how much socializing at work is too much?

by Alison Green on November 21, 2024

A reader writes:

I am a manager at an office of 35 employees and everyone is fairly autonomous in managing their workload. We’re a pretty social and casual group, so it’s no big deal for people to socialize with one another to a certain extent. However, I’ve recently noticed that there seem to be more frequent, prolonged socializing sessions with some groups of people. I would guess it’s 3-5 days a week for 45 minutes or more each time. I think it probably starts out as work-related conversations but then wanders into more social territory. Is this pretty typical? My concern is that people are getting too relaxed and putting off the actual work that needs to be done and then quality is suffering (quality is hard to measure in my job so this is difficult to track). My concern with addressing it is that I don’t want to kill morale. If you think it does need to be addressed, how would you do so?

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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{ 93 comments }

{ 93 comments… read them below }

  1. Ari*

    People around me spend hours every week talking about sports and politics and everything except work. Fortunately I don’t manage them and they’re in a different org, so I just put my headphones on to drown out the noise.

  2. KHB*

    I’d love to hear more insights into the bigger question Alison identified – how DO you assess work/performance/outcomes when there’s no obvious objective way to measure quality of work? I’ve been struggling with this for ages – I’m in the media space, and I can tell good writing from great writing when I see it, but it’s hard to get any more specific than that. I don’t have any direct reports myself, so I’m not directly responsible for assessing anyone’s performance, but my colleagues who are aren’t any wiser about this than I am.

    1. Medium Sized Manager*

      This has been a big pain point and focus for my org for a while that we are slowly improving. When starting from scratch, I like to think about what a pain point would be. Is it that cases weren’t reviewed daily? Is it that you had to review the same document four times? Is it that the decisions aren’t in line with the company?

      Sometimes, you have to figure out what you don’t like in order to figure out what you do like. Once I have a rough idea, I take a sample from a variety of people and measure it against the created rubric and figure out what changes might be made (ex: did everybody fail? Did it pass objectively bad work? Does it favor people who work on x type of work?)

    2. Serious Silly Putty*

      Me too! Even for my own work. Everyone says, “as long as they get their work done, does it really matter when/how long their butt is in a seat?” But… what does getting work “done” look like in fields where there is ALWAYS more than can be done, though few things break if some things never get done?
      Like if a grant is due, and I’m responsible for it, I may need to work really late. That’s easy to judge. But what about wanting to revamp how we do something that’s working good-enough right now? How do I gauge my own productivity?

      1. Caramel & Cheddar*

        I think this is where goal setting comes into how you plan your work each year. Your grant is one of your day-to-day tasks, but I’d consider revamping a process that works well enough already to be a long-term goal for the year because it’s not quick and you’re unlikely to finish it with the same speed as your other work. Assessing a goal in the case of a process change would be evaluating whether or not the new process has improved whatever metrics you were hoping to fix (e.g. if you’re changing the process to improve quality, are you noticing fewer errors now that it’s in place).

      2. Anonym*

        There’s an important element here – we look for objective ways to measure our work, but sometimes there isn’t an objective answer, so you have to decide what’s most important. It can feel easier to defend the importance of something that’s generally held to be valuable, but it’s just as valid to say “there are many ways to measure this work; we have chosen to focus on X, Y and Z because [reasons].”

    3. LoraC*

      We use metrics like how many typos/grammar errors were found in a piece of writing, but that doesn’t convey the quality of writing. There were some works that were grammatically perfect but didn’t convey any useful information, and some that had typos, but broke down complicated concepts and explained them very well.

      Even things like number of hits/time spent on a page aren’t a good measurements.

      1. Watering can*

        We use a similar metric and I hate it. Instead of errors it’s percentage of edits. So it’s dependent on the editor, their workload, mood, etc.

      2. Disappointed Australien*

        Goodhart’s law also comes into play “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”.

        Software engineering has been struggling with this for a long time, possibly because computers are so good at counting things. The computer says you only did 100 keystrokes this minute, whats wrong?

        Rules also constantly need to change with conditions and as people adapt to them. That plus Goodhart means whatever metric you come up with will probably be irrelevant by the time it’s implemented.

    4. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

      What’s the difference in impact between good and great writing? Are you writing just for the sake of writing, or or you writing to [persuade/educate/sell/entertain/placate an important stakeholder/whatever]? And assuming you have some end point your writing is designed to achieve, how do you assess that endpoint? Like maybe it’s retaining a certain % of readership, or having some kind of impact on an issue in the world, or shifting public opinion measured by reader polls, or a particular number of or character of instances of positive feedback from stakeholders…etc. etc.

