“You Are My Person”: Work Wives Cristina and Meredith Say Farewell

“You’re My Person” sticker

Meredith Grey and Cristina Yang have been competitive but loving BFFs for ten seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, the Shonda Rhimes hospital drama. Their time together is coming to an end and, with it, so is one of TV’s richest workplace female friendships:

Unlike other beloved TV friendships among women — on Sex and the City, The Golden Girls, Living Single, Girls, and so on — Cristina and Meredith also work together, and in a highly competitive field. The stakes reach beyond their romantic and personal entanglements: They are often in direct competition with one another, fighting to climb the career ladder while, sometimes fumblingly, also working to maintain their friendship.

When I started my first job out of college at the Very Important Talent Agency, I was excited to become besties with my officemates. Instead I ended up in a department with a guy who accompanied our all-male supervisors to Hooters for lunch and a wealthy young woman who lived rent-free in her family’s surplus Upper East Side apartment but sighed over how much it cost her in taxis. Turns out you can’t always relate to other people just because you work alongside them.

In several different workplaces since, I have made some very good friends as well as a couple of mysteriously powerful enemies. (Cramped quarters have the power to create both.) Occasionally in low moments I have returned to early seasons of my favorite workplace dramas like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The West Wing,” wishing I could sample their camaraderie, but for the most part I feel like I’ve been lucky. What’s your model for an ideal office bromance? Have you had a Cristina or a Meredith?

“You’re My Person” sticker available for purchase on Redbubble

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.