Boss tells line manager that she's "too friendly" with her male colleagues after they side with her in a meeting: 'This manager has had an issue with me for a long time'

You're always told that you should be friendly with team members—but not too friendly. Despite encouraging team bonding and after-hours unpaid recreational activities with your team, organizations have a tendency to get a little weird about things if you get too close or if things get too recreational. This, of course, doesn't apply in the service industry for some reason, where it's generally expected that staff will almost certainly engage in an interpersonal free-for-all.

Still, this paranoia about lines being crossed or being personally disadvantaged by crossed lines can cause some people to get uptight about any socialization happening in their teams, especially when those people are also jealous at their inability to cultivate normal friendly working relationships.

This is certainly what was happening when this worker was told by her female boss that she was "too friendly" with her male colleagues, despite no one else involved feeling that there were any lines being crossed. Frustrated, the worker shared their experience with this online workplace community, getting advice and responses and sparking discussion from readers in the comments.