The only way I can explain this is that by "best friend at the office" the survey means office buddy. I don't think a lot of people have actual, true friends at their workplace.
I also had a lot of friends in college who I haven't seen since we graduated and went our separate ways. Life intervenes to end friendships all the time but it doesn't mean that we weren't friends to begin with.
I don’t think that makes them not friends. A certain kind of friend perhaps, but still a friend. I have coworkers with whom I got along very well and then lost touch after one or the other of us moved along. But then we reconnect at conferences or new jobs and are glad to see each other and remember old war stories or to work together again.
This is very much my experience. I have a friend at the office, we had lunch together almost every day, but since WFH started in March 2020 I have barely spoken to him, just a very occasional email. I have physically seen him once. I have also never kept in touch with anyone I worked with at a former employer.
I spent 17 years at a 70k+ tech megacorp. As a product manager for global cross functional teams, I interacted closely with >1000 people across all spectrums. Not once did I encounter an employee who regularly interacted with another outside of work related functions.
I have worked cross-functionally a lot as well, and I'm baffled how you would make such a matter-of-fact statement. How would you even know? If I do hang out with colleagues outside of work, I will generally not be talking about it as there's lots of potential for weird perceptions of favoritism or cliqueyness.
You are right. I should have included the clause "that I was aware of." Considering that I spent a lot of time with many different groups of co-workers (including quasi-social activities), I would guess that I would have noticed a hint of non-work related friendship activities in some large % of those that I was interacting with.
I should also note that this was a buyer of startups rather than an actual startup (no matter how much they gave lip-service to the idea that we were supposed to act like "a startup within a megacorp.")
> Not once did I encounter an employee who regularly interacted with another outside of work related functions.
No offense to you but statistically 40% of people have dated a coworker at least once and people hold on average 12 jobs in their life so if you interacted with 1000 persons there is a good chance that at least 30 of them were definitely interacting with a coworker outside of work related function.
