Work friends see you at your most tired. If they still like you, that’s real.

Work shows people a version of you nobody else gets. Friends meet you when you have chosen to show up and look fine, while the people on your shift see hour seven: short-tempered, out of patience, not performing anything. Being liked in that state is a different quality of evidence, because there was nothing to be fooled by.

Take one of those friendships off the schedule this week and make it real elsewhere: get food after close, swap numbers properly, invite them to something outside work. Plenty of the longest friendships people have started with somebody who saw them at their worst and stayed anyway.