Work Facebook chat - too much

[Glitterboobz]

Is this normal in most jobs?

We have a work group chat on Facebook messenger and it's constant. Night time, weekends (the company is only open during the day, week days).

The boss pulls people up for things she's not happy with on the group chat.
Other co-workers have digs and moans on it.
And like I say - it's evenings and weekends.
I have a life outside work so I don't look at the chat constantly. I've stopped looking at it full stop which has been noticed.

But when I leave work for the day, that's it for me until I arrive the next day.

Is this completely ott? Or common nowadays?

I wouldn't say that's normal, no.

Way too much. We habe a whatsapp group but it is nothing to do with work really - unless we are being reminded of something

Completely abnormal, unprofessional and you are right not to engage anymore.

Yeah we had one like this and I got told off for leaving it because it didn't show good teamwork 🙄

Can you mute it?
You're not obliged to reply outwith working hours.

Not remotely normal. I don’t know anyone who’d put up with this!

I've got it on silent but I can still see when the messages pop up. And it's 9pm in the evening or a Saturday afternoon etc.

Leave it. Life’s too short to read other people’s inappropriately communicated grievances and passive aggression. If people have something to say, they can say it in person, surely? Terrible management, but sadly not unusual.

We've got about 4 different work WhatsApp groups... Doesn't mean you have to take part if you don't want to.

Nope. We have a very tame WhatsApp group for immediate team (I mainly use it to check I’ve checked in / seen activity from everyone every day because we work hybrid and a few months ago someone in the department sadly died and no one in his team noticed he wasn’t logged on until the next day). I know there are other very active WhatsApp groups but I’m not in them and not interested really.

I don’t even have current colleagues on Facebook / social media because I prefer to keep that separate.

I would find what you describe as completely oppressive. I am committed to my job and career but I don’t want work to take over my life.

Totally inappropriate too in terms of data protection/gdpr. Leave the group

Go into the group chat, click the names at the top to go to the chat settings and hit mute chat. You can then select an amount of hours to mute it for or ‘until I change it’

this will stop the messages coming through until you are ready to unmute it, but doesn’t tell anyone in the group you’ve muted it. I do it often when work or school mum chats are pinging at 9pm!

unfortuantely I’ve worked in a few teams with ‘casual’ chats like this on messenger and WhatsApp, it can quickly become intrusive. But if you mute it they’ll soon learn that they won’t hear from you on there out of hours and that’s ok.

We have a team WhatsApp group - about 8 department members, plus our boss.

It's strictly social though - just mainly general chat, night or meal out planning. The only reference to work is 'thank fuck that day's over' type comments (including from the boss).

I wouldn't resoind to anything business related to it and certainly wouldn't be happy with boss raising issues on it.

No. Work should be only in working hours. I had to remove myself from the group whattsapp chat because size it became too much We shouldn't be thinking about work out of work hours and your boss is wrong for doing that.

Deffo OTT. Ours is small and usually only used for things like letting team know laptop has crashed or running late for meeting etc.

How does it work for people not on FB? I'm not and wouldn't join just for work chat!

My work WhatsApp is on mute and currently had loads of unead messages!

What? No it isn't normal. I use Facebook to keep in touch with my actual friends and it isn't connected in any way to my job. We have multiple group chats for different things on Teams, WhatsApp etc but nothing is connected to our personal numbers or accounts. And they're used during work hours primarily.

Just had a few ping through just now. It's 9.49pm.
I finished work at 1pm

On Facebook? That feels inappropriate for starters.
We set up a WhatsApp group as a way to relay important stuff such as if running late for appointments. Work related but also started to share silly memes and arrange work outings (which everyone is invited to)
To use it to raise potential grievances is absolutely shocking. There are policies and procedures regarding that. Plus anything in a group chat can probably be used as evidence, such as reporting bullying. It's disturbing your manager thinks any of it is appropriate. It feels completely unprofessional and unboundaried.

Archive the group, that's what I would do and have done, mostly with WhatsApp groups. That way they don't know you've left. Completely unreasonable to be getting intrusive messages at 10 at night. Are you brave enough or worried you might miss something important?

Definitely not normal

I work for a care company and the group chat is a necessary evil as needed for emergency updates on service users, or traffic conditions that may affect us getting to calls etc.

The chat is constant during working hours, 7am -10pm.

I turn off the notifications for the days I am not working, but that causes problems in itself as you may miss a crucial update that could affect a service users wellbeing.

I find it very distracting and intrusive, but mass communication is crucial to our line of work.

This is batshit and I wouldn't engage. You have every right to switch your brain off from work when you're done for the day. This would never happen in anywhere I've worked!

So unprofessional.

I spell my name slightly different to my legal name on my social media accounts purely so my colleagues can’t find me or add me.

OP, your situation would drive me nuts and I’d leave the group ASAP. Sounds like a toxic working environment anyway. If anyone said anything to me about leaving the group I’d ask them to send me the official policy.

You just need to switch notifications off, rather than mute it.