I know lemmy is titled to the left, so most probable answer is going to be no, managers are our enemy, but hear me out.
I always thought like this: I’m there to work and earn money, not to make friends, not to fake a friendship with any manager. If they fire me, no manager is going to ask me how I’m holding up or what my plans for the future are. What may look like a friendship is all fake.
There is, however, a manager where I work at that everybody agrees she is friendly and goes the extra mile to help employees. When I say everybody I mean that literally, none of the coworkers I asked said anything remotely bad about this person. At my company there are other managers everybody agrees are narcissistic morons and everyone hates them.
I had an argument with this manager everyone likes and after thinking about it, it was mostly my fault we raised our voices. She raised her voice first but because I wasn’t listening to her because she triggered me.
I feel bad about it and I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I’d like to have a private conversation with her to apologize and explain why she triggered me. She also does typical things any manager does that I find very unfair that I want to explain so she maybe stops it.
Is being honest and having such a conversation a stupid idea?
That seems sad to me.
I managed a team for a few years. Another team in our organization made a pitch to take two of the people from my team into theirs. I ended up going along with the plan because it was a way to quickly get them a salary increase that I’d been trying to get for them for years. The rest of my team got absorbed into another team in our group and I transitioned to a non-management role.
We still chat constantly and we get together regularly for dinner. I consider them all close friends.
Edit: I wanted to add: if you were wrong, you should apologize. It doesn’t matter who the person you wronged is. All that matters is your integrity.