1. Peer Relationship
I work with a few people at Sherwin-Williams and the relatively few workers means that you get to know each other fairly well and have a more personal, less uptight and rigid dynamic on a daily basis that allows for more open conversation. At my store, I would have to consider my co-worker Sarah as my greatest workplace proximity associate and would consider us to have a collegial peer relationship. Collegial peer relationships are characterized by moderate levels of trust, self-disclosure, emotional support, and friendship, most of which I would say our relationship has. We demonstrate a decent level of trust between one another simply by trusting the others work and flowing better together as well as being able to gossip and discuss work and personal issues openly. Additionally, we have a good sense of friendship in our ability to be relaxed and joke around with each other on serious issues, and our lack of socializing outside of work is the only real barrier we face to having a special peer relationship.
2. Elements affecting Relaltionships
Of the four elements discussed in chapter 11 that affect peer relationships, I believe just about any two people could see how most if not all of these elements come into play in their relationship.
Proxemics - Close proximity in the workplace has absolutely affected my relationship with my collegial peer, simply in that we often use to work many shifts together by ourselves giving us a lot of time and opportunity to openly socialize without other people around. As our shifts together have lessened to almost none, there can be perceived distance growing between us until we can have more time to socialize again.
Similarity - This category has come into play more than I would have ever guessed. I believe we have many similarities and tastes on different topics, music, political debates, work issues, and so on, but even more so in casual conversation. It is rare to meet someone with whom you gradually talk with throughout the day and have fun during casual conversations because you both simply get what the others saying and have something interesting or funny to say back.
Relational Balance - This element I'm sure has some affect on my interactions with Sarah, but it is a category that is hard to identify. For instance, our balance may dictate that she needs a workplace friend more than I do, but the only way I could really know that is by directly asking her or noticing some imbalance as to which one of us starts a conversation or texts the other outside of work more often. Even if I perceive this imbalance as existing, I then still cant definitively say that its caused by her greater need for a friend. With all that being said, I do not believe there is any imbalance in our relationship and that we maintain a symmetrical dynamic between us.
Personal Needs - It is difficult for me to say what Sarah may have for personal needs in our workplace relationship, but my guess is that it would be similar to my own personal needs. I seek workplace relationships to have someone to ask questions of, to casually talk with, and to gossip about work and life issues. In some sense my personal needs are rather selfish ends, without a desire for new friendships really being among them. However, I don't think this has had any adverse affects on our relationship as I'm certain that she has the same needs to at least some degree. In book terms, my needs mainly stem from inclusion but may include some elements of control as I see these relationships as a source of information as well. There may be some needs for affection on her side, I am uncertain, but I have tendencies to be rather distant in emotional situations and therefore do not seek affection in new relationships often which is likely a big factor that prevents further developing this and other relationships.
3. Dark Side of Peer Relationships
The dark side of peer relationships can often be seen in work environments, though it may not always be easy to realize at first until you come to better understand your co-workers and their motivations.
The greatest misuse of the peer relationships I can think of would stem from our assistant manager in her co-dependency use of relationships with the rest of us. Though she will never admit it, she has a strong sense of superiority and believes she knows better than everyone else, which becomes evident in her constant interrupting of your helping a customer to butt in and say something completely irrelevant or that the person had already covered, usually confusing and angering the customer. However, in her mind she thinks shes just correcting you from not saying or presenting a piece of information exactly the way she would do it which is the best way in her mind. She takes this further by then relying on all of us to finish her work and responsibilities she cant live up to because she just "has too many other things to handle" or "has been working so hard all week" and other lame excuses. In this sense, she is completely co-dependent on her relationships with us to pick up her slack and keep the store running, but also as scapegoats for the blame should anything serious go wrong.
There is some level of support working against the person here too, in that our assistant manager will on rare occasions talk up Sarah to customers or others in the heat of the moment. In this sense Sarah is using her relationship with our assistant to further her own advancement in the company by simply nodding and agreeing with things such as taking on the assistants responsibilities so that eventually the higher managers see how incompetent she is and let Sarah take her place. This is actually her admitted plan, to simply allow our assistant to think their friends or at least okay with each other and do whatever ridiculous things she asks so she can eventually go talk to the district managers and prove that shes doing almost half of the assistant responsibilities already so that hey will hire her and fire or at least move the current assistant manager to another store.
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