I saw my employee’s X-rated chat

by Alison Green on April 2, 2025

A reader writes:

Today, during a screensharing session with my new employee, Barb, I saw something inappropriate on her screen and did not speak up. I was so dumbfounded that I just quickly wrapped up our call. I’m almost sure I saw her chat session with a coworker with explicit reference to private body parts. Both the screenshare software and chat software are part of the same company-provided system; it’s typically used for training and collaboration.

Should I say anything to Barb? Or try to forget I ever saw anything? Since my view of the chat window happened very quickly, and I have no “proof,” I’m not sure I should say anything, especially when the content was something I’d rather not repeat.

Some background: Barb and I work at different offices. Her previous manager felt that Barb wasn’t a fit for her role and was trying to manage her out; there was a skill mismatch, but Barb also needed to improve her attention to detail. When I learned this, I thought she could be a good fit for my team and proposed bringing her over. I was up-front with her that she would need to improve her attention to detail. She indicated commitment to improving that area and seemed genuinely excited about the opportunity. But because she’s continued to make frequent errors, I’ve had to hold back on fully transitioning some portions of the job to her. I’ve had conversations at the time errors presented, and a general conversation about the pattern of errors, backed up by retraining.

I would love your advice as this situation has made me uncomfortable.

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

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{ 142 comments }

{ 142 comments… read them below }

  1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

    Reading the letter, the phrase “tip of the iceberg” popped into my head. OP was shocked by the content of the message, not the event of a NSFW message.
    Alison, “this sounds like the tip of the iceberg”
    Yep. OP, before you go BEC on this person who doesn’t realize the situation she put herself after you saved her from the previous situation she put herself in, accept that she has to go. How do you feel about that? More relieved over hiring a new person or more stressed that you have to hire a new person? Sunken cost fallacy? You essentially vouched for her and she’s letting you down, too. Ultimately, you can’t care more about her keeping her job than she does.

  2. CubeFarmer*

    I think I would ask IT for the logs. If it was a one-time thing, then I would talk to her and explain that this absolutely cannot happen again. If this one instance was part of a pattern, I would use it as part of my documentation to terminate her. If she’s that sloppy in a new role–after being told that attention to detail was an issue with her work–then I wouldn’t want to risk someone else being exposed to this.

    2. Elle*

      This does also seem to me to be the way to go, but I confess that I would really not want to read those. I get up to plenty of my own activities outside of work and am not judging that aspect, just the bad decision to do this at work. This is childish and selfish of me but I’d be annoyed that they disturbed my ability to think of them as non sexual beings.

      1. Ally McBeal*

        I bet the logs could be fed into ChatGPT or similar and have a summary generated that way. But I don’t know that reading the logs would be the manager’s duty (or at least sole duty) in the first place – I imagine HR or IT may have a service/program that flags questionable content.

        1. IT blues*

          Unless the company puts the investment for a monitoring software, mostly what happens is IT retains logs and a copy of all the messages. The problem with monitoring software is it becomes a game of is it jargon or a questionable content. Mostly what will happen is that HR will receive a complaint usually will go to somebody in IT usually a manager or above and pull the message logs. From there, it’s just a matter of searching the logs for specific messages or keywords. Usually by the time HR is involved screenshots of the messages were already sent so it’s just a matter of confirming that with what the server logs say.

        2. It's not easy being green*

          ChatGPT really shouldn’t be involved in the decision-making chain towards possibly firing somebody. For all you know it might just make something up …

          2. amoeba*

            Yup, also, feeding private/sensitive employee information (which chat transcripts would certainly constitute?) into ChatGPT? I mean, I admit I’m European and thus maybe a bit more sensitive as we have pretty strict data privacy laws, but that does sound illegal to me? Maybe if you had a proprietary/local LLM available, OK. Still wouldn’t solve the problem of being sure you get accurate information, but it might give you a first idea, which you’d then definitely need to double-check by going into the actual raw data, anyway. But it might save you some time for screening. But please don’t just put that stuff into the cloud!

            1. Annie E. Mouse*

              The data is owned by the company, not the employee. It isn’t a privacy violation if it’s permitted by company policy, although most companies do have policies against sharing data with chatGPT. Hopefully if you were using AI, you’d ask AI to review the conversations and point out problematic content for humans to review in context, versus having AI review the whole thing and just tell you whether to fire someone!

        3. Kevin Sours*

          “A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision”.

        4. Lenora Rose*

          And how would you know it wasn’t hallucinating if you didn’t check the source?

        5. Daria grace*

          Absolutely do not under any circumstances. Apart from the fact that chatGPT routinely makes stuff up, you’d be risking breaching your employees privacy by potentially feeding personal info and images into an AI database.

        6. Deedee*

          I work in IT and would do this kind of request.

          it depends how the chat was done, that’s why it’s a danger to use a non business application for chatting because it might not give you the ability you need.