    5. Gray Lady*

      Media is exactly what I was thinking of as an example of how judging quality would be difficult, especially compared to a theoretical “how would the quality be different if they spent an average of 30 minutes more per day focused on work”?

      They’re meeting their deadlines with acceptable output, but how do you know whether a piece of writing would be better if they spent a few more minutes on it? Maybe it’s great, but could it be better, and how would you evaluate that? I’m not saying the question is unanswerable or shouldn’t be raised, but it seems really hard to judge.

      1. Adam*

        I think I wouldn’t try to evaluate the media directly, but presumably the media exists for some reason, and you can measure that? If you’re writing web articles, how many times is it clicked/shared/read to the end/whatever matters for you? If you’re producing training programs, do people show they’ve learned the material? If you’re recording audio ads, how often do people buy the product?

        1. Fíriel*

          That kind of metric good in theory, but it can really create perverse incentives quickly. Like “lack of environmental regulation damages small town” is *not* going to be getting the clicks that “Taylor Swift releases new album” is going to, even though it’s probably a lot more work to write. And certainly not the clicks that something even more salacious would.

          1. Gray Lady*

            Yup, it really depends whether you’re writing to directly generate some kind of measurable response, or you’re writing for something like a think tank or opinion journal where the quality of style and content is a primary goal. (Just as examples.)

          2. anotherfan*

            or even more important. Crime and celebrity news always gets more clicks than the meat-and-potatoes work that means print/online news media is doing its job. Jon who covers cops will always have better metrics than Nancy who covers schools or Kary who covers local government. It’s the nature of the beast. We can get better engagement or click metrics by abandoning local news altogether and just post arrests and celebrity or real estate trends — but is that actually success? It’s what makes working in media so hard to assess. I once had a manager tell me that I wasn’t “reaching a higher bar” but gave no indication what that meant. I was “supposed to know that as a professional.” She was a terrible manager, of course (and downright abusive, but that’s another story) — I was still turning in more copy that was newsworthy, accurate, timely, well-written and in line with the paper’s philosophy than just about anybody else in the office, but media metrics are all subjective once you reach a certain level of competence.

    6. Echo*

      Who’s your audience, and is the message coming across for that audience? You could look at objective metrics like click-through rates but frankly I’m not all that impressed by those. For me, it’s more about how people react – did what I wrote change their view or give them a new perspective on something?

  3. Arrietty*

    How do you set targets of outcomes when the outcomes depend heavily on people outside the organisation? So for example, we run llama grooming taster sessions to give people the chance to decide whether they want to come to one of our llama grooming workshops or join a llama groomers club. Do I set a goal of X% of people at the taster sessions coming to one of the other events, even though we can’t force people to come?

    1. Silver Robin*

      You can set a goal like that, I think. You would need to look at historical rates of conversion to set something reasonable, and you would need to be willing to let the person running these try different things and fail to see if improvements can be made. Good faith effort should not be dinged, but that is why good management means having conversations about what is happening rather than looking just at the numbers. Maybe you are never going to get more than a Y% of people to come to another event, so then the goal will change to maintaining that percentage.

    2. Michelle Smith*

      I mean, in theory you’re tracking conversion rates right? So you should be able to look at your number of events, the number of people coming to events, and the number of those people who come to the workshops or join the club. Then you can figure out that on average X number of people from a tasting session will become customers. If you find that someone is significantly below that, it can be worth seeing if you can figure out why (could be anything from bad performance as a taster to a particular day of the week or time of day being less ideal for conversions).

    3. anonymous anteater*

      If the outcomes depend on outsiders, it becomes the job of the staff to reach out to the right customer base, and do a good job in the taster sessions to highlight the appealing parts of what’s on offer, and possibly to be good about following up/closing the deal.
      As a start, I would make sure you know/measure the conversion rate (percentage of people who decide to buy). You can’t make people come, but you can decide if the conversion rate is worth the effort, or if it could be improved by making changes to the taster sessions. This would be easiest if you have several people running the sessions, and you can compare their performance. A lot of place will only have one person, though. In that case, you can try to find out what other similar organizations see. Or you can do the math of ‘how many people are coming through the taster sessions’, ‘what income/impact do they generate’ and then you should know whether that person’s time is well spent, or whether they could be doing more impactful activities.
      This is easier if you are doing for-profit sales, because then it’s that person’s cost vs the income they generate. If it’s a non-profit, you need to think about impact differently.
      Or you can try to compare them against a predecessor.

