Found Family via Work

"You know, I was worried about spending Thanksgiving without my family. But after today, I've realized... my friends are my family!"

Captain Holt: I hope you know your family's gonna miss you.
Rosa: I don't care. I barely speak to them.
Captain Holt: I was talking about the Nine-Nine. Be safe, Rachel Weinstein.

— Brooklyn Nine-Nine

The average person spends almost more time at work than in their personal lives. This makes it a breeding ground for very close relationships. The Office Romance (including cases of Sleeping with the Boss) are incidences when this relationship becomes romantic or sexual. But it can also just be a creator of platonic friendships, and that's this trope.

Not to be confused with Family Business, when a family literally runs the business. However, they can overlap, as it's common (both in real life and in fiction) for family businesses to claim that their "family" includes their employees. Whether this is a publicity stunt depends on if it's a Mean Boss or a Benevolent Boss. Whether it's a good or bad place to work has generally little effect on if it's a good place to form friendships, though; people can be just as united under a Bad Boss as a good one.

What matters is that these people are so close that they'll turn to each other when they're in need, they love one another, and they hang out together. Especially clear when such work-based commitments become more important to the characters than their "outside" friends because they have a Commonality Connection with the latter. Related to Band of Brothers, which covers dangerous incidents that bond together units, and may be a sister trope if that "employment" is military or battle-related.

Naturally, this can be Truth in Television. If the boss is involved in such friendships, it can overlap with Nice to the Waiter or No Hero to His Valet, but this trope includes people of the same or similar ranks. A natural fixture of the Work Com, to the point where it might be more noticeable if it's subverted or averted.

A character simply being friendly with their co-workers doesn't qualify them for this trope. They need to show an unusual level of devotion and loyalty to their work friends that surpasses their "out of work" friends.

This is both a subtrope and result of Limited Social Circle, with a bunch of the same practical reasons applying (keeping the story focused on the main cast, keeping the character count low to save on production costs), as well as the possible problems (making it seem like the characters can't make friends outside of work). Compare Family of Choice.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Case Files of Jeweler Richard: The Ranasinghe Jewelry Company and everyone who has worked with them end up making a found family: Seigi and Richard as "partners", Saul as some sort of adopted Team Dad, Maia, a jewelry designer who teasingly sends Richard tea he hates, and Vince also attends the company parties even while studying abroad. Seigi even comments the company party is basically a family party.
• WORKING!!: The staff of Wagnaria become very effectively a family unit. They spend even their days off together doing things like going to a resort, and Souma even helps "Yamada" dodge her actual family. "Yamada" lampshading this almost gets Otoo killed, since she assigned him the role of father and Kyoko the role of mother, much to the ire of Yachiru Todoroki, who believes Otoo is trying to steal her Kyoko from her. Good thing Otoo knows how to pull a Bare-Handed Blade Block. Satou is also like an elder brother to most of the cast, such as teasing Popura by messing with her hair, or hitting Souma when he teases him about his own infatuation with Yachiru.