          Assuming, for sale of argument, Microsoft Teams you would use a legal compliance search from what was formerly Microsoft Compliance Center now Microsoft Purview

          it’s also possible to delegate their teams access to administrator and go in as if you were the user.

          that said IT would compile the offending messages based on search criteria HR or the director of the department give us. the evidence will be put together, in the form of a csv file of output, and put in an encrypted mail to HR and/or legal.

          IT isn’t qualified to know what is and isn’t legal or to interpret the harassment policy, they just pull the data and provide it to the relevant authorities

        7. Elizabeth West*

          Why do people always go straight to AI even when it’s not appropriate? It’s starting to feel like Amway at this point. Jeez.

          The logs show what was in the chat, period. They can be searched. There is no need to involve HAL 9000.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        Reviewing the logs themselves might be something HR would be in a better position to handle.

        1. linger*

          Leaving aside the work-inappropriateness of the content, that’s a helluva distraction to have alongside you, and potentially explains Barb’s systematically poor attention to detail. (Either this has been happening repeatedly, and/or there is some underlying executive-function problem leading to more general lack of focus between and outside work tasks.)

          1. Hannah Lee*

            ^
            This

            It’s like people who are having affairs, or using positions of authority, trust for their own nefarious purposes. The breach of trust is one issue, but there’s also

            “when they were doing the thing, they were NOT doing the things they were supposed to be doing – diverting time, energy, attention, money and other resources away from their supposed core responsibilities”

            Instead of doing her job, this employee (well, at least 2 employees) are spending time, attention, company resources on the care and feeding of whatever is going on between them personally.

    3. Escape from the Bay Area*

      I am willing to bet this isn’t a one time thing. I briefly dated a guy who was the IT investigator for stuff like this. He said once the employee made it obvious enough to get reported to him, it was never a good result.

    4. Thomas*

      I would want the chat logs to be reviewed too. It sounds like the LW only got a momentary glimpse, they say they’re “almost sure”, there’s still room for it to have a non-sexual context such as discussion of a health issue. An appropriate response can only be made if the company knows what was actually said in the chat.

      That doesn’t change the rest of it that this is an employee who’s bad at their job, but if the employer goes down the dismissal road claiming it’s for “misconduct” when the real reason is poor performance is not right.

      1. Elsewise*

        Reviewing the logs could also tell LW if her employee was being harassed, like Alison pointed out, OR if Barb was doing the harassing. It’s still inappropriate at work if it’s consensual, but less alarming, and your approach will be different.

        Also, if it’s via a work chat, another employee must be involved. It sounds like it’s probably not someone LW manages, but their manager should probably be informed of what’s going on.

  3. Don't You Call Me Lady*

    I’ve had the exact same situation happen, except it was with one of my best employees. He was sharing his screen on a client call, and his gf at the time who also worked there was IMing him and he forgot he was still sharing…Client was not happy and I had to do alot of tap dancing

    Anyway, it was a one time thing so I just told him please use better judgement in the future.

    2. Strive to Excel*

      Reason #1001 why you should never mix your personal and work devices, ESPECIALLY your chats.

      1. HelloWorld*

        I have co-workers who have completely separate phones for work for multi-factor authentication and email.

        I also have co-workers who ponder about not getting a personal laptop or phone because they’re on their work laptop/phone all the time. My workplace gave top-of-the-line computers for us.

        I’m in the camp for getting my personal phone and laptop, but am ok with using my personal phone for multi-factor authentication. Not having a personal phone is dangerous at time of a layoff.

        A former colleague worked for a phone company. No one from the team bought phones for personal use. Their workplaces also paid for their phone subscription. One day, the entire team was included in the layoff. Suddenly, my former colleague didn’t have access to a phone with her phone number.

        1. Strive to Excel*

          Multi-factor authentication is the only thing I’m ok using my personal phone for. Anything else, no.

          1. Mongrel*

            I refused the MFA app on my phone due to the EULA leaving me with some privacy concerns.

            It’s EULA was OK but could, as far as I could tell, be superceded by the giant tech company who’d just brought them who were far more liberal about using your data.

          2. Hannah Lee*

            I did it for a while, and then realized that it didn’t serve me OR the company.
            If something needed to happen in a particular app while I was away, say, on vacation, suddenly my boss can’t do whatever until I interrupt my time off to deal with the request. (or worst case scenario if I have a medical emergency, wind up in the hospital, i REALLY don’t want me or my family to have to even think about how my employer is going to be able to process payroll without access to my personal phone (which could be lost, damaged, no one else knows the passcode, etc)

            2 things pushed me to push for a separate company phone 1) I was travelling out of the country for vacation and 2) my employer had some business activity that involved MFA for dealing with US government portals for business purposes. (Insert Ghostbusters “Don’t cross the streams!” gif)

            So I got a basic $10/month smart phone solely to use for work MFA, mobile app stuff. I hand it to boss when I head off on vacation and both of us are good to go. In this case, he happens to be the CEO, so it’s not giving him access to anything he shouldn’t access.

            Ideally, he’d have his own credentials for any external system/app we need, and he does for ones that are specifically linked to an individual’s identity. But for most stuff, that would come up, the phone hand off works fine.

