with them. They ask me a privy question and I answer: ‘nice weather today’ or ‘what did you have for breakfast’? completely ignoring the question and trying to redirect.
Yeh that definitely sucks they’ve rigged it up in a way that’s unusual for this type of work and also forces you in to this situation. Redirecting is good and probably your best option, canny and sensitive people will notice you doing this and take it for the hint that it is but dense or uncaring people will probably carry on steering things in to places you don’t want to go. If you’re forced to eat with them then yes redirecting the conversation will work up to a point but it is a subtle skill to do so non-obviously. It’s hard to advise specifically what to say like a script, though I would say if you just totally ignore the question altogether and switch topic very bluntly it’s going to come across strange and prompt confusion and questioning. You’ll need to somehow maintain the initial thread of their topic as lip service and then turn off down an unrelated avenue fairly smoothly. It’s what politicians do professionally. Reading the other responses to your post I think they’ve got some really good ideas on how to deal with this if you really get forced in to conversing against your will. It’s a subtle art of contributing basically nothing and rephrasing their same question back to them. I think another commenter suggested something along the lines of “I don’t know much about that what about you?” and similarly bland and useless resonses. This is friendly enough not to piss anyone off and lame enough to be totally uninteresting which hopefully invites little follow up. If they continue on their original track, you can combine this with seguing to another topic.
I didn’t suggest this to you initially because it doesn’t sound like your natural style and I think advice is best if it allows the recipient to handle things mostly in their own way while helping to avoid pitfalls in doing so. I guess you’ll have to navigate this daily frustration in a way a little outside of your comfort zone by carefully appearing to engage whilst really not and hopefully they’ll find you so boring they don’t bother anymore. Hopefully you don’t mind this giving the impression that you’re a boring person to the remaining 50% of your peers that don’t bother you so much but sometimes it’s a necessary evil.