this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
19 points (95.2% liked)
Casual Conversation
3960 readers
68 users here now
Share a story, ask a question, or start a conversation about (almost) anything you desire. Maybe you'll make some friends in the process.
RULES
- Be respectful: no harassment, hate speech, bigotry, and/or trolling.
- Encourage conversation in your OP. This means including all information that can initiate conversations when you can and also engaging in your thread when possible.
- Avoid controversial topics (e.g. politics or societal debates).
- Stay calm: Don’t post angry or to vent or complain. We are a place where everyone can forget about their everyday or not so everyday worries for a moment. Venting, complaining, or posting from a place of anger or resentment doesn't fit the atmosphere we try to foster at all. Feel free to post those on !goodoffmychest@lemmy.world
- Keep it clean and SFW
- No solicitation such as ads, promotional content, spam, surveys etc.
- No support questions. See !techsupport@lemmy.world
Casual conversation communities:
- !casualuk@feddit.uk
- !casualeurope@piefed.social
- !forumlibre@jlai.lu
- !batepapo@lemmy.eco.br
- !esp@lemm.ee
Related discussion-focused communities
- !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca
- !askmenover30@lemm.ee
- !dads@feddit.uk
- !letstalkaboutgames@feddit.uk
- !movies@piefed.social
- !television@piefed.social
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Watercooler talk. Ask about peoples weekends, their hobbies, their kids, etc. Ask how project xyz is going. Actually meet and be interested in your coworkers as people - once you get to know them, a lot of them will turn out to actually be quite cool. And this is good, because your life is better when you know more cool people, and can show up to work every day feeling like you are going to spend time with a bunch of people who give a shit about you.
But ALSO, this is a crucial workplace/career strategy called networking. Want to learn new skills? Solve problems faster? Get raises and promotions? All these things are far easier when you have coworkers who know and like you. Want a different/better job? Your coworkers can be your references and tell you about job openings they hear about. When a coworker or manager finds a new job, they can often bring you with them.
And even if none of this pans out professionally, you are still practicing the skill of giving a shit about people and opening up to them, which is extremely useful in all aspects of life.
But if you've already asked everyone how their kids are, you can start working on improving something. In every job there are boring repetitive tasks that can be streamlined, or error prone tasks that could become less error prone, etc. Think of solutions to these problems, and try implementing these solutions for yourself or a few others on a large scale. Once you prove it works, it can be implemented by the rest of the company (note: make sure you take the credit). Things like this, which often only take maybe an hour or two for the rough implementation, are often the most impressive line items on your resume.
And if you just hate your job and your coworkers so.much that you cant stomach either of these suggestions... spend the time applying to other jobs.