            This also is good for me, because I like my personal phone to be uncluttered, without a lot of apps, so not having to have a bunch of work related stuff on there is a good thing. Plus it also reduces to pretty much zero the chances that I am going to accidentally text/email/DM a work client contact in error when sending a silly/risque message to my cousins, or vice versa.

        2. Kuddel Daddeldu*

          I have one phone but two SIM cards/numbers (work and personal).
          Android Enterprise allows “splitting” a phone into a company-controlled work profile and a personal profile. They have separate Google accounts and apps.

        3. Dahlia*

          I can’t imagine not having separate devices for most jobs (barring, like, light freelancing where you don’t make enough money to buy them because realism). I even use different word processing programs for personal projects versus school projects!

        4. Junior Assistant Peon*

          That happened to my friend. 30-year employee unexpectedly laid off one day, never owned a personal cell and lost all his contacts.

    3. Anonymoose*

      My coworker’s wife also works here, and we can’t have phones at our desks, so I know that they IM each other. Yet they have the sound judgement to limit the spiciness of their messages to which restaurant they want to try after work (he recently mentioned that he messed up and messaged another coworker about restaurant choices although that other coworker ended up making another recommendation so it ended up as a friendly and fun point of discussion).

      1. BayesianByDefault*

        Love this!! My husband and I have worked in common office space a lot since COVID and most of our spicy IM/IRL dialogue is about where our Tupperware most likely has gone

      2. MigraineMonth*

        “Help! I’m so embarrassed–I accidentally sent a message meant for my wife to a coworker, and they responded with a restaurant recommendation. How will I recover from this massive work faux-pas?” is the kind of content that would put Alison out of a job.

      3. LifebeforeCorona*

        Today I was putting out a fire at work while receiving mushy love texts from my BF on my personal phone. I can’t imagine getting them at work because as the saying goes: assume anything on your company laptop can and will be read aloud in court.

      4. Turquoisecow*

        I don’t even work with my husband but he has avoided sending me stuff from his work computer (he’s logged into iMessage on all his devices) that he didn’t want his job to know about. Like when he heard his boss was leaving he messaged me that he wanted to talk about some work gossip later but didn’t want it on his work computer. And I know that with some coworkers or former coworkers they’ll use Signal to communicate rather than like Slack or whatever because they might be discussing things they don’t want the management of their company to read.

        Like, “should we get Italian or Chinese tonight,” or “Mom wants to have dinner this weekend,” or whatever is fine, but “hey babe let’s try that new sex position,” maybe not.

      5. Turquoisecow*

        Yeah the risk of accidentally messaging the wrong person is big! I have a couple of times sent something to my mom rather than my husband (thankfully completely innocent and appropriate) and didn’t even realize until she responded.

      6. Curious*

        Well, if you are discussing restaurants, I guess that spiciness is OK, so long as it is measured in Scoville Heat Units.

      7. amoeba*

        Yeah, I mean, some of my colleagues even have their partners who don’t work here as contacts in Teams (apparently that’s possible?) but they certainly don’t discuss anything spicy, it’s more like “oh, could you pick up some coffee from the supermarket on the way home” or “you need to pick up the kids, my meeting is running late”, I guess.

        I also sometimes chat about private stuff with colleagues on Teams – private stuff like “that’s the book we were talking about at lunch!” or “here’s a photo of my cat” or “check out that concert on the weekend, would you be interested in going?”

        You know. Stuff that IT would be fine/bored with if they ever decided to read it.

    4. Citymouse*

      Had he not been a top performer I’m guessing he would have been fired. At some places he still would have been fired.

      1. Don't You Call Me Lady*

        Well, this was at a fast growing startup in around 2011-12, so nobody would have been fired for this back then (there was much more work inappropriate stuff going on – there was a book written about it)

        Different story now though.

    5. Heffalump*

      I’ve never heard “tap dancing” used this way, but I knew exactly what you meant. Good metaphor.

    6. Grasshopper Relocation LLC*

      I had this happen last week, except I can’t tell what it was. A colleague (who was in the process of chewing two of us out) shared his screen, which included a YouTube tab which began with the word “BDSM”. I have no idea what the full video title was. I don’t think anyone else noticed.

  4. Generic Name*

    Maybe I’m just a prude, but I’d pull the IT logs of the individual Barb is messaging as well. This company has 2 people who feel free to use company provided equipment to pass sexual messages during working time. And also to make sure that the messages are consensual all around and that neither participant is harassing anyone.

    2. Observer*

      Not a prude. What people want to do on their own time is their business. But when you do this stuff during work hours on work equipment, things tend to “happen”. We’ve seen more than one letter here from situations where someone made a mistake with some pretty severe repercussions.

      So in the best case, you have two people who are using the work systems in ways that are inappropriate and have a high potential for creating some real problems.

      And also to make sure that the messages are consensual all around and that neither participant is harassing anyone.