      1. Arrietty*

        We’re a start up non-profit, so it’s tricky! I’m a first time manager and figuring everything out as I go along.

    4. Apex Mountain*

      I’d think you would want do that anyway so you would know if the taster sessions are worth doing or not

  4. Dinwar*

    I think this is going to be HEAVILY dependent on office culture. I’ve worked in offices where a five-minute conversation was considered too much, and I’ve worked in offices where an hour-long rambling conversation was considered normal. It just depends.

    I will admit to being a heretic here: I don’t really mind the longer conversations. From a personal perspective I prefer to work around people how interact with me as a person. When all my conversations with someone are strictly professional, it comes off as cold, even harsh. And since my life has literally depended on these people, and absolutely will in the future, this is a problem for me. From a professional perspective, these conversations are valuable ways to transmit information between groups. No joke, these conversations have saved the company I work for millions over the past ten years. That’s a pretty good trade-off for allowing people to engage in normal behaviors for the region I’m in!

    I would say that if your concern is quality, develop a metric to measure it before you do anything else. I know you say it’s hard to track, but you’ve got to have some sort of deliverable and standard against which said deliverable is measured. Also, look at your hours. If I’m having a 45-minute discussion with someone, but am routinely working 12-16 hour days, that discussion is probably not impacting my work hours significantly, nor is it the contributor to declines in quality. Finally, what are these people doing during the discussions? One reason our company culture includes a lot of chit-chat is that most of us started out in the field, and you simply cannot work in the field without chatting. We get used to working while chatting. If they’re doing something while chatting, and the work is getting done on time and to the quality you need, this is a non-issue.

    1. Momma Bear*

      It’s also probably similar people over and over so if OP sees groups, try to figure out who the common person is. In my office we have one very Chatty Cathy. I have an informal agreement with a nearby coworker that if they hear the conversation drone on for a while and it’s not obviously about work, we’ll create a diversion. It’s hard sometimes because in between the storytime there’s important info or Cathy legitimately needs to bounce a problem or idea off another human. It’s like the old Family Circle cartoon that showed Billy’s meandering path to wherever he was going – we get there, eventually. If I really can’t be bothered, I close my door. But it is almost always the same person involved in long conversations. I bet OP has a common denominator, too, and should look at that person’s behavior, productivity, and workload.

      The bigger issue seems to be that OP couldn’t tell what productivity looked like for that department. OP needed to get a better idea of what tasks these people did and what constituted “done” or “progress”. My boss may not 100% understand my job but he can see if there’s a complaint because the Shippers didn’t get the hay to send to the farm. Understanding their job functions better would have given OP a better idea of the workflow and whether or not this was as much of a problem as it seemed.

      1. Dinwar*

        I’m one of the Chatty Cathies. Then again, my role is “Know everything going on at this huge jobsite and coordinate with everyone”, so it sort of fits–I’m required to talk to everyone.

        I’ve learned to have a few degrees of chatty-ness. At the lowest end of the spectrum, I come in with a list of questions and a notebook, and we’re only discussing those issues. On the other end, there are the hour-long rambling discussions that include seventeen different projects, our favorite sandwich shop, the kids’ grades, upcoming performance reviews, weird international TV shows, and the pros and cons of various types of notebooks. The key is, I let the other person decide. If they want to chat for a while and I don’t have anything pressing, I’m up for it; if they want to be 100% business, I don’t take offense. And I try to tailor my opening to the person. For example, I know that certain people will want to chat more, so I make time for that. Others are more focused on business, so I start far lower on the “chatty” spectrum. And I make a point to usually carry a notebook, which is actually really useful for rapidly switching between chatty-ness levels.

  5. Persephone Mulberry*

    “Are people meeting their goals and getting the results you’re looking for? If so, and they still have a lot of time every day for socializing, do you need to revisit the goals?”

    I’m so tired of this narrative. Not from Alison specifically – just in general. In society.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      I agree.

      The problem I see is that if you meet your goals, they give you more goals. You get punished for being a good worker by being given more work but not more money for getting it done.

      I have learned to “act my wage” and work more slowly so that I am just finishing stuff up as the day ends. I get all my stuff done, and that’s it.

      1. Mouse named Anon*

        Same friend same. I will absolutely act my wage! I am good worker during my hours. But I am done once I log off or leave the building.

      2. BellaStella*

        Same. This year at my job has been super rough for many reasons and when I am off the clock I am off. When I take a day off I am off. And not going above and beyond as I did for four years, not any longer. I will not get promoted in the next couple of years if ever at this org so I am applying a bit here and there elsewhere and in the meantime just doing my work and not volunteering for more.

