It is not unusual to hear a workplace referred to as a family. This may apply to a work group or a division or even a large organization. When somebody says that a work group is a family, they are generally referring to the fact that it is supportive, that people like one another and that they do things together.

The problem with this analogy is that, for many reasons, workplace and the family are very different organisms. It is important to remember this because neither the workplace nor the family are all benign, and when we begin to mix these two up, we often create stresses for ourselves that are larger than would be created by the actual difficult situation itself.

Quite naturally, the first thing we learn about relationships is from family and from our place of origin. Let us suppose that these relationships were warm, loving and supportive, or that you come from a culture where the operational rule is that, no matter what, family is always first.

Then imagine that you come into the workplace where the emphasis is all on productivity rather than personal relationships. While you may be valued as a worker, you still may feel that something is wrong with the workplace because it is not meeting your picture of what it ought to be like. This is probably where we got the smart-alecky remark response to complaints: "That's why we call it work."

When the original family relationships are troublesome, this, too, can carry over in the workplace. For example, I have a friend who is the second oldest of seven children. Her older sister and she never got along, and my friend perceived her sister as having been favored by the mother. Inevitably, it seems, in each workplace where she has functioned there have been older female authority figures with whom she has been unable, over the long term, to get along. It has seemed that she is recreating her relationship with her sister in each of these older authority figures.

In the same way, if siblings tend to be highly competitive, people may have a harder time becoming a team member in the workplace, since their idea of relationship, even good ones, was based on the ideal of competition. This "transference" is something we all do to a greater or lesser degree when we leave our family and go out to form other relationships.

You may find the same kind of issues arising in social groupings or in voluntary work you do, or in almost any other setting. Being aware of it is helpful. Even more helpful is learning to distinguish the characteristics of the setting you are in.

Certainly there are warm, supportive, mentoring, fun occasions in the workplace. These are important and part of a good organization. At the same time, if we bring the same expectations to our workplace that we had for the family (e.g., family is the place where you can always go home), we are likely to be disappointed. And, as pointed out above, if we recreate the same situations in the workplace that existed in our families of origin, we are likely to bring whatever problems we have in our family into our workplace relationships.

Since, as I said before, all of us do this to some extent, as you can imagine, workplace relationships can become pretty confusing.

The key to remember is "we aren't little anymore." We can manage relationships and form realistic expectations and choices because we come into the workplace as adults. If there are difficult co-workers, we can learn to negotiate with them. If there are wonderful bosses, we can learn to appreciate them for who they are and not expect that they will treat us like our parents did.

If you would like to talk to us, please call the Academic & Staff Assistance Program at 752-2727 for an appointment or you can email me at shharvey@ucdavis.edu.

Sally Harvey is director of the Academic and Staff Assistance Program. Her columns appear quarterly in Dateline.