It seems perfectly natural to me, but then again, I'm exactly the same way. Of course, I hang around a lot with theater people, and we're a notoriously affectionate lot. You tend to get over a lot of your "personal space issues" when you have to pretend to be madly in love with someone you've never even met before.
Hugging co-workers ... I'm not sure there's necessarily a hard-and-fast taboo there. I hope there isn't, anyway -- I found myself doing just that yesterday. The "problem" comes in that gray area between "co-worker" and "friend." The co-worker in question is a woman with whom I have a decent amount of social contact at work, but in the four years we've known each other, we've seen each other maybe twice outside the office. Are we "friends?" Or just "co-workers who have lunch together most days?"
Yesterday, she spent an hour at my desk, trying to figure out what to do about her marriage. (This is the second woman in as many weeks to tell me a story of her husband admitting his activities with cybersex, and how he feels that since there's no actual contact, it's not cheating. But that's another story...) She spent much of the hour fighting back tears, and I think that had we not been in the office, she wouldn't have worried about that.
So, before she went back to her desk, I gave her a hug. Was it "appropriate behavior in the workplace?" Perhaps not. Was it a necessary part of the relationship between two human beings? Absolutely. Did it help her? I sure hope so...
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Hugging co-workers ... I'm not sure there's necessarily a hard-and-fast taboo there. I hope there isn't, anyway -- I found myself doing just that yesterday. The "problem" comes in that gray area between "co-worker" and "friend." The co-worker in question is a woman with whom I have a decent amount of social contact at work, but in the four years we've known each other, we've seen each other maybe twice outside the office. Are we "friends?" Or just "co-workers who have lunch together most days?"
Yesterday, she spent an hour at my desk, trying to figure out what to do about her marriage. (This is the second woman in as many weeks to tell me a story of her husband admitting his activities with cybersex, and how he feels that since there's no actual contact, it's not cheating. But that's another story...) She spent much of the hour fighting back tears, and I think that had we not been in the office, she wouldn't have worried about that.
So, before she went back to her desk, I gave her a hug. Was it "appropriate behavior in the workplace?" Perhaps not. Was it a necessary part of the relationship between two human beings? Absolutely. Did it help her? I sure hope so...