read right as polite, because they get offended easily.
I’m a male nurse in a predominantly female unit.
How I see a job: I'm there to work and go home and don't want to socialize. Each of my coworkers is welcomed to talk about work with me, but I don’t disclose my personal life, age or life goals with them. Work and let me work. If you need help, call me, we’ll work together.
How my unit works: there is a group that’s childish and gossipy, don’t know boundaries and act like a clique, but maybe 50% of the unit are people that work and let me work, help me and I help them (with the gossip clique this is not always the case).
I was sick for 4 weeks and I’ve decided this is a good opportunity to establish boundaries, something I’ve never done at my current unit. Why now? Being sick I had time to think what I don’t want in my life: faking interest in the sexual life or my coworkers, knowing who started dating who or what they think of Biden or the second amendment ain’t things I care about. I’ve had a coworker trying to find me a girlfriend a week after knowing me. No thanks.
I'm entertaining other job prospects and I still don’t know if I’m gonna jump ship, so for the time being, I'm here. Where I work I’m forced to eat with the rest of the team, including the gossips, so I’m trapped (because if I don’t eat with them they’ll start asking why I’m so unfriendly or if I’m angry at them and feel offended, they simply cannot understand that sometimes I want time to unwind without them).
What I think I could tell them, next time they start with their inquisitive questions:
‘I’ve worked here for a year already. It should be clear by now that I’m not a talkative person. This is a question I don’t want to answer. And I hope that you respect that.’
‘that I don’t talk doesn’t mean I hate you, it means I have nothing to say’ < I find it ludicrous even having to explain this.
‘I don’t see what that has to do with the job’
‘I don’t talk about religion, politics or my private life with coworkers and I hope you respect that’
should they keep pestering:
‘all right, I need time to unwind, which means today I’ll spend my pause somewhere else.’ and proceed to eat alone somewhere else.
And if they pester yet again:
‘leave me alone’
if by this point some of them start giving me the evil eye and afterwards start ignoring me or treat me differently, time to accelerate my transfer to another unit.
If you like keeping boundaries with your coworkers, what do you tell them that works?
Great, so find some people who want to socialise. Having that need does not give them the right to force OP to socialise if he doesn't want to. He's not stopping them from doing it, he just doesn't want to partake in it himself, and he has every right not to.
OP owes exactly nothing to his co-workers other than doing his job and being polite. If you think he does, then you're the problem.
Why do you think it's OK to force someone else into interacting with the world the same way you do, just to please you? That's not what OP is doing.
Yeah and being polite includes making small talk when people want to engage with you, not be a dude that says "don't talk to me we just work together". Work consists of 1/3rd of your life, even more for a nurse where doing a 24hr shift is normal. Not engaging with anyone during that time is being rude, even if you don't like to talk to people. It's like the minimum of a social contract.
OP proposed many ways to let his co-workers know he doesn't like chatting and none of them are what you quoted. In fact, he expressly created this thread to figure out how not to be rude to them
People are allowed to keep to themselves. Why does it bother you so much? Why are you so personally offended by this? I've never understood why extroverts feel as if the world owes them attention.
thank you for defending me, but as you can see, being a minority is not easy: a neutrally worded and genuine question is met by animosity because people like maalus simply don't understand or don't want to understand. And he get's upvoted. Even worse, he and his followers assume malevolence.
Just wanted you to know that I appreciate the feeling, but they are more and talk waaay more.
But still, I don't know what to tell my delicate coworkers.
And make no mistake, this post will also be downvoted...
Yeah I know. It still annoys me though, I don't want this place to turn into Reddit.
I understand your frustration, I'm an introvert and I work in education which is about 75% women, so I have run across groups like what you describe.
The easiest fix is to find a better work place, but in the meantime the only thing I've found that works is to become boring to them; listen politely but give short, non-committal answers. Shrug and say "I don't know" as much as you can. Don't say anything that they can use to ask a follow up question. If you get a hardcore talker, excuse yourself to go to the bathroom.