Something you’ll learn to live by once enter the workplace: your coworkers are not your friends. There might be a one in a thousand case that’s an exception to this rule, but most of the time you should not think of them as more than coworkers you have to work with to get your job done. I’ve witnessed too many cases of coworkers backstabbing each other for their own professional ambitions or where a coworker dies and everyone just forgets about him a few days later.

That doesn’t mean you should be overly pessimistic either. The idea is to be pragmatic. No one wants a toxic environment, so everyone will put in some effort to maintain a cozy facade, and you should too, as that minimizes tensions for everyone. The mistake would be forgetting that it’s all a facade and starting to think of them as something like a family.

My motto is: smile at your coworkers but guard your damn ass when you turn your back to them.