      Also true

    3. IT blues*

      It’s amazing what people put in chats. IT isn’t in there looking at people’s chats all day, infact it would be a reason for firing if an IT person was doing that. But if we get the go ahead to pull them we will see everything, depending on retention policies even deleted messages. I have seen someone try to make an HR complaint about an individual only for the complainant to have it backfire because they gossiped about their plan in Teams and HR found their racist/bigoted comments in messages.

    4. Her name was Lola*

      The one thing I wonder about is that the LW said the message popped up on Barbs computer. Did Barb write anything first to invite that kind of message?

  5. mango chiffon*

    People who do this on company equipment on company time should not be trusted to have good judgment in other situations, imo. Like it’d be one thing if it was on a personal device on company time, but wow

    1. Anonymoose*

      Over the years I’ve seen where people have affairs at work and they got in trouble when they tried to delete the emails and not because of the affair. Trying to access networks to destroy emails is a much bigger problem, and so easily avoided using a burner email! I was shocked by their stupidity.

    2. Anon this time*

      At my company, this would be cause for immediate termination, no questions allowed.

    3. Rogue Slime Mold*

      Yeah, this is “Woo hoo here is a public display of my bad judgment, recorded on a company device! With layers, like a bad judgment onion!”

    4. Generic Name*

      I completely agree. If I had to guess, I’d say that it’s likely they are using company resources because one or both of them are in relationships with other people, and want to keep their goings on off their personal devices. Which also tells you something of their character in addition to their judgement.

      1. Don't You Call Me Lady*

        Not really since you made that up out of thin air.. There’s enough here already we don’t need to invent things!

    5. many bells down*

      100%. I reported someone after I found literally hundreds of sexually explicit emails he sent from his work account (I’m Outlook admin and I had to triage his literally thousands of unread emails after he left). Those emails launched an investigation that found FORTY YEARS of misconduct. I guess no one had ever had any “hard” evidence before?

      2. econobiker*

        Yes, I want to know what dirt and on who that he had in order to stay around FORTY years at one job!

  6. Don't You Call Me Lady*

    With some of these letters lately, Barb and her friend could have simply been discussing the latest AAM posts :)

  7. Stuart Foote*

    This is definitely very poor judgement, but…while I’ve never done anything near this inappropriate, I’ve definitely had Teams conversations go off topic and sent stuff I wouldn’t want others to see (mostly along the lines of “I’m can’t believe they haven’t told us about our bonuses yet” or “Why is management doing this?”). Firing for this seems like an overreaction. Pulling the IT logs definitely is an overreaction.

    1. Venus*

      Interesting, I view pulling the IT logs as an obvious easy way forward because it will quickly show if this was an innocent conversation that was misread or another problem from a problematic employee.

    2. FricketyFrack*

      Sorry, hard disagree. Firing someone for having off-topic but basically SFW chats would be an overreaction (assuming it isn’t an ongoing problem and there aren’t other issues) but anyone having NSFW chats at work on work software is crossing a huge line. Especially when that individual already has other issues. Like, damn Barb, read the room.

    3. Meat Oatmeal*

      Are you saying that pulling the IT logs would be more of an overreaction than firing? That’s really interesting. I’m interested to hear why, if you’re willing to say more about it.

      1. Stuart Foote*

        I think reading private conversations is pretty invasive. I understand that if it’s on company computers it is technically the company’s property, but reading (and presumably sharing and discussing) highly personal conversations (especially since we already know that yes, inappropriate conversations did happen) seems to be crossing a line.

        1. SunnyShine*

          If it’s on a work server, then it’s not private. I work for two large companies and they make this a required training.

          This happened at my work. They pulled the logs and fired 5 others including a manager because this conversation was just the tip of the iceberg. It’s not an overaction at all.

        2. Lady Danbury*

          There’s no such thing as a private conversation on a work device. There may be need to know conversation or confidential conversations, but never private. That disclaimer/warning is included in every halfway decent IT policy I’ve ever seen. The problem is when people treat work devices like they’re personal/private devices.

        3. canuckian*

          Most workplaces should have IT/tech policies and I guarantee you every single one of them tell you that anything that happens on your work computer/device, etc IS NOT PRIVATE. And even if they don’t have policies, it behooves employees to expect that is the case. My school board just sent an email out reminding people not to store personal information, including tax info on their work devices or in the google drive (we have google education for now) attached to their work accounts. The line crossing is not the employer pulling the records it is the employees who have personal and/or nsfw conversations on equipment and accounts that do not belong to them. So, no, pulling work chats or work emails isn’t an invasion of privacy because you should have no expectation of privacy at work.

          1. Hannah Lee*

            My workplace was having network storage issues, frequently having to upgrade and add more storage. So IT was looking at usage, what could be zipped or archived offline, because the storage needs seemed excessive, and found that a couple of people were using one of the shared drives to back up all their personal photos and other media. One of them had parked RAW files from multiple devices out there.

            A quick conversation with each of the offenders, including clear instructions to NOT do that again, and notice that IT was going to delete it all by 4 pm Friday afternoon. And somehow, magically, all the company’s available data storage issues went away.

            Fortunately, I don’t think there was any NSFW content out there, unless you consider many many pics of someone’s extended family in conga lines and doing the chicken dance at weddings to be NSFW lol! If there had been, that would have been a completely different issue and conversation.