      3. Angstrom*

        If your competitors are getting more work done with the same number of workers, they have a competitive advantage. I don’t know how to get around that.
        Lots of people have complained about high prices and poor staffing over the past few years. How do you counter that without increasing efficiency?
        I don’t see the US making the kind of changes needed to make the standard of living less reliant on earned income.

        1. Peanut Hamper*

          This is an incredible oversimplification of what a competetive advantage is, and one which sees employees as resources to be squeezed until the pips squeaked, rather than as assets which need to be nurtured.

          It’s not just efficiency, it’s also about quality. And it’s easier to get quality work from workers who feeled valued and respected than it is to wring quality work out of workers who seen only as debits on a balance sheet.

        2. Flor*

          But as an employee, they aren’t “my” competitors; they’re my employer’s. It’s not in my best interests to be more productive and bring in more money for my employer if they’re going to continue to pay me for the lower level of productivity regardless. I’m better off getting a new job with a salary reflective of my work capabilities.

      4. Dinwar*

        I suppose it depends on what you want with your career.

        I’ve made a career out of taking on more responsibilities if I can (and giving up some when I’m overloaded). I end up doing a lot of work that those above me in the org chart don’t want to do–but those are tasks in the next role in my career path, so it’s training for me. This benefitted the company, benefitted my boss, and benefitted me. If I’d “acted my wage” I’d be a low-level field grunt my entire career, which means in practice being unable to have a family, real friends outside the job (too much travel), any sort of real social life, etc.

        I know another project manager that’s got zero ambition to rise beyond his level of PM. He has enough work to keep himself busy, it’s complex enough to keep him interested but not so much as to overwhelm him, and he’s good enough at it that the clients keep requesting him. I’ve never seen him at the office after 4 pm. Multiple people have jumped over him career-wise, but he’s comfortable with it; he’s where he wants to be, and working to maintain that status.

        If you’re comfortable where you are, and have no ambition to advance, “acting your wage” is fine. And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with that necessarily. It’s just that you need to understand what trade-offs you’re making, AND be comfortable with the fact that you are telling the company you are intending to stay where you are for the foreseeable future.

        1. Devious Planner*

          It’s also not just career advancement, but raises. Other than a cost of living adjustment, which is designed to keep up with inflation, raises are meant to reflect that with more experience comes more productivity. That’s fine if that’s the choice you’re making, but it can have some long-term financial implications.

          1. Flor*

            I think a lot of the “act your wage” attitude stems from people whose employers aren’t really giving performance-based raises. My raise this year was less than inflation and below the national average. That’s really not much incentive to work harder than I currently am. And my boss had nothing but praise for my contributions, but made it clear they’d been given a fixed amount for the team.

            1. I Have RBF*

              This.

              I am damn good at my job. But for decades I have worked for companies that give an average of 2% raises. Inflation is always more than that. At many of those places, I would need to walk on water to get a raise equal to inflation.

        2. Reluctant Mezzo*

          I’m glad that working super hard benefited you. This is not always the case in many companies. In some companies, you become ‘indispensable’ because it would take two and a half people to replace you and therefore, you are never promoted.

          1. Dinwar*

            Obviously I’m not saying you should say yes to everything that comes across your desk. There’s a huge difference between being a pushover, and strategically stretching yourself into the new role. The company, pretty obviously, will want to get as much out of you as possible (paying one person for the work of three makes the quarterly reports look good); you have to actively engage with the process to direct this where you want to go.

            I’m curious as to how you think people advance in careers. I’ve been thrown into positions with no training, and it was brutal. Stretching yourself in a systematic and intentional way–learning the job piece by piece before you get there–makes for a MUCH less stressful transition. You have a safety net if anything goes wrong, you learn individual skills rather than a whole suite of them all at once, and it’s based on what you already know rather than handing you a bunch of new stuff.

            The important thing is to be intentional about it. If you just say “Yes” to everything that comes across your desk yeah, you’re going to be taken advantage of. And know when to delegate work, or when to say “I’m not available, but Jill may be and is really good at this sort of work!” so that you can take stuff off your plate as you add stuff to it.

        3. Vanamonde von Mekkhan*

          Might work in a really well functioning organization and where you have the approval of your bosses. But it can easily turn into a situation where you are going to write to Ask A Manager for help instead. Think of things like:

          * I’m never promoted because I’m too important in my current role!

          * My colleague quit and I temporarily took over their work and now I’m doing two jobs for the same pay. Then we get an update that they are now doing 4 jobs.

