You may love your job and all the people you work with, but at the end of the day you are in a business environment where the goals of the organization are driven by business decisions.

Where I work, I am cordial and friendly with my co-workers. But I keep my outside life mostly out of work. I don’t invite them to my social media profiles. I don’t tell them about my blog. We are not friends. We are not going to get dinner or go see a movie. I keep them at arm’s length because we aren’t friends. We’re co-workers. We’re thrown together in work just as we all went through school with a random collection of people who just happened to be of similar ages.

I don’t wall them off because I want to talk smack about them online. I don’t talk about my co-workers online. I don’t blog about them. I don’t tweet about them. I don’t talk about them. It’s best practice not to because you never know who will find what you’ve said or will look you up. It’s a small world out there and you never know who’s reading or searching what you say. So be safe and don’t say it.

One of my favorite quotes from Maya Angelou is, “When people reveal themselves, believe them.”

I believe there is a division between work life and personal life. You may be friendly with co-workers. But they may have different goals and expectations as you. Be ready to always look out for yourself first. No one will take care of you like you.