I’m ashamed of how little I know about what my friends do for a living
If you happen to be a F.R.I.E.N.D.S fan just like me, then you know the whole joke about Chandler’s job. Throughout seasons the characters make fun of not having a clue what one of them did for a living. In fact, during a trivia game, Monica and Rachel lose their apartment to the question of “What is Chandler Bing’s job”.
I always thought of that as hilarious in a very unrealistic way. Of course I know what my close friends do for a living.
Or so I thought.
Today I learned I actually don’t. That knowing their job titles and companies is really not the same as understanding remotely what they do during most hours of their days.
It is about time I change that.
Last week I was talking to my boyfriend about the MBA thesis I’m currently writing. I was telling him how difficult it was to find experts to interview about my topic, Resistance to Innovation.
He then asked me: “What about Sara? Doesn’t she work with R&D?”
“Hm, yes” — I said. “Well, you are right, maybe she could know something about it”.
So, today, I called her, one of my closest friends in Germany, and told her about my thesis. In a matter of seconds, she started talking super excitedly about the topic, like I have never seen her. Sara is someone who usually talks quietly and serene but yesterday she was on fire.
It turns out that not only had she already accumulated years of experience with innovation management, she also could discuss with me in details about the studies I was reading. Like the best expert I could possibly find.
The girl who always stays with my dog when I travel. A friend I meet every week when not in quarantine to catch up and cook ginger chicken with. I even threw my birthday party at her apartment last year because my place is too small. That kind of friend.
And I had no idea what she actually worked with. And it took my 3-month boyfriend who has seen her twice to click things together. How embarrassing is that?
Here I was, going through LinkedIn to find experts with at least half of her experience, and she was right there, a phone call away and extremely happy to help me — like the great friend that she is.
We talked for over an hour about Innovation and I learned so much. I obviously always knew she was very smart, but what I experienced today was something different. It’s like I had unleashed a wild animal. A really badass queen-of-the-whole-thing one.
It felt so good to hear her talking passionately about her job and her past experiences, the things she has learned, the challenges she sees for the future. It contaminated me up to a point in which i got excited about writing my thesis at 9 pm (as much as I love writing, academic writing sucks the will to live from my soul).
I don’t think I’m alone in this. Neither is Chandler. I believe this is something that happens to all of us. We get caught up in our daily lives when meeting friends over the weekend and end up either laughing and drinking or just doing some kind of superficial life-reporting.
“oh, I found this new Yoga app. You should try it.”
“Nice, I bought this new coffee machine that is so cool.”
“My boss is a jerk, but lets not talk about work now.”
“I’m so hungry. Let’s order now.”
Then, when we actually sit at our desks to look for information or learn something, we obviously don’t realize the friend we met the day before for a drink — the one who got this very cool coffee machine — works exactly with that.
We might be spending hours in networking efforts with strangers to get some industry information, for example, when all we need may just be right there, in our good old buddies.
And I bet the opposite happens to. They also don’t come to you because they don’t really know what it is your currently working with, or the degree you are doing.
I just finished an MBA and I am very certain my best friends have no idea what that means, the kind of things I learned.
Surely they know the basics: the nice people I met, that I had some internacional modules. But they won’t know about the slum tour we did in India with our MBA professors and how crazy that experience was.
Or about how hard it is to do group work with people from cultures so different from yours.
Simply because we are not used to showing this deep interest in our close friends’ work life. Maybe we feel we already know everything we need. Maybe we just forget to ask, and let the daily topics take control.
We might know deeply their relationship problems with their families or partners, or their sport preferences. But we don’t normally talk deeply about our work and study lives. Which is crazy, because it’s what we spend most of the hours of our days doing.
We are losing so many opportunities. To find commonalities who never imagined like I did with Sara today. How nice is it to discuss a topic you are interested in with someone you already like so much and feel so comfortable with?
I will tell you, it is so damn nice.
But, also, we are missing other opportunities. To learn about something so distant from your universe (the case with my doctor or lawyer friends).
Having friends who don’t do the exact same that you can be so enriching, but only if we talk about it. Only if we show interest in what they do, if we try to understand their universes a bit more.
I thought about this and I decided I will each day during this week call a different old friend. And, instead of talking for 1 hour about Corona measurements and exit lockdown strategies, I will ask them to tell me what is it that they actually do for a living.
I will make sure to ask examples of a project they did, stories of their team work and difficulties they faced. I will ask them to describe a day in their job, their favorite tasks and the most challenging ones.
I will then just let them talk freely about it and I will listen.
I’m sure I will discover fascinating skills and passions in them that I had no clue had always been there, and that will make me like them even more.
Plus, I could really use a break from Corona topics anyway.
