I had to leave my job about 7 months ago for a variety of reasons, but namely a serious situation related to work. A handful of former employees started following me on social media after I left. Today, my former coworker reached out and we started texting. We are friends and talk almost weekly, so this was not out of the ordinary. I told her it was weird behavior these people started following me and stalking me on social media. She proceed to defend them and blamed me, even though my profile is private. I got super upset and stopped responding.
Am I the asshole for calling out these coworkers?
If you have a private profile, don’t you have to approve accounts to follow you? How can they follow you (which is not stalking, btw) without you approving it?
At this point, NAH.
Correction: I meant to say former coworkers, that I never worked with closely/directly, not employees*
Light YTA. If you didn’t want people looking at your posts, you should not have approved them. It’s not on her
Calling them out for… What? Following you on social media? Going with YTA until I know more.
If your profile is private you clearly wanted them to be able to see your content. Whats did you call them out for? Did they post something on your social media or something?
I told her it was weird and wrong. I had no reason to believe they would try to make light of something awful that happened to me. I was confused by her response because we have different views on why someone would add you on social media.
Did they do anything on your social media? That seems like relevant information that is missing.
No but someone took a screenshot and sent it in a group chat, which ended up with some very inaccurate rumors about what happened to me. I felt hurt because I had no reason to believe they would do that? I don’t add people I have never spoken to on social media. It’s mostly for friends and family so I thought it was kinda weird to add me but I also didn’t want to be rude to them. I’m having a hard time articulating the norm here.
YTA lightly. You approved followers who now have access to your social media. If you didn’t approve and they tried to find other ways to view, then it would be different.
You are allowed to set boundaries and stop responding to your coworker if you don’t like who she is defending or what she is saying. However, if you approve followers, they will likely view your social media.
Is it normal to watch someone’s story every single time they post it? I don’t know. To me that’s a little strange. But I think I’m learning through some of these comments I might just not understand social media norms like other people do.
I think it’s normal to do that, and also normal to not want people to do that. I go through times where I’m active and not at all active on social media, but if I do post I notice people that are very active will view my social media regardless. I assume this is because they are very active.
You do have the ability to keep your social media private if that’s what you want.
I agree with you. I never add people from work until after I leave a workplace and that’s why. It gets dicey so fast. I ended up just deactivating my account. I realize I am still dealing with the aftermath so I could be wrong. I just felt frustrated she couldn’t see my POV and I was struggling to see hers.