A fork of Rural Dictionary
Similar to the Friend Zone, the coworker zone is a lonely state you find yourself in after your attempts to initiate an outside-of-work friendship with a coworker are rejected. Can also be used as a verb – to be "coworker zoned" is to be denied friendship by a coworker, thereby placing you in the coworker zone.
I asked Charles if he wanted to hang out and work on the project some time, but he totally missed the point that I wanted to hang out and just said he wasn't really interested in working on the project. He totally put me in the coworker zone.
He acts all tough on the message board, but that's just his httpersonality.