An Ode to My Corporate Peeps
(And it’s not like they’ll ever be able to read this.)
Because they’ll probably be somewhere between doing their own businesses, meetings, deadlines, coffee runs, reports, and the kind of busy that makes days pass without anyone noticing. Maybe that is why I am writing this here because some goodbyes deserve to be said properly, even when no one is around to hear them.
I’ve heard it a lot of times; they say the corporate jungle in the Philippines is one of the craziest places you can find yourself in. It is fast, demanding, and unpredictable. It can be full of pressure, long hours, unclear expectations, and people who make you question whether a paycheck is enough reason to wake up every morning. But I learned early on that it does not have to be that way.
Not when you are surrounded by people who genuinely want to see you win. This was my first corporate job in the Philippines, and I walked into it not really knowing what to expect. I was younger, newer, and still learning how to speak the language of business—how to sit through meetings, survive email threads, understand office politics, and somehow look like I had my life together before nine in the morning. But then there were my people. My corporate peeps. They were colleagues, technically. But they became more than the people I worked with. They were the kind of people I would willingly have coffee with outside of business hours, not because I had to network or impress anyone, but because being around them never drained the life out of me. They indeed made work feel lighter.
They were all older than me, which could have made me feel small or out of place. But since I know how to blend into a room, how to listen, and how to find comfort among people who have lived a little more life than I have. And honestly, I loved talking to them! They carried a kind of wisdom that does not come from presentations or training modules. It came from experience: from losses, promotions, transitions, mistakes, families, ambitions, and all the things people learn when life has asked them to keep going. Their stories stayed with me. Their advice became the kind of thing I would think about later, usually on the way home, when the day had finally gone quiet. And most especially, they reminded me that the corporate world can still be a good place.
Not because work is always easy (hell no!). Not because the deadlines disappear or the business stays profitable. But because good people can make even the most exhausting seasons feel bearable. They can make a Monday less dreadful. They can make a difficult meeting feel less lonely. They can turn a simple coffee break into a moment of laughter that carries you through the rest of the day.
And now, because the portfolio was no longer profitable, my first-ever department/business group has been discontinued. It sounds so formal when written that way. Discontinued. A business decision. A change in structure. A line in an announcement, perhaps another update in someone’s calendar. But for me, it feels like saying goodbye to the first people who taught me that I could belong here. I am sad that the chapter I have with them has to end. Sad that the routines we built—the familiar faces, the casual conversations, the shared frustrations, the inside jokes, and the small victories—will no longer belong to the same ordinary workday. I know this is not the end of anyone’s story because I believe that good people find their way. People like them will continue to grow, move forward, and leave warmth in every room they enter. I truly believe that.
Still, I will miss them. I will miss the version of myself that learned beside them: the younger girl navigating her first corporate job, trying her best to understand the world, quietly grateful that she had people around her who made it feel less intimidating.
Winnie the Pooh said, “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
And I think that is exactly it. How lucky I was to have corporate peeps who were more than coworkers. How lucky I was to find kindness in a place people often describe as cruel. How lucky I was to meet people who made me feel that success did not have to be lonely—that it could be shared over coffee, conversations, encouragement, and the simple comfort of knowing someone in the room is rooting for you.
To the people who made my first corporate chapter worth remembering: thank you for the wisdom, the laughter, the warmth, and the reminder that even in the corporate jungle, good people still do exist. And because of you, I will always believe that work can be more than work.