No friends
As we mentioned, John had friends, but not in the current city he was living in because of work. He tried to make friends at the office, but everyone was much older than he was and they had families to go home to. Nobody had time to go out for a drink after work was over.
Apart from that, outside in the city, people were hard to meet and everyone just had their own thing going on. How was John going to meet people and make friends? He needed a group to go out with after work or he was going to quickly lose his mind. The clock was ticking.