Live-Action TV

• Abbott Elementary: Deconstructed. Janine is very attached to her coworkers, and due to the show being a Work Com, her relationships with them get a lot of focus. However, she admits in this episode that since her breakup with her more social boyfriend, her coworkers are her only social circle. The other characters stress that she has to have a personal life outside work, which encourages her to go to a Halloween party with a high school friend.
• The Brokenwood Mysteries: Perhaps it's on account of the detectives not having families of their own, but Mike, Kristin, and Sam hang out together off-duty. This includes Kristin being Mike's platonic plus-one to a wedding and the three of them sharing Christmas dinner together at the station.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Aside from Amy and Jake's Office Romance, the entire squad of the Nine-Nine are very close. Hitchcock and Scully are never seen apart, Terry is a Mama Bear more than a boss (a fact that he gladly admits), while Holt is a Papa Wolf. Jake and Boyle are also best friends, and both are very close to Rosa. The only exception is Gina, who is actually Jake's childhood best friend and therefore not linked to him through work.
• Criminal Minds: Over 15 seasons, the members of the BAU definitely come to see each other as family, in large part because they spend almost all of their time together due to their heavy workload. Over the course of the series, each member either falls in mortal danger, is framed for a crime that would cost them both their job, their freedom, or both. And the team pulls out all the stops to rescue their teammate and/or clear their teammate, making it clear that they're doing it because that's what family does for each other.
• CSI: NY: Lab Chief Mac Taylor is an only child and both his parents are deceased. No mention is ever made of aunts, uncles, or cousins. He and Stella sometimes fight like a stereotypical "old married couple;" he has some heart-to-heart chats with the younger members of the team when they're struggling with personal issues; and takes Sheldon in when he loses his apartment. Referring to his co-workers, he tells his new girlfriend in season 8, "For a long time this place, those guys, were my whole world. They got me through some really tough times."
• The Good Fight: Subverted and defied. Although they had once been good friends, after being fired, Maya rejects Lucca's attempts to help her, and coldly tells her that they had only been "work friends" anyway before slamming the door in her face.
• The Good Wife: Until learning that she cheated with Peter before their friendship, Alicia was very close friends with Kalinda, and Kalinda with Cary (a bond that was never broken), to the point of being willing to put herself on the line when Cary was in prison for smuggling drugs. Will and Diane, who are co-partners in Lockhart Gardner, also refer to themselves as having "the perfect marriage — everything but the sex".
• The Haunting of Bly Manor: The staff of Bly Manor counts three romances amongst them: Dani and Jamie, Owen and Hannah, and Peter and Rebecca. However, notably aside from Peter, the Wingraves and the Bly staff are all extremely close to each other. Most clear when Charlotte tells Hannah to come and stay at Bly permanently after the breakdown of Hannah's long-term relationship, which she then does for years.
• From The Office (US), Michael Scott sometimes deludes himself that he has this type of relationship with his employees. He believes that he is very close to them to the point he sometimes inserts himself into their personal lives. While there are episodes that do show some of them being close, it is never to the level of family.
• The Pact: All of the main women are very close friends. Nancy is godmother to Anna's daughter Tamsin, and ultimately goes to prison for murder to protect her. Although the brewery is a Family Business, Louie is actually much closer to her co-workers than her actual family (which was abusive), and regards Cat as her surrogate daughter, even choosing not to sell the brewery (and therefore not be rid of her memories) to keep them employed and together.
• Severance (2022): Very much so, and for obvious reasons. Mark, Helly (these two also have the beginnings of an Office Romance), Irving, and Dylan all develop very close friendships that culminate in them covering for each other (to the point of being physically and emotionally tortured in the Break Room to Dylan's willingness to risk life and limb to bring them to their innies. It's natural, given that they actually aren't able to remember their outside-of-work lives.
• Star Trek: Very common for starship crews that spend years in space with their co-workers, isolated from their personal family and friends and with no one else to interact with, routinely engaged in life or death situations.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series: Kirk is the captain of a spaceship, and he considers his two closest friends to be Spock (his first officer) and McCoy (his doctor), both of whom notably call him "Jim" instead of "Captain" or "sir". Spock and McCoy are also friends with each other, though they won't admit it. They talk about this in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier:
    McCoy: It's a mystery what draws us together. All that time in space, getting on each other's nerves, and what do we do when shore leave comes along? We spend it together. Other people have families...
    Kirk: Other people, Bones. Not us.
    McCoy: (considerably later) I thought men like us didn't have families.
    Kirk: I was wrong.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: The crew of Voyager finds themselves unexpectedly marooned in the Delta Quadrant with no idea if they'll ever make it home. Having to band together to survive and try to find a way home, they eventually become a legacy ship, with members of the crew marrying and having children. When they actually do make it back home, some of the crew members struggle with the idea of leaving the starship and coworkers that have been their home and family for nearly a decade.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise: Trip and Malcolm work together on the same spaceship and eventually managed to become best friends despite Malcolm's grumpy, pessimistic personality.
  • Star Trek: Discovery: The crew of Discovery often finds itself in situations where they can only depend on each other for survival. When they are trapped in the mirror universe, they band together to find a way home. When it becomes clear that they're going to have to take a one-way through to the 32nd century where everyone they've ever known or loved has died, they further lean into their found family to help make the emotional adjustment. Many even verbally refer to the crew as a big family, particularly Culber, Stammets, Adira, and Grey who more or less function as a set of parents and teenaged children.
• The workers at Cloud 9 in Superstore come to realize this about themselves through the series. Friendships develop among them all as time goes on, and by the time of the finale and the store closing they realize that they've come to love each other way more than they expected, and have regular get-togethers outside of work hours.
  Garrett: I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a job. I mean, if jobs were fun, they wouldn't pay us to do it, but occasionally there were moments that weren't so bad. Memories are the only things I can remember right now. You know, most jobs suck ninety-nine percent of the time, so you really... you really gotta enjoy those moments that don't. Those bits of fun you have during downtime. Or an interesting conversation with a co-worker. Or something happens that you can laugh about later. Or you do something that you're actually proud of. If you're lucky, maybe you even get to be friends with a co-worker or two along the way. Not sure what else you could want at a job.