          * I’m doing all of these things that no one else want to do and isn’t part of my job and they all take it for granted that I will do them. I want out!

          * I did something that saves the company millions of dollars but my colleague took the credit.

          And so on.

        4. Tea Monk*

          That’s great for you. The rest of us have to think about career longevity as well. If we do too much, we burn out hard and the companies will post our jobs before our family can post the obituary.

      1. Jennifer Strange*

        I don’t think Persephone’s complaint is about the goals, but about the idea that if someone is reaching their goals with time to spare their reward should be more work. Goals should be set based on the needs of the organization, not based on squeezing every working second out of employees.

        1. Maisonneuve*

          Fair, but I don’t read the suggestion to review goals as intending to squeeze every second out of people. I understand it to mean re-assessing whether the workload needs to change. It could actually be too light. Maybe some new tech means things can be done faster.
          That said, I don’t think managers can also assume that all socializing is merely avoiding work. Chit chat helps build trust and info sharing tendencies, which are important to any job.

          1. Persephone Mulberry*

            “re-assessing whether the workload needs to change. It could actually be too light. Maybe some new tech means things can be done faster.”

            BUT this is exactly my point. WHY is the dominant narrative that a workload can be “too light,” or that more efficiency means adding MORE WORK instead of more free time?

            1. nnn*

              Well, because they’re not paying you for free time and why should they? Would you pay a plumber for free time?

              1. Persephone Mulberry*

                They aren’t paying me for my time, they’re paying me for my outcomes. That’s why I get paid a salary, and not an hourly wage. This idea that I should get paid for my outcomes *but only if* my outcomes take me X hours of work per week to complete, is where the system is broken.

                If the plumber chooses to bill by the hour, then when I hire him I’m agreeing to that payment structure. If he chooses to bill by the project, and I agree that paying X for Y service is a fair trade, then I don’t care if it takes him 10 minutes or three hours to complete it.

                1. nnn*

                  Few American employers would agree they’re only paying for outcomes, it’s why most jobs have core hours when you’re expected to be working.

                2. Peanut Hamper*

                  Core hours are about being available to customers, fellow workers, and/or superiors at a given time. They have nothing to do with outcomes.

                3. Persephone Mulberry*

                  @nnn

                  “Few American employers would agree they’re only paying for outcomes”

                  …and thus perpetuate the broken system.

            2. Peanut Hamper*

              Yep. My company has a policy for all (all salaried, all exempt) that if we need more than 40 hours to get our assignments done, then we’re expected to work those extra hours.

              But if we get our assignments done in less than 40 hours, we’re expected to ask for additional work. So this works only in the company’s favor, and not ours.

              Hence, my work always gets done just as I hit 40 hours. If they want to play stupid games, they get to win stupid prizes.

              1. Varthema*

                Gotcha, so there’s the broken bit. Ideally, the workload should be rebalanced in both directions – if you can’t get everything done in your allotted 40 hours a week, then the goals need to shift, the expectation shouldn’t be overtime. And then by the same token, if you’re twiddling your thumbs half the day, maybe your time could be better spent.

                Otherwise, yeah, if they expect overtime when deadlines are pressing, they should allow some thumb-twiddling when they’re not.

    4. Ally McBeal*

      Completely agreed. And if we’re required by management to come into the office for “collaboration and culture,” then management is tacitly agreeing that we will be spending time socializing. That’s the tradeoff – they get to feel a little better about the money they spend on office space, and we get to feel like humans in our office space.

    5. Unkempt Flatware*

      Yep. I turned my last workplace around in very short order and after years of them struggling. I worked fully remotely. One day boss said I needed to start coming in more. I asked why. He couldn’t say. I asked if he thought my output wasn’t up to snuff. No, he said, in fact it was above and beyond what he thought I could/would/should do. So why do I need to come in if I’m killing it? “Because maybe you could do even more”. Resignation on his desk that day.

    6. Medium Sized Manager*

      There is a balance to be managed though. I don’t think everybody should be churning out cases like robots, but if you set a production target of 2 cases an hour and 2 cases takes 5 minutes, it’s not reasonable if 2 cases an hour doesn’t solve your total case load. You can’t (and probably shouldn’t) hire infinite numbers of people before re-evaluating if goals are reasonable.

    7. Tech Industry Refugee*

      Yeppp. It’s the endless, infinite growth and productivity rhetoric. Humans are not designed for this kind of environment. Just, yuck.

    8. Lenora Rose*

      I think there definitely needs to be a balance — and right now the balance in too many places is skewed towards “Moar work per person!” and “crunch time all the time”, and the office equivalent of “if you have time to lean you have time to clean”.

