[JohnFen]

My manager does something even worse: we have a team meeting every Monday morning, and each of us is expected to give a brief report of what we did in our private lives over the weekend.

He lets me slide when I say "not much", fortunately, but I think it's an overly intrusive ask, especially in front of the whole team.

[peab]

I hate to break it to you, but this sounds like pretty normal human social behavior

[f30e3dfed1c9]

No, it doesn't. If this were between two friendly co-workers chatting on a Monday morning, sure. But in a team meeting, asking every person what they did over the weekend, when that is actually none of the manager's business? Not normal, not by a long shot.

[JohnFen]

I've been in this business for multiple decades, and I have never had a manager do that before. It's very unusual in my experience. A status meeting is a business occasion, not a social one. Asking for a status report about my non-work time is just very strange and intrusive in that setting. My time is my time, not subject to company review.

It's a world apart from talking over the water cooler, where it would indeed be normal social interaction.

[ivan_gammel]

I have seen this. Presumably it is done for team cohesion and it may work for a while, but as soon as someone sets the personal boundary and refuses to talk or says something generic it starts looking weird.

[diatone]

Bingo, if the meeting is geared for openness but people aren’t open, now you’ve got conflict. Of course if people aren’t open you might run into trouble anyway but there’s a grey area there

[f30e3dfed1c9]

I really don't think this is about people being "open" or not. I think it is strictly about inappropriate questions from the manager. They probably think they're "establishing rapport" or "building team cohesion" or something but what they're really doing is sticking their nose where it doesn't belong. It's inappropriate prying and bad management.

[JohnFen]

Yes, entirely this. It's not a question of whether or not you have open conversations at work about work-related topics. It's a question of having appropriate boundaries between work life and personal life.

My employer has no right to demand that I talk about my personal life at work.