        4. Great Frogs of Literature*

          I would rather have my employer read my personal chat messages than have my boss assume from a glimpsed message that I was getting hinky on work devices, on work time, with a colleague (and possibly fire me for it).

          Which is not to say that I have any reason to believe that Barb is innocent here, but if she is, those chat messages are the only thing that will prove it.

        5. Kay*

          Well, conversations on work devices aren’t private – even more so when you SCREEN SHARE THEM WITH YOUR BOSS!!!

    4. Jennifer Strange*

      The difference between the two examples you gave and this is that both of the examples you gave are things you might talk about at work/with co-workers outside of anything that might keep a log. An X-rated conversation is not. Pulling the logs is definitely not an overreaction, and depending on what is found a firing likely wouldn’t be either.

    5. Arts Akimbo*

      An overreaction… to sexual conversations on work chat software? Seems like just a normal, baseline, due diligence reaction.

    6. Isben Takes Tea*

      There is liability here around sexual harassment that would definitely call for pulling IT logs. One reason sexual content is off-limits at work is because everything can be consensual until it isn’t (such as being inadvertently exposed to sexual content during a screenshare!), and the moment it isn’t it’s grounds for sexual harassment.

      If you as a manager knew about the possibility that sexual content was being shared and it comes out that you didn’t investigate or address it, that ends up being very bad for you.

      Pulling the IT logs both gives proof to address and document a one-off situation with the employee and will show whether this is a minor judgment error or a serious pattern.

    7. TQB*

      Assume any conversations you’ve had on work systems and work equipment could be seen by others!!

      1. Annon*

        I have literally seen instant messages from my company’s IM system on the evening news. I assume that not only can my company read my IMs, they could show up on the evening news.

        1. dbc*

          I once considered an involvement with someone who was employed at a well known research company. He passed his downtime sending his highly explicit, NSFW fantasies about me– From His Work Email Account! Even though I wasn’t employed there, I did not want my name associated with such questionable judgment if they came to light, (and– if someone shows you who they are, believe them), so did not pursue the relationship.

        2. econobiker*

          And show up in court per unrelated lawsuits that could scoop up the company’s IM log per accusations of malfeasance or legal posturing.

    8. Strive to Excel*

      Always assume that anything you send on a work chat will be visible to everyone. Assume it has a chance of ending up on the front page of the Times, or spread across every social media platform. Assume you will have to read it out loud in front of the Supreme Court at a deposition.

      Am I exaggerating? For 99.999% of communications, yes. Am I bad at following this rule myself? Somewhat. Should you still assume this is what will happen with workplace communications? Absolutely.

      While this is an extreme example, there’s a massive database out there somewhere that’s a dump of Enron emails. *All* of them. Not just the executives. We analyzed them in business class. Someone in the last days before the company folded – after the fraud came out – wrote a very funny snarky poem about all the fraud and sent it to a colleague by email. All of it became discoverable.

      1. LifebeforeCorona*

        IIRC there was another big investigation involving the govt and the discovery process discovered several affairs among married personnel.

      2. Orora*

        Because employees do not generally have a right to privacy on work devices or on work networks. It’s the company’s property, so unless they are using it to proceed illegally against you (monitoring for whistleblowing or union activity) they can absolutely view and publish whatever they want.

    9. Observer*

      You don’t see the difference between the stuff you mention and the stuff the LW is talking about?

      Add in the context of a poor employee who is not getting the job done and doesn’t even realize that they are falling short, and it’s not an over-reaction at all.

      If I even heard a supervisor dismiss it this way, I would question their competence to manage, TBH.

      Pulling the IT logs definitely is an overreaction.

      Absolutely not. And I cannot imagine why you would think that.

      For your own sake realize that you have *zero* expectation of privacy on your work equipment / accounts. IT can pull your chats, emails, etc. at any time for any reason. Sure, a functional workplace won’t do it for funsies. But if there is ever *any* potential issue that management needs to deal with, they can and generally will pull logs to check stuff out. So don’t ever put anything into email that you cannot defend, you don’t want to be part of a discovery process and / or would be embarrassing to you for others to know about.

    10. Excel-sior*

      but this isn’t a teams conversation going off topic. this is what OP described as “explicit reference to private body parts”.

      if, as in your example this was OP spotting some grumbling between coworkers then yes, leave it. but this isn’t that, not by a long stretch.

    11. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

      I think pulling the logs will show if this was a one time oops or a continued pattern of bad judgment. My husband occasionally texts my work phone by accident (because it’s an Apple and his is an Apple and Steve Jobs wants to control people from beyond the grave or whatever). it’s never been anything spicy but it does happen occasionally. (And I text back immediately, “this is my work phone” so he doesn’t!) Chat is harder to make that kind of mistake in but if it was once, I’d tell her to be careful, a pattern, fired.