      What the workplace should want is enough people for the work to get done … in regular work hours … WITHOUT continually burning out your high performers … AND with a bit of slack/redundancy in the system so that coverage is never a concern. Too many businesses tend to stop at the first clause: “Well, we lost 1 of our 4 staff members and the other 3 picked up the slack for the crisis, so we’ll let them keep going in crisis mode and just not hire a new person.”

      A few extra conversations are not themselves evidence you’re underworking your staff, not without a whole loft of other metrics in place.

      And yes, crunch time happens to us all; if there’s never, ever a day when it’s all hands on deck and everyone is working 100%, then you might want to revisit whether you’re overstaffed. But until that’s more common and understaffing and burnout is much less common, I’m not too worried.

  6. Peanut Hamper*

    Tangential:

    I was fully remote until a year ago and loved it because I am so much more productive when I am not surrounded by people having conversations or get dragged into those convos.

    But now I have to work one day per week in office (whole other issue) and had to listen to an in-office coworker stand at her desk and have a half-hour conversation with another coworker about how she doesn’t like working from home, she’s not as productive at home, etc., etc. Of course, neither of them were doing a darned bit of work while they were standing there, and I was struggling to get anything done while being distracted by them.

    But hey, they are both meeting their metrics as am I, and I have learned to bring ear buds with me. The work is getting done, and that’s what matters.

    1. fpg*

      part of why I hate the Anti-WFH narrative. CEOs hate when you work from home, and they hate when you go into the office to socialize. you can’t win. i get that some people hate WFH – good for you. I love it.

      1. Justanobody*

        We want you to come back to work in the office for collaboration and camaraderie, but not toooo much c and c.

        2. stratospherica*

          We need you back because we want to foster a culture of face-to-face communication and innovation, and to cultivate relationships in each department! Now, sit in front of your computer screen in silence for 8 hours, please.

  7. Insubordinate Clause*

    I wish people would also consider how their socializing affects OTHER people around them. I do a lot of writing, for example, and am best first thing in the morning and when it’s quieter. Our CEO does NOT like headphones. It’s just awful and unproductive to get trapped in the middle of bored colleagues’ babble when I have tight deadlines to meet.

    1. Dinwar*

      The issue here isn’t socializing, it’s poorly-designed workspaces. This sort of distraction and interruption occurs even with purely work-related discussions. If I’m working on the llama medical budget I don’t really need to hear an in-depth discussion about the redesign of the llama barns, for example!

      Open office plans are horrible for getting real work done, whether folks are in a social office or not. They “facilitate collaboration” by pulling everyone into the conversation, whether they want to be in it or not.

      1. ScruffyInternHerder*

        Open office/cubicle farms are hell on earth with what I do for a living. I don’t need to listen to the department that shares our corner argue with people about the cost of llama collars under contract. I’m attempting to quantify llama medicines that are required for a new medical contract over here, there’s a lot of thinking involved, headphones aren’t cutting it, and I am not upping my ADHD meds because they put me in an inappropriately designed office space.

        1. ArtsNerd*

          I changed workspaces from a random table in a room (next to two people on the phone all day re: totally different projects to mine) to a proper cubicle with dividers amongst my team and the difference was night and day. Notably, my ADHD benefits from chit-chatting with the people whose tasks I’m working on. Keeps me from feeling like I’m working in a void without accountability.

          The catalyst to get me in the right spot, however, was a total interdepartmental blowup including threats of formal discipline in response to my quietly trying to adapt my workspace to my needs. It was so wildly mishandled that I’m not the only one scoping out my next steps in the fallout.

      2. I Have RBF*

        Open office plans are horrible for getting real work done, whether folks are in a social office or not.

        This.

        Open plans are about being cheap. If you save 30% on your office spending to go from cubes to open plan, but lose 50% of productivity, you are penny wise, pound foolish, at best. Even cubes are easier to avoid audio and visual distractions.

    2. Reluctant Mezzo*

      I nearly lost my job because of a Chatty Cathy who didn’t like I that I had too much work to socialize with (one of the reasons is that I had to take on some of *her* work). Alas, she had the ear of the boss…it was a near thing.

    3. I Have RBF*

      Seriously.

      One place I worked, pre-pandemic, there were three of us in a room – IT/helpdesk. We had two doors – one in to the room, the other out onto a patio. So we couldn’t close off the doors. There was one jackass from accounting who would come in and gabble at us for over an hour! There wasn’t anything he needed from us, and nothing we needed from him. But he would come in at least once a day to hide from his job and distract us from ours.

