Confusing Hypocrisy At Work

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Ok. So, i work at wal-mart in the electronics department and i've been there for two years. A friend of mine(who's actually one of my only real friends) comes to wal-mart a lot because there isn't much to do here and he doesn't have many friends either(i really suspect he has an undiagnosed ASD, probably why he's easy to talk to). He usually goes to the electronics department to look and games and stuff, and if i'm working he will usually hang around and talk to me for awhile.. Usually about video games or tv shows, which at least has to do with where i'm working since i'm in electronics. He has a sort of obsession with music video games and knows all about them, so sometimes when customers there have questions about a Rock Band or Guitar Hero game and he's there, i'll even ask him for his input. I don't feel that him hanging around interferes significantly with me working, and i actually usually learn something useful from all the video game facts he tells me. He also buys things there, so this also makes him a customer(and, thus, we should be nice to him). Telling him to "go away, i'm working" would be rude, and i don't want him to go away because i like him. This has been going on for over a year, by the way.

A few days ago one person who works in the cell phone department(which is in the same area) started acting mad or something at me when he was there, and me, him, and a guy i work with were discussing video games. She can be kind of bossy and annoying to most people in electronics really, so when she started being bossy to me and a guy i work with, he didn't want to take it and they got into an argument. This ended up with them going into the back talking to management or something for quite awhile. Afterward he wouldn't tell me what exactly they talked about, but would only say that i should probably tell my friend to go home. I'm guessing that she was probably annoyed at me for talking to my friend while i was working. I was about to go to lunch anyway, so i didn't worry about it. But then a couple days later he was hanging around and i saw my manager talking to him. After that, he left. I didn't know what happened until i talked to him online and he said that my manager told him to stop talking to me and that it could get me fired.

So, this is confusing me. I've seen other people i work with talk to friends at work before... And the people i work with talk to eachother all the time, usually MUCH more than i do. In fact, i usually feel like i'm seriously out-of-the-loop at work, and other people are always having conversations i'm not a part of. So when someone i like to talk to hangs around sometimes for a little while and i talk to him while i'm working, it's bad, but what they're doing isn't? That one girl who initially got annoyed at me spends lots of time talking about inane things like what she just saw someone wearing.. At least when my friend comes in there we usually talk about something that has to do with where i'm working, and he can even be helpful at times. Plus, he is a paying customer, so it seems to me like someone telling him to stop talking to me is just plain rude. And it's not like we set it up and i tell him to come in a certain time because i'll be there and he stays all day.. He just goes there a lot, and when i happen to be working he hangs around for awhile. I actually first met him at work.

It's weird too.. because people have gotten mad at me for talking to people other times too. Like when a guy i barely know who i had a class with at the community college once was asking me how i was and stuff, i felt really awkward but was just trying to be polite by talking to him because he's nice... And two of my coworkers got mad at me for it! Am i supposed to tell a customer who strikes up a conversation with me to go away or to ignore them? And what right to they have to get mad at me about something like this, when i spend much less time having conversations with people at work than they do?!

I really don't get it, and it just seems like they want a reason to be mad at me. And why would a manager tell him to stop talking to me, without talking to me about it at all? I barely have any friends, and then when i do have one who likes to talk to me at work it's bad? When other people talk to lots of people at work? Uhhhhgggggg.

well, you know... hard to state this but, people just are miserable to people they see as "happy", like yourself, you proably don't show much difference to them, like the people at my work place, their just plain miserable sometimes to me, like 2 servers today talking about me or something about me not ever 10 feet away, and I said, that's not polite, and because I work while listening to 1 earbud, it pisses them off as management will not tell me to remove it as well I'm a good work they say. I said, well I heard you, but can you hear me? and they said no what?, no in the place I work, I am valued, not to say you are not, but I can get away with this, but I said and I had my middle finger out in the down position, wait let me turn up my volume, giving them the finger in the process, trust me I am not the cool customer you think I am, this I did as I was tired of working all night to have 2 harpies complain at me about Silver ware they wanted so they could leave, but had not the manners to say right. Yeah, people are hypocrites... they back talk, snitch, complain and mostly live alot of their lives on their knees.

It's a common tactic of anti-union employers to prohibit non-work related conversations at work. They do this because if they allow any non-work related conversations at work they have to allow union related conversations at work. Basically if you allow fred and joe to talk about sports. You have to allow Joe and Stew to talk about unions. Where I work most companies will have sections in their employee manuals about non-work related conversations.

They are almost totally unenforceable because they have to apply the policy equally to all levels of employees. So if a foreman talks to the supervisor about his golf game or what the weather is like it usually makes that whole no non-work conversation section moot.

I don't know how that applies to your situation other then the fact that all employees should be treated equally.