Do you keep in touch with ex-colleagues?

I never have, I usually find that the only thing you have in common is work and when either you, or they, move on there is little in common to talk about.

I've wanted to at times, but for the most part, haven't. There're two ex-colleagues I have as Facebook friends, but I think that's more because of shared interests rather than because we worked together. There're people I'd like to keep in contact with from my most recent job, but I doubt that will happen. (I was fired, which has lead to some acrimony, and I don't think people will want to be involved if they don't have to be. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up as persona non grata for raising a grievance and higlighting some of the management flaws.)

I think it's easier to keep in contact with work colleagues when you see them on a daily basis, and there's little effort involved. It also depends what kind of office you worked in. The kind where people socialise, or have time for a chat over a cup of tea, or an office where everybody had their own cubicle and keeps their heads down. In the former environment where you've done a bit of socialising, you would know if you had common ground with your other collegues. In the latter environment, you could easily meet up 'for auld lang syne' and then realise you have nothing in common. Not the best grounds for a further friendship ?

One of my best friends is an ex-colleague - or rather an ex-student intern that I was supervising. We haven't worked in the same building since late 2007, but it's a rare day that doesn't feature several e-mails in both directions as an absolute minimum.

But this is pretty rare, admittedly - I'm racking my brains trying to think of other ex-colleagues I've bothered staying in touch with (for anything other than professional reasons, anyway).

It totally depends. Some I do, some I don't. I find that work colleagues are just like any other randomly selected group of people, you may or may not get on outside the reason that the group was brought together. ?. Some were no more than colleagues, others have become friends. It's useful to be able to get in touch with some ex-colleagues on a professional level, so keep those relationships sort of ticking over.

I've stayed in touch with the ones I've wanted to stay in touch with, generally people who I went to lunch with / socialised with out of hours. Depending on the people / person, we meet up as follows!:

1 x friend who I worked with 11 years ago - See every couple of months for a night out.

1 x friend who I worked with 10 years ago - See every couple of weeks. We have also been on holiday with him and his wife.

Both of the above came to our wedding in Vegas.

5 x friends who I worked with 6 years ago - We meet up every 3-4 months or so for a meal and drinks.

2 x friends who I worked with only very briefly 6 years ago but got on well with - We meet up every 6 months or so for a meal and drinks.

We also keep in touch via email / fb.

I have one ex-colleague with whom I stay in touch; she was pretty much my mentor and role model for my first 7 years in teaching and an absolutely remarkable teacher as well as a lovely, lovely person. We email about once a month and meet for lunch a couple of times a year which doesn't sound much but I'd consider her to be one of my most valued friends.

I did keep in touch with a couple of ex colleagues but as with all things over time people move on and drift away

No. And I've never bothered with the "must meet up" nonsense.

Pretty much all my major friendships were formed before the age of 20. The older I get the less I seem to like people.

My best friend is an ex colleague, but I've got others that I kind of stayed in touch with for a bit, through email mainly although a couple that I'd meet for a drink every now and then.

As the months / years have gone on though, I realise that I've got nothing in common with most of them apart from working together, and I don't particularly like them as such!

I made a lot of good friends at my previous job - one is now one of my closest friends, we were flatmates for a while and she was a witness at my wedding, I see her usually once a week or so. Another friend from the same job now lives very close by and we do our local pub quiz together every week. I also see a few other people from that job occasionally at birthday drinks etc.

I haven't made such good friends in my current job, the girl I used to sit opposite left nearly a year ago, she came to my wedding reception but since then we've made noises about meeting up for a drink but haven't managed it.

Only ones I was friends with outside of work IYSWIM.

Business networks seem to be more important over here though. Lots of people i used to work with will orgnaise drinks and invite pretty much the whole department rather than aranging to meet with oen or 2 people.

I was thinking about this and about to respond by saying that there are a select few people that I've worked with over the years who I'm still in touch with and then I remembered that my best friend is an ex work colleague too! We only worked together for about a year but have been very close ever since and I forget that we once worked together as it doesn't generally come up in conversation.

I used to but tbh i find that after a couple of meet ups you end up running out of things to talk about. It's different when you work together as you have a common interest when you're meeting outside of work but other than that there's not normally any common interests.

I have a few friends who I met through work though none of them are local now. A couple of them I don't see often but we email every now and again and meet up once a year/every other year. They were close enough to be invited to my wedding. One of them, at least, is quite a surprise that we have stayed in touch. There were other people I got on with more and had more to do with. We're both also quite bad at emailing. Its been over 10 years since we worked together though. I have another friend I met through work and we see each other a few times a year and are very good friends. He introduced me to my husband and was best man at our wedding!

When I left my last job a couple of people said to stay in touch. I've emailed them a couple of times but they only reply once and don't initiate emails to me. They sent a Christmas card but I suspect that'll be the last I hear. Shame as I thought one of them would be a long term friend - we went for walks at lunch time and had loads in common. We even met up on holiday when we went to the same place (we overlapped one night in Verona).