everyone likes me, so why am I not in the group chat?

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I started a new job about four months ago in a team of six people in a mid-sized company, and my five immediate coworkers have been nothing but nice and helpful. They answer all of my questions, take lots of time to explain stuff, include me in lunch plans, go out of their way to make sure I have the equipment I need, etc.

We spend one week per month in the office and work from home the rest of the time. There is a group chat for just our team and our manager where we discuss work, but also post the occasional funny meme, talk about our weekends, just normal stuff. The thing is that I’m pretty sure there is another group chat with the same people minus our manager to which I have not been invited. This is starting to bug me a little bit, but I’m not sure if I should say something?

I “know” about the other chat because during my interview, when I was given the opportunity to talk to one future coworker alone, I asked about the culture around communication and he mentioned they have group chat with the boss and one without. When I never encountered the second one once I started working, I figured that I misremembered that, but recently I had my first annual review with my boss and he made an offhanded remark like, “I know you guys have this chat where you probably talk shit about me, but I don’t care as long as the work gets done.” To which I just said something noncommittal.

Some background: I’m the first new person in the team (barring temps and interns) in more than a decade. I’m also the only woman.

It’s possible to share only the immediate history of a group chat, so if they wrote something weird about me early on, they could invite me without me seeing that.

I don’t think the others are close friends outside of work, but they have worked together for ages and know each other well as a result.

It’s not an issue of me not receiving information about career opportunities and the like. We are all established in our careers, 40 and older, and it’s a very collaborative job. It’s pretty much impossible to make oneself look good at the expense of others. In my review, our manager said that everyone told him that I’m a great addition to the team, and I’m not worried about being excluded from (male) networking opportunities because the job doesn’t work that way anyway. Their jobs are also super secure (in Europe, unionized), no reason to feel threatened by the newbie.

It’s also a job that attracts introverted, slightly awkward people (I include myself in that). My coworkers have pretty niche interests they can get very intense about, that I don’t necessarily share. I think they either just write about their nerdy stuff there and haven’t invited me because they rightly assume I wouldn’t be interested anyway, or else they talk really bad shit about our manager and don’t (yet) feel safe that I wouldn’t tell him if I saw that. In both cases I’m probably better off not being in that group chat, but I’m still feeling a little weird about being excluded. How long would you wait before saying something, if at all?

Do you want to be in the second group chat? If you don’t really care, I wouldn’t bother saying anything at all.

It’s very likely that one of the explanation is one of these, some of which you’ve already considered:

* they use it mostly for niche interests that they know or assume you don’t share

* they use it to shit-talk the boss and they don’t feel comfortable adding a new person to that (I wouldn’t normally assume this is the explanation, but it’s interesting that your boss himself described it that way, and it makes me curious whether you’ve noticed an unusual level of grumbling about the boss and/or whether he might be particularly frustrating to work for)

* they’re somewhat socially graceless and thus never thought about adding you

* something about the chat feels particularly male to them and they assume a woman wouldn’t be interested (this potentially covers a really wide range of things, from “90% of the chat is fantasy football and, rightly or wrongly, we assume that’s not your thing” to “there’s harassment in that chat”)

* they just feel closer to each other, having worked together longer (and being together on a continent that you’re not on, it sounds like?) and it’s just their friend group chat and they don’t really see it as a second work chat

That said, if it’s bothering you, there’s no reason you can’t say, “Hey, is there a group chat for all of us except Frank, and can I get in on that if so?” If there’s some reason they don’t want to add you, they can say, “Oh, it’s literally all about ancient Roman military strategy and occasional falconry talk, we figured you wouldn’t be interested in it” or whatever.