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askamanager_feed) wrote2025-09-08 02:59 pm
my coworker floods me with social messages all day every day
A reader writes:
My coworker, Kara, and I are on the same team at work. We’re remote, and I’ve been on this team since 2020. We’re similar in age, have a lot of the same interests, and our values align. We didn’t really start talking until about a year ago, and it was awesome! I was happy to finally have someone I really got along with on my team. We’ve hung out together once outside of work, and it was great spending time with her!
But Kara has become… a lot. I like being friendly with my coworkers, but I do not want to be best friends with a coworker. Every single day we’re both working, she talks to me all day, through the work chat. It is a rare occurrence that I’m not getting 10+ messages from her per day. The most frequent topics are complaints about basic work responsibilities, and long-winded descriptions of podcasts she’s listening to. Throughout nearly every single day. But then, she is also constantly asking questions about my life, and wants updates on everything I have ever told her about.
She tells me she wants pictures of my pets, because I have a lot. I’ve told her that if I get particularly cute ones, of course I’ll share. But then she’ll let me know I haven’t sent her pictures of X pet in a while. Or Y pet. Or how is Z pet doing? She acts almost annoyed that I’m not taking time out of my day to remember to send her pictures.
If I’m not talkative, she’ll comment on it, and I’ll give a very normal reason like “just tired today.” Some time later, she’ll always ask for an update on the situation — “Are you feeling less tired today/this week? Have the dogs calmed down since a few days ago? Did you ever figure out that legal situation with your aunt you mentioned 2 months ago? How are repairs on the house going?” And these “check-ups” are on top of the constant questions like, “Any plans for the weekend? Do anything last weekend? How is (animal)? Have you named (new pet/foster) yet? Here’s a bunch of suggestions you didn’t ask for! Remember I asked for pics!!” The other day, she said as what I assumed was just a friendly send-off, to “boop the animals for me!” I said I would. A couple days later, she asked rather seriously if I had actually “booped” my animals for her, as requested.
If I ever come in late, I’m asked about it. If I’m okay. Slept in? Alarm didn’t go off? Not feeling well? Dogs do something? If I work on a day I’m normally off, even for like two hours, (my work lets me move time around sometimes), I get a message. “Flexing time today?” She is always watching to see if I’m online, or not, and needs to know why if it’s outside the norm.
I’m being completely serious when I say that no one else in my life talks to me this much. Not a single person. Not any of my friends, not my only sister, no one I’ve ever known has talked to me this much on such a constant basis. Not even significant others. And it’s been, like, a year of knowing her better. I am socially exhausted, and it feels like I am the only person on earth she ever speaks to.
I’ve tried dropping hints. I’ve tried directly telling her, “I don’t want to hear so many complaints/negativity about work,” “I don’t want to hear about podcasts constantly,” etc. etc. Going silent leads to passive-aggressive comments and more questions. Once, I told her very blatantly that I was burned out, and did not want to socialize at work for the foreseeable future. Two days later my Teams pinged — “Feeling rested enough to chat yet?”
I consider myself an extroverted person who loves to socialize. I am very talkative. In social settings. As I said, I like being friendly with my coworkers, and even making friends occasionally. I do not want to get messages for 10 straight hours, four days a week, from the same person about the same topics. It’s gotten to the point where even if she doesn’t talk to me for a day or two, the second I get a message from her, I feel exhausted and annoyed all over again.
I try to stick to my guns when I don’t want to socialize. And maybe once every two weeks, I’m the one who is particularly chatty, because work is slow or whatever. But I’m struggling of thinking of a way to tell her, “You are talking to me WAY too much, and I don’t dislike you at all, but it is exhausting to interact with one person this much when I am AT WORK” without upsetting her or sounding awful. How should I deal with this?
First and foremost, can you mute Kara on the work chat so her messages aren’t constantly popping up throughout the day? It’s actually a blessing that this is happening through messages and not in-person, so take full advantage of that!
Beyond that, one option is simply to respond to her at the cadence you want, not the cadence she wants. Maybe that means you respond to one or two messages at a day, at a time that’s convenient for you to do it. Maybe it means a few times a week. You can decide how often you’re up for chatting and just stick to that. You don’t need to answer every single message, either. Answer what you feel like engaging with and ignore the rest.
If she demands answers she’s not entitled to, like why you weren’t online earlier, you can just … ignore that. If she sends passive-aggressive comments about where you’ve gone, you don’t need to change anything on your side. You don’t need to respond to those or address them in any way. At most you could say, “Sorry, just busy and can’t respond so frequently.”
Alternately, or in addition, you can address it head-on: “You’ve commented a couple of times that I don’t seem talkative, and the truth is that I just can’t chat this frequently at work. I can trade a few social messages a week, but that’s my limit — and when I’m very busy, it might be less than that. I really need to focus on work.”
You did a version of that when you told her were burned out and didn’t want to chat for the foreseeable future — which was good — but when she pinged you two days later to ask if you were ready to socialize again, ideally you would have said, “No, I’ll let you know” or “No, really busy” or even not responded — which might feel rude, but given the context it’s really not.
In fact, I suspect a lot of this struggle is because you feel rude maintaining boundaries in the face of her barrage of messages. In a normal social situation where someone picks up on and respects your boundaries, you generally don’t need to say things that sound rude — so most of us don’t get much practice doing it. But when the other person is flagrantly ignoring the clear boundaries you’ve laid out, you sometimes do need to say things that are so blunt that you’ll feel rude about them. You’re not the one being rude, though; she’s forcing you to spell out very explicitly something that you don’t normally need to hammer someone over the head with.
The other thing here is, Kara may be someone who needs very clear boundaries that you never deviate from. Most of the time, it’s entirely possible to have a work friend who you might not interact with for days and then you have a lengthy chat one random Thursday, and the person doesn’t assume that means you will be having lengthy chats every day from then on. (Or if they do think that, it’s usually easy to clear that up just being less available.) But in Kara’s case, if you’re particularly chatty with her on a slow day every couple of weeks, you’re probably undoing all the boundary-setting you’ve done up until then; she’s just not someone you can have a particularly chatty day with or she’s going to think you welcome it the rest of the time.
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