Getting along with co-workers

[Caitie33]

What helps you get along with the people who you work with? I am an assistant teacher in a pre-school class so other than the monthly professional development meetings, most of the time the only other adult I interact with at work is the lead teacher. I like working with her and want us to have a good professional relationship. I don't expect us to be good friends and I don't think we even have that much in common at all but its nice to be able to make friendly small talk. I'm no good at small talk though.

 

[Bolletje]

I have a lot of hangups about conversations with co-workers. A few years ago I found that the most effective way for me to communicate with people is to talk to them like I'd talk to a friend at the pub. Which, for me, means a lot of joking and chiming in on subjects other people are talking about.
This may sound weird, but if I talk to them that way I'm at my most relaxed and most true to myself. I might occasionally make a slightly inappropriate remark, but I prefer that to silently watching conversations and anxiously wondering when it's my turn to speak and what I should say.

For me the hardest part of interacting with co-workers is during breaks, when they talk about their interest and their personal life and I find I have very little in common with them other than work. I have to feign interest in their stories about their children and TV shows I don't watch. That's why I usually spend my breaks outside smoking. Or I choose to work during lunch hour and take my break afterwards, but I'm trying to do that as little as possible because it creates even more of a divide between me and my colleagues.
The group of smokers is relatively small but since you already have something in common it's easier to get along, in a strange way. It's almost like a secret pact. Not that I'm telling people to start smoking to enhance their social life

 

[Suzanne]

I was terrible when I worked, because I was so frightened of doing the wrong thing with my work and considered that I was there to work, that I did not even attempt to try and talk with others.

As for small talk, sometimes I am ok with it, because it means there is no silence, as I have a phobia with silence, since I was a child. I do find however, that to communicate with nt's, one must do small talk with them, because they are so used to it, then cannot take someone who goes deeply into a subject. It is so hard, though, to not get carried away and I can now see when the bordom steps in!