Here's another reader e-mail I thought I'd share with you all:
Hi Alexandra, my co-worker and I really seem to get along. I like spending time with her at lunch and when we travel. I thought it would be fun for her and her husband to get together with my boyfriend and me outside the office, so I asked her a few times if they wanted to grab dinner, a movie, etc. But every time, she’s come up with some excuse as to why she can’t do it, and some of them are pretty lame. Why is she rejecting me like this? My feelings are hurt.
I felt this reader's pain. Really. I experienced the same situation several years ago when I was working at a PR firm in New York City. I ended up calling my co-worker on it and she said to me quite bluntly: “Alex, just because we work together doesn’t mean we’re going to be friends in real life.” Ouch.
The reader's co-worker might feel the same way for a variety of reasons but isn’t comfortable saying something along these lines. Maybe she wants to keep her personal and professional lives totally separate. Maybe she is swamped with commitments and genuinely too busy to schedule a date. Maybe she’s having issues with her relationship and neither wants to explain, nor expose them to the reader.
For more of the advice I provided to this reader, check out the full response on the Fast Track blog.
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