Keeping Separate Lives

When I first joined Facebook a few months ago, I was not sure what the etiquette was in terms of accepting friend requests. In other words, I was afraid I would hurt someone's feelings by ignoring their friend request. My main thought was that a big red flag would be sent to their "In Box" indicating that I rejected them. I had to balance my desire to be polite with my desire for privacy which is important to me. If I did not recall someone, I would send out an email to a common friend to help refresh my memory. I was surprised to find out that sometimes, the person I reached out to, did not recall the person in question. I think it is because when we see that we share common friends, we automatically think they are safe and accept them.

I once faced a dilemna. I received a request from a higher-up at the company I work for, from a persom whom I shall hide by the name of Bob. I have never met Bob although we had corresponded by email a few times, mostly requests for my reporting services. Bob is extremely pleasant, very smart, and if we worked in the same office, we may probably have become friends. In fact, I have heard feedback that he is a very nice man.

Keeping in mind that I thought it was a breach of socially accepted behavior to reject someone electronically, I accepted his friend request. It was all fine until I started seeing that he used Facebook mostly for his professional life. If I wanted updates on the hotel industry, I would subscribe to a newsletter. I eventually removed him as a friend, and now I feel worse. I am hoping that he has 500 friends and does not notice my absence!

I use Facebook for my personal life, period. As most people can attest, it is where I post my son's achievements, special events, and feed my thoughts written on this blog. I use it to keep in touch with my dearest friends, whom I get to see only every other year. I use it to reconnect with childhood and school friends, most of whom I have not seen in years. It is for the same reason that I do not use my work email address to write personal correspondence. I like to keep my work, and home lives separate. I think that LinkedIn is an environment for people who network for business purposes, please contact me there if you have a problem with Delphi.