To not be interested?

[Help987]

A woman at work has sent 4 videos and 8 pictures of her daughters 18th birthday on the work WhatsApp. None of us have ever met this girl and are extremely unlikely to. Im not interested at all, why would she think we would be?

Depends on the group - is it strictly work related chat? If it is then she should realise it’s inappropriate and I can understand being annoyed.

Or is it social chit chat and other people have posted about their new baby, holiday photos and similar, in which case it’s hardly outrageous or too onerous for you to just scroll on by. Maybe others on the group did want to see or it’s a big occasion for her.

Most of the stuff people post on social media isn’t interesting to others - most people don’t put their holiday photos on Facebook thinking 342 contacts including second cousin Bob and Tina you went to primary with and Eliza who went to the same NCT group as you in 2007 all want to see a dozen photos of an AI hotel in Corfu. People enjoy the attention or validation, it’s harmless and most people do it. Obviously if it’s a strictly work related group that’s not reasonable though.

I have no clue, but using a work means of communication to share personal items is unprofessional. Her manager is probably hoping that the lack of response eventually registers.

This is what the heart emoji was made for.

Feels really mean tbh. Can’t you just heart it?

Can't you just ignore it, like people do with threads here?

I think one picture is reasonable if it’s the sort of group where you’d share these things. 4 videos and 8 pictures is way too much, but I couldn’t get worked up over it. I’d probably comment on one of the photos saying what a beautiful young woman her daughter is (totally sincerely, I teach older teens and they’re all beautiful, I wish they could see it themselves).

Where does it say it was on a work device?

“Looks like you had a lovely time” … it really doesn’t hurt (or even take much time) to be nice

How annoying

Not a device per se, but the "work WhatsApp" which implies it is an app for work only.

Your post isn't interesting either. Us humans often do interact about stuff we really don't care about. No big deal.

I would agree except for her characterization that it was on a "work Whatsapp." If there is no precedent to bring in personal stuff, it could be a slippery slope to reward someone mis-using it that way. What soon happens is that work stuff gets lost amongst the personal and employees waste a lot of time trying to sift through it.

Is she not just proud of her daughter and wants to share it with people who she probably assumes (having worked with them probably for a decent amount of time) that people care about her/her life and may actually be interested in a big life event. Your kid becoming an adult is a big deal as a parent. It would take you no effort to stick a heart on it or a simple kind comment.

Possibly, but also if it is a "work" WhatsApp one can also see the flipside of that where it could cause problems to conflate work and personal information. In that case, I would personally opt for just sending a personal text to the people on the team that I had that type of personal relationship with, rather than commandeer the entire work group chat.

Of course, the exception would be if everyone used it that way, but it does not sound like this is the case.

Perhaps she sent it to you by accident?

I call two of my WhatsApp groups "work" because they're with work colleagues.

But they're on personal devices and we don't discuss work....so without clarification from Op on the nature of the WhatsApp groups we can't really determine if she's being unreasonable or the birthday girls mum is

Mind in our work teams chat, on work devices, we often share personal anecdotes about our lives/our children.

We have a couple of work WhatsApp which are mostly "I'm running late", "Is anyone free to pick something up from hospital?" or "Who is covering the clinic on Wednesday?". Admin stuff related to work rather than actual patient-focused stuff.

We also throw in random photos from our weekend.

It sounds like their Work WhatsApp is not used in the same way or she would not have been annoyed by the personal photos, or maybe nobody posts photos at all. Who knows? I do not think it matters whether you post from a work device or a personal device, if the chat was established as a "work chat" for work reasons. Many contractors use their own personal devices partitioned for work, so it is really about the app and chat, itself, more than whether the communication came from a specific device.

This is why it is so much more professional to keep work chats work related and establish a secondary non-work chat to convey things that are unrelated to work. It allows people that do not have time to focus on work only and then when they do have time, catch up on personal stuff with their workmates.

It’s nice to be nice, the lady is obviously proud of her daughter and excited. A quick reaction from you will make her feel good and you have done something nice so you feel good. Win win for very little effort

Why is it an issue? It’s a WhatsApp post, you can ignore it if you’re not interested. Some people like to share their happy moments with colleagues. We share baby photos, pets, holiday pics on ours. I don’t understand why people have to be so miserable!

You're 'interested' enough to start an internet thread about how awful this colleague is being in daring to assume your interest in her pesky teenager. Wouldn't it have involved less thought to click the 'heart' response, or just to ignore?

I think the tone and diction of the OPs post does imply what the last three people are conveying . . . that she is possibly a bit negative or mean-spirited, and certainly annoyed, but one must consider the inefficiencies posed when work chats get commandeered by not just one person, but multiple, and become part work / part social. For people who do not have a lot of extra time to do both during the work day, it can become overwhelming to sift through that type of chat to parse out the work items that may need to be acted on, from the social stuff that does not. So, so much better to have two distinct chats, so that one (the social one) can be perused at one's leisure.

How big is the group? I mean if you're a big multinational with a hundred people in the group it's probably inappropriate but if you're a small business it probably isn't. I work for a small company where we all know each other and these sort of photos are normal.

I have a coworker that overshares all the time on Teams, she takes pics of everything going on in her life. It's honestly annoying but she is very sweet so i usually heart emoji it and move on.

I'm retired now but when I was working it was simply not done to talk about your children.