If you don’t know what Slack is, we sort of hate you, because this likely means you have a cool job that doesn’t require you to commute to a shared office space every day like a regular Joe (or Jill). You’re probably strumming your guitar right now, a paintbrush in your free hand, laughing at how inane the life of a worker-bee must be. The rest of you, however, clicked on this story for a reason, which is that you know all too well what Slack is. Here, six relatable observations about the inter-office instant messaging service.
Exploring Our Love/Hate Relationship With Slack
In some ways, Slack does speed up workflow, but if you're anything like us you work in a giant, cubicle-less open office, and it would probably be just as efficient to turn to the person to your left and ask them a question as it is to Slack them. Slack may allow you to engage with a coworker without interrupting the rest of your team, but it also allows you to spend half your day talking about your break-up instead of working without anyone (except the unfortunate coworker on the other end of your forced therapy session) being the wiser.
You're playing with fire whenever you say something negative about your boss on Slack, as the casual nature of the platform and the close proximity of one chat to another makes it all too easy to accidentally send a chat meant for one person to another.
It doesn't matter what you write in that little box: No one will care, and you will continue to be bombarded with messages regardless.
In our minds, Slack is perfect for a Friday afternoon when you're barely working. It's not so great for a Monday morning when you've arrived back to work with a to-do list the size of Texas. It's hard to ignore a message that's coming from someone two seats down from you who clearly knows you're at your desk and have probably read their message, which is why you sometimes just wish you could close out altogether and (gasp!) focus.
Okay, maybe not fired, but your workplace would certainly be uncomfortable for some time after the leak. It's easy (for some) to censor their emails, but it's much harder to remember to speak professionally on something that feels like AOL Instant Messenger circa high school, when you used it to gossip with friends about Behind-The-Bleachers Brenda.
So, there are a lot of reasons why Slack drives us up the wall, but at the end of the day, it's an easy way to connect with various coworkers on a more intimate level than email or face-to-face meetings may allow. A lot of magic happens on our office Slack in the form of inside jokes and just general silliness, and without those diversions, our days would be slightly more dull.