    12. Turquoisecow*

      I think I’d pull the logs just to be sure – OP saw the chat briefly and possibly out of context, so first things first make sure that what you think you saw is what you saw. If it really is a sexually explicit message then yeah, bye Barb. If it’s just something that looked like it, then a serious chat about attention to detail &etc

    13. kenough*

      Firing for this seems like an overreaction. Pulling the IT logs definitely is an overreaction

      LOL, what? Employee (who is already pretty mid, by the way. This isn’t even a top performer) lets her x-rated chat with another employee become visible to the boss of all people. Her new boss at the company where she already has a reputation that is holding her back. If nothing else, pulling the logs will show if it’s a one-time occurrence or ongoing. If nothing else, pulling the logs will show if Barb was the very unfortunate victim of both sexual harassment and terrible timing, or if the LW actually has two employees who are stupid enough to conduct blatantly inappropriate behavior on workplace devices during the workday. Assuming Barb wasn’t the victim of unwanted overtures from the other coworker, then firing Barb and the other employee is absolutely not an overreaction. It’s the appropriate reaction. And a manager failing to do that shows incredibly poor judgement that would tank morale among the rest of the team, which will have ripple effects across the entire company.

      Firing for this seems like an overreaction. Pulling the IT logs definitely is an overreaction
      Of all the stupid things I’ve read this week, this is definitely one of the stupider ones.

  8. Citymouse*

    This would be a firing offense anywhere I worked. X rated chat at work on a work system with a coworker? Insane.

    1. geek5508*

      I agree, and bet that it likely violates the company’s Code of Conduct as far as IT systems

  9. Wednesday wishes*

    What would happen if a client or another employee saw those messages! Act now, and get the logs to see whether this is a problem. Also, this could be the reason she is not focused!

  10. HonorBox*

    It sure seems like there’s plenty of reason that Barb is not working out. I’d start the process of dismissal. Talk to HR and figure out exactly what you need to do in order to follow the rules, but I think she’s showing you that she’s not capable of doing the job AND is making very questionable decisions.

      1. Synaptically Unique*

        I know everyone is focusing on the NSFW content, but the other (arguably bigger) part of this is trying to turn a bad employee around and realizing they are just not a good fit for your company/field. I’ve taken on problem children – along with some rockstars – from other departments. What I’ve learned is that rockstars are almost always going to be rockstars. Problem children are way more hit or miss. If you are going to risk taking on a problem child, be really clear in your head that you’re going to ramp up quickly and systematically, and be ready to escalate faster than you would be for a complete unknown. They don’t need the benefit of the doubt – they already had that by remaining employed in the first place. If they aren’t going to buckle down and show you their best self after getting a second chance, they need to be gone before you destroy morale for the entire department.

        2. 1-800-BrownCow*

          Completely agree! We have a Problem Child at my job that has been passed around to a few different managers. Lucky for her, she now has a manager who takes pride that in his 20 years of management, he’s never had to fire anyone. Which I don’t think is brag-worthy! Either the person has been super-lucky and great at hiring or they ignore major issues. And “ironically” this manager has a high turnover rate of rockstar employees, so it’s definitely the latter reason for never having fired anyone. Thankfully some of the good ones took on different roles in the company and some have shared they did only to get away from Problem Child and the manager but wanted to stay at the company. But yes, Problem Child continues to be a Problem Child, and the problems seem to get worse. And not only does it destroy morale in the department, but it also breaks down trust and communication and effects productivity all around. No one wants to work with Problem Child, not even other groups, but because her role is unique, we are forced to include her. But to avoid issues and morale, people wait until the last possible moment to include her in meetings, emails, or anything project related that she needs to be involved, which oftentimes causes roadblocks and other issues. I don’t normally have to interact with Problem Child, I’m in a completely different department. But when project work requires us to include her, I completely dread that portion of the project.

  12. The Body Is Round*

    I wanna know what that “almost sure” means. Is it possible the content was not what it looked like?

      2. Turquoisecow*

        Yes. Pull the logs and you’ll be sure. If it was innocent but looked like something else, then have a conversation about perception and not sharing chats on screens.

      3. Emily Byrd Starr*

        Absolutely. If it turns out that she was actually talking about pens, and you accidentally read the letter “i” between the “n” and the “s” when it wasn’t really there, then reading the logs will let you know.

    3. Blue Pen*

      Is it possible Barb was referring to a medical issue and just speaking off-the-cuff here? Still not great, but it takes a “special” kind of person to send explicit messages to another coworker on a work chat program.

      Also, and while I know Alison touches on this in her response, where is the other person in the message exchange? Are they responding in a way that suggests the dialogue is welcomed? Again, not great and not OK, but if so, they should also be reprimanded.

      1. Emily Byrd Starr*

        I’d argue that it’s inappropriate to talk about your genitals to anyone at work, even if it’s in a medical sense. That kind of talk should be reserved for your doctor.

    4. Hyaline*

      I was curious too–and it really seems like a red herring, after reading the rest of the letter. Do you need to know for sure that Barb sent inappropriate messages on work communication software? Actually…no, you don’t. She’s not working out. Either take steps to formally improve or fire her.