      Another place, full open plan BS, my boss and a couple others would stand around and lean on my desk, making it shake, and yak sportsball for hours. Putting on my headphones didn’t give them a clue, and they made my desk shake so hard I couldn’t type. The same place, I was working on a deadline, headphones on, trying to stay in the zone, and one jackass tapped me to interrupt me and talk to me, only to ask if I was done yet!! I lost 20 minutes getting back into the zone because he wouldn’t respect headphones.

      This is a major reason I like to WFH. Coworkers are less likely to be able to interrupt me when I have my head in something.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I had a chuckle at that too, though from the perspective of management people wanting people back in for “collaboration” and “team building” but now we’re collaborating and team building too hard, apparently. I get that it’s a problem if your work doesn’t get done, it just makes me laugh at there’s some magical amount of socializing that meets the collaboration/team building threshold and any less or any more is a big problem.

      1. Mango*

        yeah – I work remotely and my company HEAVILY encourages 30-minute “coffee chats” with people. I do around 3 a week, and yeah – I absolutely do better work with the coworkers I socialize regularly with. 45 minutes is small potatoes for a big group of people

    3. not nice, don't care*

      Maybe badging can take on a new meaning. People should wear badges that turn a certain color when a set amount of socializing time has been spent. No more chats until the badge resets.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        I said above that I usually work remotely, but I did have to come on site to train a new coworker about a year ago. He was a great guy, perfectly friendly, and very good at his job. At the end of the day, we were wrapping up, I said it was good working with him person, but that it was a lot of socializing for me (which is true, it was definitely more than I was used to at this point).

        He just said “Yep, I’ve had enough socialzing for the next 30 days.”

      2. Dinwar*

        That would probably cause me to leave the company.

        Not because of the issues with socializing. It’s that this demonstrates contempt for your employees, and that you don’t trust them. If you don’t trust me to manage my time, how can you trust me to do my job–which is complicated, physically dangerous, and could open the company to massive legal liabilities? You can’t have it both ways. Either you trust me or you don’t, and if you do you need to trust that I can manage my time and conversations.

  9. cat lover*

    one thing to look out for to me, is, does this disrupt other employees. i share a floor with a VERY chatty department, and they have very long socialization sessions nearly every day. it can get pretty loud/boisterous. we are open plan with only half cubes, so even if i listen to music i still have to be subjected to it and it drives me insane. the manager of this group eagerly partakes so he’s clearly not shutting it down but boy is it annoying.

  10. carrot cake*

    Then there are those who duck out of public-facing offices to go chat with others for an hour or two at a time, leaving the rest of us to manage the customer flow, which disrupts our individual tasks.

    Of course, this is on purpose, designed precisely to avoid having to help customers.

    So sure, they get their work done, but off the backs of the rest of us.

    Looking at you, Larry.

    1. Paint N Drip*

      Funny how different in offices this socializing vs. shirking looks completely different. Right now my boss and coworker are sitting 2-5ft in front of my desk, discussing the particulars of an office remodel – if they would go in an office (they each have one, I don’t) I could actually get some work done!

  11. Sally*

    Back when I worked on site my coworkers and I would do this frequently. It started out as work 99% of the time and from there it was a mix of both work and personal. We all had things going on in our lives and checking in on each other to make sure everyone was doing okay was important. The work was absolutely still getting done, though the department had metrics that allowed us to prove it. Finding a way to track expectations is definitely a required first step!

    At first our manager told us that we could get more work done if we didn’t chat. This didn’t go over well at all on the account that we are human beings and not robots.
    She then figured out the best way to get us to stop was to come over and say “oh! Are we having a meeting?” in a super friendly tone. It was really, really successful!!

    Pros – we’d scatter like cockroaches the second we saw her car in the lot.
    Cons – we’d scatter like cockroaches. Legit work convos would end and move to Teams because we didn’t want to deal with her assumptions.
    We didn’t even have to be talking to each other at all, just being in a common area with the possibility of an interaction was enough for us to run back to our desks and anyone who wasn’t already wearing headphones regularly started to. We switched all of our chats to Teams once she came in for the day so overall team morale remained intact. Any and all conversations we had with her were strictly about work and she seemed disappointed about that…but she got what she asked for.

  12. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

    45 minutes most days is a lot for socializing, but it’s entirely in the normal range for lunch. If this socializing took place in the break room / kitchen while people were eating, nobody would think twice. So my question is, are the chatty employees also taking a lunch break, or are they working through lunch and using “lunch break” for socializing? (And either way, it’s a potential aspect to explore – encourage them to socialize at lunch, when it’s less disruptive to others, and also may discourage them from having long chats at other times?)

