It seems a lot of people absolutely despise the idea of spending any of their free time with their coworkers, even something as measly as a lunch break that you're basically stuck at work for anyways. I could understand it if your coworkers were particularly nasty to you or something like that, but it seems that a lot of people have fine relationships with their coworkers and still would rather sit in a car alone to eat lunch rather than having a conversation at a table or go home after work and watch TV rather than get a beer or coffee.

I can understand people want to hide or whatever, but why is that such a widespread phenomenon now? It wasn't always like that as I understand. From a lot of what I've read and heard, fairly intimate relationships between coworkers were much more common. It seems like if we're talking about the general breakdown of society or the decay of the labor movement, this is an obvious symptom that doesn't seem to have anyone's attention. So what gives?