I joined the workforce in January 1995, and it’s been almost 14 years since then, where I moved from the manufacturing sector into IT Support. I learn over the years, that some colleagues remained colleagues, some I choose to forget the moment either they or I leave the company, some are extremely good drinking and / or partying buddies yet terrible colleagues, and some become good friends where we share ideas and talk about almost everything under the sun. In my world, everybody is let all the way past my defenses until they have proven themselves to be scheming, self-centered or conniving little a**holes.

So it was not long ago, I had a discussion after work on the way to the Clarke Quay MRT station with one of my colleagues and a friend over the matter of two other colleagues who are at loggerheads with one another. He then told me that he wasn’t surprised that has happened since these two other colleagues stood at the opposite of the spectrum. One is friendly to almost everyone, while the other has on one occasion mentioned, “There are only colleagues, and friends.” Meaning, these two categories are mutually exclusive of one another.

It was sometime later when I did a recap on that conversation, when I suddenly remember not too long ago I had tried to add another colleague (not the same one who made that comment) to Facebook, and I received an interesting reply that goes like this:

And thus I am ‘inducted’ into the stark reality of some people’s worlds. A reality in which existing colleagues are never considered as friends, and colleagues and friends are mutually exclusive. A world in which they compartmentalise different sections of their lives and keep them from one another. While there is nothing wrong with such a view, it comes into conflict with mine. While I would not openly and actively object to people living by such principles – they are of course entitled to it – there is nothing to stop me from subjecting them to their ‘realities’ based on my definitions and understanding of it.

I may never know who else lived by these principles, but those who are known to live by them will now be subjected to my understanding of such a ‘reality’, where under my scope of work they are nothing more than a ‘client’ and nothing else.

A ‘client’ is less than even a colleague, since I defined colleagues as not a person working in the same company but only those in the same department. Since I am in IT Support, a ‘client’ would therefore refers to any user who calls us for support.

While their view may work to compartmentalise their lives and keeps them from getting hurt or backstabbed by other people, it also cuts the other way. After all, it is of no surprise why no one else would treat them better than a colleague (or in my case a ‘client’). They can blame no one but themselves for not making an effort for making it better.

I do not have to object to it, but only choose to subject them to the principles they swear by. Now, they can just die by it… quietly. Don’t complain if I treat them terribly along with the usual IT Morons I already despised.

Die, by the very sword you wield.