To ask if people really do this at work?

[Anycrispsleft]

We've just had a reorganisation at work and we have a new boss. The meeting was yesterday, had been booked in for a week, and there have been various rumours doing the rounds about it, most of them true. One of the people who used to work for new boss (F) came to our (me and G) small office on Wednesday and asked if we knew anything about what was going on (no) and asked if his boss had been invited to our meeting - and revealed that he had checked her calendar to see if she had a meeting booked at the same time.
Yesterday at the meeting the +1 manager had a go at 7s for spreading rumours and for "doing things like talking to other colleagues and checking calenders to try and find out what is going wrong. Now that sounds a lot like what F had done, but how did the big boss know? I certainly didn't tell him, so did G?
That's what I wanted to ask - do people do that? How do you even do it? Do you just drop the guy an email going "just thought you might like to know that F was down here asking questions" or whatever? I'm totally freaked out by the whole thing.

YANBU - who wants to be a grass
YABU - nothing wrong with letting senior management know what people are saying

B’s a bit of an idiot if he doesn’t realise that people will naturally speculate amongst themselves when changes are clearly afoot. 🤷🏻‍♀️

This sounds like a lot of headspace over diaries/meetings, from all involved the letters of the alphabet involved.

And literally the point of open calendars in a workplace is so that you can check them.

No it's not.

This is embarrassing @HuffleMyPuffle !

You do understand this wasn’t a diary from WH smiths but rather on their internal system?

and no one can access anything if “closed “

so it would not have been closed

This all sounds like a lot of drama over nothing. Checking others work calendar is normal practice. That’s how most people book meetings.

Frankly, in my workplace several people would have politely suggested that if Big Boss was that worried about speculation and gossip, he or she should consider keeping colleagues better informed about potential mergers or reorganisations etc, and that they didn’t appreciate being kept in the dark and ticked off like schoolkids for justifiable concern about their livelihood.

This is indicative of a team with not enough work to go around and the work itself
likely dull.

What's the point of being able to see if other people's calendars are busy or free in the workplace, if it's a breach of privacy to look at them.

Is your workplace hiring?

My feeling is that checking calanders is part of normal work life, there's normally a privacy toggle you can use if it's private.

and that if B had handled the communications properly rather than all this cloak and dagger stuff things might have gone better. If you let people know there's a mystery that might involve them but nothing more, of course they are going to be curious and concerned.

This was all I could focus on from OP’s (perfectly understandable) post 😂😂😂

Online work calendars, not physical book diaries….

yes, this!

So you're worried that one of your colleagues is a tattle tell tale?

Have you been gossiping about that as well? It might be worth just cracking on with the job, getting involved in this stuff turns into twilight zone territory.

which calendar? I use both at work,

The office one is for everyone to check, how would anyone manage? Have to interrupt you all the time to check if you are available or not?

My private one, with strict settings, is private. If someone was snooping on that one, I'l make a strong complaint.

You know it’s an outlook calendar right not “dear diary, I caught Josh looking at me today, but at break time that cow Sarah was talking to him. She knows I like him. She’s such a cow. I hope she gets acne”

@HuffleMyPuffle clearly thought it was a paper diary

and won’t be back to clarify!

Well that would mean they had actually
logged on as you…. Which is clearly very serious

Perhaps @HuffleMyPuffle would better understand the word calendar 🤔
It's not The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, it's a system for booking meetings!
Perfectly normal to check others'.
In my place the rumours would be intense and everyone would be checking "calendars" to see who was invited to which meeting....

Very odd, and not a good management style IMO, to castigate Staff about rumours in a meeting.

This isn’t a five year lockable journal with a picture of a puppy on the cover. It’s a professional calendar. Of course it’s completely normal and indeed expected to check colleagues calendars, I do it all the time and people also check mine to find out when I’m available for consultations or meetings. Perfectly standard.

😆 🤣 😆 🤣

@Anycrispsleft Your workplace sounds bonkers and I think it's a good plan of yours to look to move on because of course the boss should have handled communications better rather than complaining after the fact.

@HuffleMyPuffle's workplace also sounds bonkers if a) looking at an Outlook diary is considered a breach of privacy or if b) they're all still using paper diaries in 2025.

G could have done it, or F could have been flapping his gums to any number of other people.

Checking calendars is pretty normal in a workplace. If the company didn't want people to know that A was attending a meeting, it shouldn't have been in a calendar that people can access. Unless said person's calendar was private and someone has accessed it on the sly.

People definitely grass in an attempt to ingratiate themselves to management though. Especially when someone new is coming in. Always reminds me of BrickTop's line in the movie Snatch...

"Get your tongue out of my arse hole Gary, you're not a dog." 😅

What is a +1 manager? I’m so confused