This is reductive to the point of absurdity. Situational friends are still friends. How many of your elementary school friends are still your friends these days? High school? Summer camp? Heck college friends? Unless you're living in the same town with the same people, there's a good chance that most of them aren't anymore. Were these people also not your friends? When you leave that book club, when you stop showing up at the corner cafe, when you move out of the neighborhood, how many of those people will you still be spending time with 5 years later. For the ones that you aren't, were they also not really friends?
Friendship isn't a binary thing. Not every friend you make will help you bury a body, but not every friend or friendship needs to (or should) run that deep. And sure not everyone you're "friendly" with at work are friends, it's a spectrum. But situational friends are friends. People you bond with for a short while over a shared experience and then when life moves one or both of you on the friendship ends are still friends.
But then what is a friend? If a "friendship" ever ends, does that mean it was never a friendship at all? I've had very good friends, people I've shared houses with, helped move, been to their weddings and they've been to mine. And it's easily been 10 years since we last saw each other or talked. We even still live in the same city as far as I know, but our lives have taken us down different paths, and we've each been busy in other ways and places and the few times we've tried to coordinate something it just fell through. But you can't call someone you chose to live with an "acquaintance" in my opinion, but our friendship ended (or at least became one in name only) when life forces no longer pushed us together.
In my opinion I consider a friendship any relationship where no matter how long ago it ended or how long ago you last talked you wouldn't mind hearing from them again, even if it might only be awkward small talk. Old schoolmates, college roommates, military squadmates, and co-workers can all be friends. They can all be acquaintances too. But crucially the fact that you stopped talking at one point or stopped spending time together isn't the demarcating factor between the two.
A friend by definition is someone you at one point spent over 12 hours a week socializing with closely and had at least 7 major bonding moments over a one year period. After that vesting period you are allowed to drop to just 6 hours a week and 3 major bonding events yearly for the next 2 years. After that you can run the friendship in maintenance mode using the momentum gained and simply reach out for lunch once a year. But if you miss a once a year lunch 2 years in a row, or if your current group of friends grows twice in size in a single month, that work friend will be put into essentially a PIP. You inform the friend of the need for increased socialization and let him know if a major bonding event does not occur, or if a decrease in rate of friend acquisition does not happen, he will be terminated and sent his remaining funds via an ACH check.
Another dumb thing about this statement: It is just so situationally and culturally dependent. In many companies and cultures, it is quite normal to make good friends through work. One generality that I find true across many different situations and cultures: If you work in a generally low competition job, you are much more likely to make friends from work. The more competitive the job becomes, the less likely you are to make (and keep) friends from work.
I just find the moment the day to day bond is severed the contact decreases over time to a point where they might as well not be friends! When I worked retail I had a great group of friends but what could we really talk about 7 years after we all went our separate ways? Just saying most people I meet at work I would not choose to be friends with out of a lineup of people and we only became close because we spent 50 hours a week in the trenches together keeping the lights on.
This is reductive to the point of absurdity. Situational friends are still friends. How many of your elementary school friends are still your friends these days? High school? Summer camp? Heck college friends? Unless you're living in the same town with the same people, there's a good chance that most of them aren't anymore. Were these people also not your friends? When you leave that book club, when you stop showing up at the corner cafe, when you move out of the neighborhood, how many of those people will you still be spending time with 5 years later. For the ones that you aren't, were they also not really friends?
Friendship isn't a binary thing. Not every friend you make will help you bury a body, but not every friend or friendship needs to (or should) run that deep. And sure not everyone you're "friendly" with at work are friends, it's a spectrum. But situational friends are friends. People you bond with for a short while over a shared experience and then when life moves one or both of you on the friendship ends are still friends.