AIBU to not care about pleasantries with colleagues?

[mamabeeboo]

Just wanting some opinions on this.

We are a team of 8 and all work remotely, since the pandemic. Each week, we have a one hour team call where we 'don't talk about work'. We also have a whatsapp group.

This is a one hour call to replace the office coffee chat, where we share photos on our whatsapp group about our 'highlights' of the week - holiday photos, the kids in the park, birthdays, netflix recommendations etc.

I find it very superficial. I don't like sharing photos of my kids or personal life, and to be honest, I don't really care about anyone else's personal life. I don't even download any of their photos to my phone. I listen politely but the whole call is very boring for me. When it's my turn to speak, I blag a short 'I did this, it was nice', 60 secs max.

I've suggested to management to do this every 2 weeks, answer no. I have suggested that I want to only attend sometimes, and was met with 'please try to prioritise this call, since we work remotely and it's the way to get to know the team'.

I am used to the office chit-chat over coffee about nice weather and traffic complaints. That's it.

AIBU to not care about colleagues' personal life and want to not join these calls?

You’re entitled to a private life but you sound quite hostile to be honest. Do you really need to be or for an hour each week can you just suck it up and chat about the weather or something? If you really don’t want to volunteer information then focus on asking questions and that way you can still join in.

Loneliness is an epidemic mental health issue and it's one hour a week to replace all the chit chat in an office. I know WFH has been a gift to the anti-social and the introverted and that's a gift to you (I assume). But people who need the connection and miss it, they have this hour. If they made it voluntary, it would seem virtuous to 'get my work done' and so it would dwindle.

60 seconds of 'what I did' and listening seems a small price to pay.

This kind of call should be optional, we have something similar but it’s drop in if you feel like a chat, making stuff like this mandatory is annoying.

This would annoy me, too. What a waste of time. You are obligated to work in a professional and cordial manner with your colleagues. You don't have to be friends, and you should not be forced to listen to whatever is going on in their personal lives.

I work from home; there are a few of us who do. It was suggested that we have a 'tea break' call scheduled in once a week but it was talked down. None of us who work from home would necessarily be free or would even want to have a scheduled time to chat-not-about-work with colleagues.

It's a daft idea. Colleagues who are also friends will find time to chat, those colleagues who are just colleagues will find the time to talk about what they need to talk about.

I would hate that!

It should be optional. If people like it then great, if it's good for their mental health then brilliant but why should everyone be forced to do it if they get no benefit from it?

Some of us would find that sort of forced, pointless interaction pretty bloody stressful.

Oh and you are not being unreasonable. You don't need to reveal anything of your private life. Make some shit up, sky-diving you did at the weekend, knitting competition, any sort of rubbish.

If management are insistent then they deserve for their employees' time to be wasted on this nonsense that should be truly optional if anything.

I am with you OP

I hate these kind of enforced online social niceties and I will be honest I skip them when I can.

But I also realise that some of my colleagues really NEED these sorts of interactions so I keep my views to myself.

I would far rather have a chat and a catch up with individuals. That is more normal.

The online team coffee chats just feel enforced and fake.

I think your manager is right because it isn't about you individually, it's about the collective wellbeing of your team. An hour a week is nothing and nobody is going to force you to be massively interested or to share anything you don't want to.

You sound unnecessarily difficult. I really struggle with small talk but I wouldn't begrudge this.

God what a tedious idea. I'd hate that. It's too forced. Chit chat happens spontaneously and as things occur.

I would find this annoying if it was every week and agree that it shouldn't be compulsory

We have a weekly catch up on Teams and usually the first 5 minutes or so is taken up with 'small talk' and then we get down to business, a whole hour of chit chat would seem massively OTT

The people who I like to speak to, I do, regularly, and we talk about whatever we want, have a moan about work, a little gossip etc, which I do enjoy.

I'm a very social person, just to people I care about. I have plenty of friends who I see/speak to/meet with regularly. I have DH, DC, my social life is full. But I can't shake the feeling that the call feels forced.

One person in the team got made redundant earlier this year, and was just removed from the whatsapp group, no one talks about her anymore...just disappeared. I find it strange to try to understand if they either care or they don't.

It's a daft idea. Colleagues who are also friends will find time to chat, those colleagues who are just colleagues will find the time to talk about what they need to talk about.

I would never have made work friends with anyone without chit chat.

I think the essential problem with FT WFH is that people assume it's a 'start from here' thing. You have work friends, partners, children, pets, a home etc. If you are a new starter straight into FT WFH you don't have those work relationships, a nice home etc.

Mark my words, 5 years from now, if everyone's jobs are FT WFH there will be a wave of MH issues, fewer marriages (loads of people meet at work), fewer meaningful friendships, and it will affect us.

I wouldn’t mind as long as I got paid for it

"I think your manager is right because it isn't about you individually, it's about the collective wellbeing of your team."