    5. M*

      The choice of language to describe it is interesting to me on a few levels. “An explicit reference to private body parts” is not *safe* for work, but it’s not *exclusively* things that are on the “Barb has to go!” level of seriousness, even if OP had been *completely* sure of what they saw.

      I mean, I’m Australian, so have a higher tolerance for casual, undirected vulgarity than the average American, so your mileage may vary. But there’s plenty of very explicitly specific things one might say about their private body parts that really aren’t firing offences. A description of how one’s bra is murdering one’s boobs – something that pops up in discussion about dresscodes *on this site* pretty regularly – is an “explicit reference to private body parts”, for example.

    6. Ipsedixitism*

      If the conversation was about the Annual Net Usage Statistics, or they were hating the Direct International Convention of Kickboxers for their recent weak performance then it would be great to know now and dismiss that aspect of the concerns so no one makes an Association of Silly Suspicions of themselves :)

      The performance issues would remain regardless, but it would be good to get really 100% sure about the nature of the problem.

  13. The Rural Juror*

    Semi-related – I was recently driving myself and a colleague to a meeting several hours away from our office. This colleague has been at our company a few months and this was the first time I was getting to know them. We started talking about long drives/roadtrips and listening to podcasts to pass the time. I recommended “You’re Wrong About” because I love that podcast and find it fascinating.

    My colleague thought the podcast sounded like something they’d enjoy and asked me to pick an interesting episode for us to listen while we rode in the car. So I picked an episode I thought wouldn’t be NSFW… and boy was I wrong! I had totally forgotten about a part of the story in the episode where two people had an affair. The hosts explained some sexual encounters with great detail (the hosts even said it felt cringy to describe it all).

    I paused the episode to tell my colleague 1) I don’t usually expose coworkers to sexually explicit material, 2) I totally forgot that was in that particular episode, and 3) we could turn it off! They just laughed and said the episode was really interesting and they wanted to see how it turned out, so we could keep playing it. They weren’t offended and we had a good laugh. I was still pretty embarrassed, though.

    I don’t think Barb deserves the benefit of the doubt, knowing what OP knows. Sometimes colleagues slip, especially when we become familiar and comfortable with each other. But we have to know to catch ourselves and apologize when it happens! (and obviously not do it again) Barb’s pattern of bad judgement makes this incident worth the investigation to find out if others are victims of the behavior.

    Also – if you’re going to listen to “You’re Wrong About,” be aware that there is strong content!

    1. Everything Bagel*

      Nice! I’m glad to see you introduced someone to You’re Wrong About, one of my favorite podcasts!

  14. Joseph*

    Back in the olden days, before everyone used Outlook, I was at college and given a user guide to Eudora which was being rolled out to students – starting with those of us doing IT. It contained a whole bunch of screenshots showing you how to use your email. In almost every single screen shot was an email from the person who made the manual to their partner explaining in the subject line exactly what they planned to put where when they got home.

    Thankfully it never made it past the first test group of a dozen or so people

    4. Wendy Darling*

      I was just thinking that forgetting to hide your chat when screen sharing lacks attention to detail.

      I’ve worked for a series of remote companies where we do a lot of social conversation on our work computers and it’s never been an issue but the reason for that is that we’re relatively circumspect. Anything that would ruin our lives if it was read aloud in open court or by the IT department is taken off work systems, and screen share hygiene is critical.

  16. antisocialite*

    I would also be concerned about the other party, too. I feel like having IT look into it (check if both parties have a high usage of chat/messaging, any NSFW keywords, etc.) and then engaging HR might be the way to go.

    But even outside of that, she’s already demonstrated she’s not great at her job(s) and hasn’t stepped up to the challenges to keep her latest job. So it’s not just poor judgment but also her work ethic and productivity is pretty terrible. I’m also curious about the other person’s so if it was me I would look into both equally.

  17. I'm just here for the cats!!*

    i do wish we had more of an idea of what was in the chat besides “chat session with a coworker with explicit reference to private body parts”
    who was the other person? Could they be dating and they are just sending inappropriate love messages. Or is it a friend and they are talking about someone. was it something like “damn that new guy has a fine X” or was it more detailed.

  18. Charlie*

    I had this happen once but I was the employee and the person sending explicit messages was my boss…
    I think they were sent from a personal device that happened to be linked to the work computer, though. Still not great judgement but I never even considered telling anyone in HR or anything! I was just like that’s none of my business lol

    He later got fired (for unrelated reasons). And divorced. Because no, the person he was texting was not his husband (though at the time I was just like well I don’t know the terms of their relationship).

    1. Czhorat*

      That’s another thing that happens, and a reason to be careful about sharing entire screens. I’ll sometimes link my personal texts to my work laptop so I can see them as I’m working – I also get professional calls on my personal cell, so there’s somewhat of a business use.

      1. econobiker*

        Never link personal information chats onto work devices.

        I had a previous work place in that I used my personal cell phone to get calls and used the outlook app to get work emails but never signed anything allowing access to my phone and the app was easily deleted as I only used it for that one email address plus the internal IT function was less than professional or astute. While they didn’t pay for BYOD (bring your own device), there were enough “free” or “unobserved bonus” fringe benefits to easily equal my phone usage for work.