    1. Paint N Drip*

      This is a good point, seems like a fairly normal range assuming people aren’t taking every break and also talking excessively. 45 minutes of chatting isn’t SO different from the 2 15-minute paid breaks that many people are entitled to, could we encourage people to GO to a break room or other space to actually take those breaks?

    2. allathian*

      I still WFH most of the time, and when I go to the office, I go there specifically to socialize. So two 30-minute paid coffee breaks and 1 hour unpaid lunch break is standard for me. This is okay with my boss, although officially we’re entitled to two 15-minute coffee breaks, and my office in general, because they value the community building.

      I get more work done at home, but I’ve realized that going to the office once a week or so is better for my mental health, although I’d hate to return to the office 100%.

  13. Just Another Cog*

    Yeah, socializing is great for camaraderie, but when it’s excessive and prevents people in the office from getting their jobs done accurately, it sucks. It can quickly escalate into farting around and that used to drive me nuts when I was in the office. My job was entirely research and the noise was hard to ignore. If anything good came out of the pandemic, proving I could do my job 100% from home was it.

  14. TheGrinchess*

    I don’t mind socializing at work. I tend not to do it a lot because I’m always busy, but it’s nice to be able to stand around and chat with co workers. I start to have an issue though when I am working flat out, crazy busy, from the minute I sit down to the last ticking second of my day, every day, for weeks and months on end, yet my co workers can all mill around aimlessly when they come in, make breakfast and eat it, get coffee, go from desk to desk to talk for 15, 20, 30+ minutes for multiple days at a time (and don’t get me started on holiday decorating time) and then also take long lunches together while I can barely find time to go to the bathroom. That is when I absolutely start to wonder: what do you do all day? How much work do you have vs me? What’s our workload distribution really like? And then I side eye my managers and wonder why they don’t see it. Or worse, that they see it and are totally fine with it.

      1. TheGrinchess*

        I’ve talked workload until I’m blue in the face. We’ve talked redoing job descriptions. Never happens. We’ve talked shuffling tasks around. Never happens. We’ve talked hiring more people. “Nobody wants to work anymore.” But I keep bringing it up. I’m apparently either very stubborn or extremely thick-skulled.

  15. Little Miss Helpful*

    I’m wonder if “I’m worried about hurting morale” is a soft version of “I kind of know I should be managing this differently, but conflict makes me uncomfortable.”

    (Am I projecting? Yes, yes I am.)

  16. Grizabella the Glaimour Cat*

    This bit really jumped out at me:

    “Employees need to be able to measure themselves against whatever outcomes are expected, and they need to know how their manager will be measuring them—and as a manager, you need to have a clear picture of what successful performance in any role you supervise looks like so that you know when people are and aren’t meeting that bar.”

    I am retired now, but I feel like screaming when I think back over my career and realize how many times I had only the vaguest idea how my manager was going to be measuring my performance. I’m talking multiple jobs, over decades of work, that ran the gamut between feeling like I was pretty sure what was expected of me to having a fair idea what was expected of me but having no idea whether or not I was measuring up.

    In most cases, I also had no idea what I was entitled to expect in that regard, so I never asked for it. I just assumed that I should somehow know, as my boss seemed to expect me to do, and blamed myself for not being able to read their mind.

    I’m glad Alison is on the job now, to set both clueless employees and clueless managers straight about what they do and don’t have the right to expect from each other, as well as what their responsibilities to each other are!

    (Apologies in advance for any typos – no matter how any times I reread these posts, I almost invariably miss something.)

  17. Mmm.*

    This reminds me of when I worked retail and some bosses gave us meaningless tasks to do to keep us from enjoying ourselves between customers when all normal tasks were complete.

  18. Chatting doesn’t have to affect quality*

    If you’re not directly managing the people within the groups that are chatting, then maybe you don’t have a direct line for reviewing the quality of their work. Consider whether the chatty crowd stays late (or arrives earl y) to get the required work done. Consider what their workload is (they could be slow or waiting for a project to pick up). Maybe they plan for a buffer of time to chat to their coworkers and it’s not really a big deal.
    Also consider your company’s culture. Does your company promote a friendly working environment and want people to get to know each other beyond work, or is the culture to strictly focus on work when in the office?
    Overall, if these are people you don’t directly manage and you know their managers don’t have an issue with them chatting, I wouldn’t sweat it. It’s not worth your time to worry about something that might not really be an issue.

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