What a load of bollocks.

What about the OP's well being? OP doesnt like these horseshit meetings so why be forced to attend something that does NOT aid the OP's well being or mental health?

🙄🤦‍♂️

I would find that a bit awkward and contrived but a lot of staff do struggle with feelings of isolation when wfh so I suppose this is management's attempt to address that.

The thing is, you've asked to do it less frequently and/or to be excused and the answer was no. So you've got to just suck it up and remind yourself that you're getting paid for the time so it's on them if it's wasted.

If you don't want to share anything about your personal life, just make shit up...nobody will know or care. And I'm sure that you can feign interest in your colleagues for an hour a week, even if you don't actually want to know?

I actually do agree with you, MrsTerryPratchett. I was thinking of this from my own perspective. I've been in the industry a long time and I don't need colleagues to assist. It's completely different for new starters and I acknowledge that. In fact, when we do have new people in the team, we have an 'introduce x person to team' meeting and everybody joins in to let them know what we individually do, where to go for help and generally wish them welcome to the team.

We did though, during Covid, have a badly thought three coffee break meeting that was mandatory. I travel a lot for work and would have to pull over into a services to join the call. I didn't appreciate that one bit. It's all well and good for people who are sitting at home who don't have to be somewhere else, taking an hour out but it's not so easy for staff on the road.

Going back to your point, I really agree about succession of new people having to do roles for which they've had very little on-the-job learning because the experienced staff are WFH. That's not good at all and I totally agree that provision needs to be made for successful integration of new team members with established ones so that learning isn't lost. That would indeed be a disaster.

How are they mandating chit chat???

I find these threads baffling along with the "I never talk to school run mums" threads.
Why?
Because on other threads about self service tills or banks closing down it's always "what about the elderly.... talking to shop assistants is the only person they get to talk to" etc etc.
I am curious. What age does it turn from "I can't possibly communicate with people that I do actually have something in common with" (ie work for the same company in the same job, children attend the same school etc) to
"I must talk to random sales assistant to stop loneliness" ?
Why is it such a big deal to just talk to other people.

You don't sound like a very social person. We do this once a week and it replaces the natural office chat. It helps keep good working relationships with your colleagues and helps combating loneliness. You might not like it, but you should totally do it. It's 1 hour a week out of your life. The what's app thing is batshit.

I also wouldn't like this, we are a team of around 15, some I'm really friendly with and some I'm not so I wouldn't want to pass the time with the ones I'm not whether I'm in the office or not...and I'm sure they feel the same.

I can understand a work related catch up but not a personal one and it's ridiculous that you can't opt out

I can understand why they do this - relationships in teams are a tangible asset and can be tricky with home working. I think it's a positive your work want to invest time in this.

I don't hugely enjoy this sort of meeting (as an introvert) but I think that understanding why you are being asked to do it helps. Ultimately, you are being paid to do it, treat it as my other work task.

You shouldn't have to share personal information, but I think if you are struggling to have something to say that's probably an issue with social skills. I talk about things like walking my dog or gardening, hardly massively intrusive topics. If I'm being honest, you sound a bit hostile to your team, which is the sort of dynamic the meeting is probably trying to address.

I think anything that helps reduce social isolation is a positive thing and I would whole heartedly participate whether i wanted to or not. In the past people lived in large families in the same villages and went to the same pubs and churches. Little by little these options to socialise and connect have been chipped away at. People move away for work, church has been replaced with individual spirituality, beer is now higher strength so the pub chit chat has changed to binge drinking etc. We are left with argumentative online forums which are often full of AI comments and can be wounding. I would take any opportunity to swim against the tide and have real conversations with real people.

Thanks all for your comments. I love chatting to people, as long as it's organic and not forced. I have a full social life, out regularly, have DH, DC etc.

The allocated time every week, alongside the whatsapp group starts to get a bit much. I might think of this as another 'work task' as someone above said, that is helpful.

Realistically, if we were in the office, I wouldn't be seeing a picture of the kids. Or a video of the new kitchen. Or a selfie outside the pub. We would just talk about work/traffic/ what's on netflix/ news and current affairs etc.

This just seems very personal.

Not being sociable doesn't = being hostile

There are quite a lot of companies navel-gazing at how to 'draw employees together'. If they did this with a work focus then that would be one thing but to try to make it a 'water cooler' thing is something else. It's forced. Nothing good comes from mandated 'fun' and I agree with PP, that isn't good for mental health.

The only real option is to follow through with getting people back into the office on the same days - even if it's hybrid - so that on x and y days, everybody is back in to integrate as a team.

It doesn't affect me as I'm contracted to work from home but even I have to go into the office once a quarter and attend the odd random meeting in between. I make the effort to be jolly when I'm in the office because that's what's expected and it is actually nice to see (most of) my colleagues.