  19. SunnyShine*

    Does Barb even have anything redeemable to keep her around? Between work performances and poor judgement on doing such a thing at work, it doesn’t sound like it. I would talk to HR, but my company requires us to report these things.

  20. Bast*

    I keep coming back to the words “I’m almost sure.” “Almost sure” is not sure. Pulling the logs would be the way to be sure. I’m wondering how long LW had to look at the screen before it was switched. I’m sure at one point or another, we’ve all looked at something/read something quickly and had to read it again to make sure we read it correctly, and the phrase “almost sure” is making me lean toward this being the case. I can also see some usages that while not exactly appropriate for the workplace, are not necessarily sexually explicit: (ie: “Boss is being such a d!ck.” “Stop pu$$y footing around the issue.”). In both of those instances, your eyes go right to the more problematic words and tend to skim over the context, particularly if you see it only for a split second and then it disappears. I’m not saying this is the case here, but as LW appears to have some doubt, so do I. Put your mind at ease. Pull the logs.

    1. constant_craving*

      Yeah, I agree. LW doesn’t even know what she saw, just thinks it might have been something. That’s not something that should be acted on without getting more sure first.

    2. Emily Byrd Starr*

      Or she could have been talking about someone named Dick or using the p-word to refer to a cat.

  21. Czhorat*

    It’s not overreacting to an employee exposing others to sexually explicit content.

    Over on Bluesky I commented that this isn’t the real issue, but we should all get out of the habit of screen-sharing. Share only the application or window you need the other person to see because, as you said, there are TONS of things that aren’t illicit but would be inappropriate or embarrassing, even if it’s as simple as a message from a different client.

    It’2 2025. Let’s learn to use our tools responsibly

    1. Wendy Darling*

      An ongoing problem my team is having with that feature is that if you just share one window, the Zoom sharing control overlay blanks out part of the window. It’s driving us nuts.

      But it’s still better than, like, having the whatsapp group chat about what an asshole that one coworker is appear in the background.

    2. I Have RBF*

      Yeah, I work in IT. I never share my whole screen if I can avoid it. One of thing I have up is my somewhat snarky work log – safe for work, but people don’t need to see that I had to fix a ID10T error for the same person for the fifth time.

  22. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

    People need to save the NSFW stuff for … when they are not at work.
    You can still text your honeybunch(es) but keep it clean in case someone sees it or you accidentally send to a coworker, boss, client etc.
    Don’t let private messaging of any kind interfere with getting your work done, for hich you are paid.

  23. Hyaline*

    It kinda feels like the LW wants to fire Barb, and is hoping that a NSFW chat popping up gives free rein to do so without needing to beat around the bush with a PIP or make the difficult decision “is her work really poor enough? have we given her enough of a chance? what else might I have done?” But after reading the letter, it feels like Barb is not working out and the NSFW chat is a footnote, not the actual problem. LW, if there was any part of you that felt relieved that you had a good reason to fire her now…you already had good reasons to fire her.

    1. SnarkyLibrarian*

      Thank you! The whole letter I was waiting for someone to point out the real issue, which is the LW went out of their way to hire a known problem employee. And is now experiencing…problems.

  25. Raida*

    I’m almost sure I saw her chat session with a coworker with explicit reference to private body parts. Both the screenshare software and chat software are part of the same company-provided system; it’s typically used for training and collaboration.

    She’s your staff member, bring this up at the next 1:1 –
    “I’m sure I saw a chat session that was explicit. That chat software is considered a Business Record. It can be searched, retrieved, used for legal investigations. It is fine to use it for chatting! It should not be used for anything that’s going to be able to be used against yourself, another coworker, or the business.
    Do You Understand?

    Alternatively… You are their manager – ask IT to get your the chat logs for that day. Use them as a good reason combined with poor performance to get rid of them. Say poor performance, and if they arc up, say “I don’t want to bring these to HR and have a record that you display poor judgement like this.”

  26. Jane*

    The part of the answer that really jumped out to me is:

    “First, take this as background info confirming that there are serious issues with Barb’s work and judgment and that you need to get much more hands-on in managing her. That means resolving to figure out quickly if she’s going to be able to do the job, and whether she can bring the level of professionalism and attention to detail you need. That’s something you’d want to do anyway, regardless of this incident, so this would just be the impetus to come to a conclusion quickly. This might mean giving her really clear feedback about what needs to change and a few weeks to demonstrate the changes you need.”

    I am in this position with an employee I supervise. I am very new to managing and I feel very uncomfortable giving continual corrections – it feels “unkind.” Nevertheless this individual is not performing at a level that’s actually helpful to our organization, such that I actually have less free time than before they started working which is of course the opposite of what was intended.
    Basically I feel like I need to get more comfortable with being firmly instructive and with the idea of having a big picture conversation about what needs to improve.

  28. Cats and dogs*

    What about the other person on the chat? Why arent they getting spoken to/going to be in Trouble?

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