Video Games

• Forza Horizon: Scott Tyler confesses at the end of the "Horizon Origins" story in Horizon 5 for his answer to the Player's question of what the Horizon Festival means to him. He knows that he's annoying, uncool, easily distracted, and tells lame jokes sometimes, but Horizon gives him a home that lets him hang out with people like the Player while doing "the best job in the world, every day."
• Kingdom Hearts: Played with in the original Organization XIII. The group as a whole doesn't view themselves as a family, but Axel, Roxas, and Xion have a strong bond, with Axel coming across as the closest thing that Roxas or Xion has to a parent. Marluxia and Larxene also show signs of being close friends, trusting each other enough to attempt a coup in Chain of Memories. Demyx actually brings this up in the Character Files, realizing he joined the Organization more or less for the sake of this trope and lamenting that he doesn't have any close friends like the others do.

Web Animation

• Helluva Boss: Blitzo views all his employees at I.M.P as the closest thing he has to family (Loona takes this to another level, as she is his adopted daughter), and threatening them pisses him off immensely, as shown when Verosika and her team sexually assault Moxxie.

Web Original

• Dina Marino and Trixie Maialini spoke about how close they were with each other and the other girls when they all worked at the strip club. They even helped Trixie getting out of her dependency on drugs.
• Schlatt & Co. in SMPLive, with co-owners Schlatt and Connor acting as parental figures to their young intern, Ty.

Western Animation

• DuckTales (2017): While most of the main cast is biologically related to Scrooge, Mrs. Beakley, Launchpad McQuack, and Duckworth are both Scrooge's employees and part of his family, with Beakley and Launchpad frequently taking part in family adventures. Gyro Gearloose and Fenton also somewhat count, though less so than the others.
• Futurama: Despite only Fry and Professor Farnsworth (and Cubert) being biologically related, the Planet Express crew get along like an extended family, albeit a quite dysfunctional one. Most are ostracized among their peers and don't have actual family members or friends to rely upon, so when one crew member has a personal problem or has accomplished something important, their coworkers will be there to support them. This view of the company comes up in "Future Stock" when Fry's 1980s businessman friend restructures Planet Express to be more serious and efficient:
  Leela: That Guy's turning this place into some kind of business.
  Farnsworth: This isn't a business. I've always thought of it more as a source of cheap labor, like a family.
• The main characters of Regular Show (Mordecai, Rigby, and their fellow coworkers at the park) gradually develop this kind of close-knit, fraternal friendship between each other. Although they frequently argue or fight with each other (especially Mordecai and Rigby despite being each other's best friends, while Benson and Muscle Man both usually disliked the duo at first), they all start getting along with each other much better over the course of the series. When push comes to shove, they'll almost always come to each other's aid against all kinds of crazy life-threatening problems; and when things are going well, they'll casually hang out or spend time together at parties, celebrating holidays, or attending each other's birthdays, graduations, and weddings.

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