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

I can see people's calendars, so I can work out if 10am Tuesday is a good time for a meeting. I can't see the details of the calendar entries, so I just know that Sarah is busy at a particular time, not that it's an interview for an internal job, or popping out for her smear test, or a disciplinary with HR, or just a meeting with the project team.

I did mention to a manager once that I'd thry won't tell us what's going on, gossip and speculation will fill the gap, so it would be better for them to give a(n edited) version that made people feel they were being kept in the loop. Managers should be able to come up with something...

Sorry what… checking work calendars is a daily part of my role and has been a common thing to do in every workplace I’ve worked in.

They didn’t break into someone’s house to peak through the family calendar on the kitchen wall.

Everybody from the Chief Exec down has an open diary in our organisation, people often diary stalk, but frankly the juicy stuff is protected as private. Although it is amusing when people ring me after spotting something in my boss's diary... and it is not unknown for him to put something in to see who is looking!

I check people's calendars all the time before I book meetings with them, to check that they're free. It's not like I can see what the meetings are, it's just to see if that bit of time is blocked out. It's a perfectly normal bit of functionality available to everyone in Outlook.

Or you could have just called them "Old Boss" and "Colleague" and "Chap from other department" and "Big boss" and made the whole thing understandable and clearer.

Sounds to me like there is something going on, management are getting a bit twitchy and don't want any gossip or rumours going round the office.

@Coconutter24 that was @Itdidnttakelong’s point

No. There is nothing private about a professional outlook diary that is visible to colleagues.

Ok, if I’ve understood, your boss sent your team an invite for a meeting, rumours were
going round that what was going to be announced was a reorganisation putting a different person in charge of your team. The presumed new manager’s team member came to pump you for intel and established that presumed new manager had a meeting in at the same time as your team meeting. The details of this meeting aren’t visible, but the presumption made is that it’s the same meeting.

the presumption, and the rumours, are correct.

new boss, as part of this meeting, says he is disappointed at all the rumours and the fact that people have been going so far as to compare diaries to try to “work out” what is going on.

you are presuming that your team mate has to have told new boss what people were talking about.

is that it?

if so; I don’t think you can know “how” new boss new about the rumours etc. I don’t think it really matters.

for me though it doesn’t reflect well on new boss to berate staff for speculating. Reorganisations are a stressful time for staff and its managements job to manage communications and morale - not staff job not to speculate or discuss.

It seemed their point was why miss out D and E as though op started with A B C etc and skipped D and E straight to F and G. That wasn’t the case she randomly started with F and G (could of randomly picked A and B but hey she went with F and G), so then when more people needed naming OP started with A

Can I check that I understand?

Your manager (C) sent a meeting where they were going to announce his replacement (A). Colleague F from A's team starts running round the office asking why A is going to your meeting, after seeing it in A's calendar. Higher up manager (B, manager of C and A) says he was disappointed.

I think what happened is that F said this to lots of people, not just your bit of the alphabet. It isn't about the calendar but about people trying to figure out the situation. B, A and C shouldn't have made it so bloody obvious by putting A on the invite when everyone can see who is there. F should have been more discreet and quietly told A that the calendar let the cat out of the bad. B is being ridiculous suggesting nobody should look at who will be in meetings they are invited to. In summary, I don't think G said anything.

Ummm no not at all. If calendars are open they can be checked by anyone. If there is something that needs to be private than it needs to be marked as such. It isn’t a breach of privacy on an open WORK calendar.

In my experience (we had lots of drama and restructuring at work lately) , people like F never tell “just two people”. Odds are they’ve been going round asking questions and telling all kinds of people what they think it’s going on and looking for more info. Sometimes , they’re even so daft that they ask A or C (from your example). Assuming it was G when they don’t have form for it is rather silly. The amount of people that told me something in confidence at 8 am and it was all over the building by break is ridiculously high. It definitely didn’t come from me.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who contributed to the tread, even to take the piss 😂
It's helped me work through my feelings a bit faster so I'm ready to face Monday in a positive frame of mind... or at least, as an old boss of mine used to say "just keep smiling, that way the buggers will think you're up to something and they won't know what it is"

I still suspect G though. No harm in assuming he's tattling to B - in fact at the moment I think it's fair to assume that any of them might be.

In every workplace I have been in calendars are electronic and shared. People are expected to look at other people's diaries for a variety of reasons they are not private.

My DD was once sacked from a job for accessing someone else'd diary, even though she had been given the password to do just that.

This is perfectly normal office gossip. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve checked other people’s calendars to see if they’re at specific meetings (normally you can’t see the actual meeting, just if they’re diary is blocked at the time).

Using someone else's password is completely different to looking up their availability in their calendar.

It all sounds ridiculous and purposely disruptive.
People do chat, they do want to know what's going on. Frankly, I'd be disappointed in a manager that was so lacking in common sense and basic HR.

And nothing useful is going to be in an open diary with regards to secrets or a reorganisation. Unless someone is incredibly dim, they wouldn't save a confidential document to a calendar which is accessible by anyone else.

Poor change management. If they don't provide information people will try to fill in the gaps with speculation and supposition. When I was in that position as a manager (ie managing a team of 20, changes supposedly happening but nothing communicated to me) we'd discuss it as a team. Who had heard what and thinking about it did it actually make sense. Some things were just silly, some potentially had merit. But talking about it helped keep everyone settled until we heard what actually was happening. I shouldn't have been put in that position. I should have been given information to share with the team. Not the finer details but high level the organisation is considering a couple of options - A, B, C; they're guaranteeing no redundancies, timeframes are this, reasons for the change are this.

Secret squirrel stuff just pisses me off. Being scolded like children would have made me bite and say people wouldn't have had to sleuth and talk amongst each themselves if leadership had treated them respectfully and provided information. If they want to create an environment of speculation and supposition, withhold information. People will fill the gaps with either the truth or made up information - leadership control that narrative and good leadership share information.

the problem wan't said to be checking calendars, the ticking off to many by B was about spreading rumours.

however, rumours spreading is completely normal at work, esp. when there is reorganisation (!!)

I vote that B is being very unreaonable to say that people in offices shouldn't gossip about who might be doing which job in near future.

Don't be ridiculous. We're talking about a work calendar here not a private one.
And by the sounds of it, all you see is "busy" - not the meeting details.

Also it seems like a perfectly normal thing to do. If the new boss doesn't want speculation then they should get on with telling people what's happening.