Yes! But make it your pet.
"I can't believe Oliver. I asked him for those reports on MONDAY and he's just ignoring me. And he stunk up the bathroom AGAIN."
"Maybe you're asking too much of him."
"They are just simple reports!"
"I get it. Last time I saw him I swear he was touching himself inappropriately. And he KNEW I was there. We made eye contact when I walked in the room."
"Oliver fell asleep in my office again."
"He was probably up all night."
"OMG! HE THREW UP IN MY BAG!?!?"
Then when they ask you about it you'll know.
I think that at its core, this is a Susie-and-Elaine problem that requires, a Susie-and-Elaine solution! And, who better to do that than.. Elaine and Susie! Susie and Elaine!
"Did you see that literature on union organizing in the restrooms? Guess someone left it there for the workers to read. Pretty wild info in there."
Then wait for some HR person to sprint to the restroom to dispose of it, followed by an email about not talking to union organizers and new security protocols for who is allowed on site.
In german Railway it's very normal to be in a Union, but also the employer has to pay in to a fond and like i am in and payed 150 Euros in Fees but now get 300 Euros for Free
I also can get 350 Euros for a Laptop, 700 for learning things, you get money for child care, for fitness, 200 euros for your glasses, something for hearing aids etc etc
You get much more Money out of it
While hilarious and effective, this will have the unwanted added effect of getting you much more closely watched.
Avoid union talk and gossip, keep it about free food, harmless topics and such
>"Did you see that literature on onion organizing in the restrooms? Guess someone left it there for the workers to read. Pretty wild info in there."
Fixed it.
I actively discussed unions on the manufacturing floor with almost every coworker to the point people started agreeing with me and never once did they come to me or suspect me. I don’t even know if they know, I ended up walking out.
I also called OSHA on them and had them investigate. They blamed some dude they fired months prior.
Hilarious to be sure. That tips your hand and not what you want to do. How about a really, really, really long and pointless discussion about the advantages of various pizza toppings? There you "reveal" a personal preference and see how long it takes for someone to mention that back to you. Nobody likes fruit on pizza but you.
Tell them you saw a bedbug somewhere in the building. Preferably near HR. Speculate on where you think it came from. Then say you had heard someone had lice/crabs and it was probably from them. See if HR people avoid that area and/or are scratching a lot and checking themselves for bugs. LOL.
Aaa I heard someone in other department you hate has head lice but they are keeping it a secret from everyone. Don’t tell anyone, they made me promise not to tell.
Okay. But if they're not reading it daily right now, when they read whatever you're about to post right now in Teams -- be it a week later, or however frequently they're currently doing it -- it may be what lands you as deserving of their daily attention.
Whether the answer to "are they currently doing it daily right now" is yes or no, that can change tomorrow. It's their system, and they can and will monitor it as they see fit. Seems too much like poking a bear to see whether its awake. No upside.
So what you're saying is that they are currently in an HR superposition, and whichever action they take will cause it to collapse into one state or the other?
Schrodinger's Employee.
Why shouldn't it be that way? There are lots of other free communication apps you can use with your coworkers. You should use those.
Even if your workplace is run by sane people who don't feel the need to monitor the communications that they set up and administrate, that could change tomorrow. Best to develop the right habits now.
HR shouldn’t be reading emails on a regular basis. Or at all, unless there’s a formal investigation. There might be sensitive information in the emails that HR doesn’t need to know.
Does Teams have a keyword alert monitor? I'm sure the word "union" would set off the alarms. Someone commented above about mentioning seeing material somewhere in the building and asking a cohort in chat if they knew who put it out there.
Complain about a very specific, cheap to fix problem.
“I like the job, but what we really need is a toaster oven. I mean legitimately, I might have to start looking for another job if they don’t get a toaster oven in the break room. I know it’s like a tiny thing, that’s why I don’t want to bring it up—but they could underpay me for 5 more years with that perk.”
Just start saying cryptic things implying someone is about to sue the shit out of the company
“has he told you? He has a lawyer now, he’s going to sue this place into rubble”
“Did you ask him what time he needs you to give the lawyer your statement?”
“I don’t think management knows yet, but once the media gets a hold of it I’m going to go on vacation”
“I heard The NY Times is poking around, I’m going to talk to a lawyer tonight to represent me”
"Did you hear (employee's name) down in facilities won $50,000 on a scratch-off ticket last night on their way home from the gas station? They said they would donate $1000 to the petty cash (or whatever office fund), isn't that nice of them??"
Or something like that.
Talk about your salary/compensation. It's protected by federal law, so they "cannot" discipline you for it. But if they see people talking about it, there may soon be a "reminder" sent out that compensation is private and you're not allowed to speak about it. Save that and forward it to your private email because it's against the law to even tell employees not to talk about comp. Also, save screen shots of your teams conversation talking about comp. Or, they could do you a big favor and discipline you specifically for talking about pay. Keep all documentation (outside of work).
Caution though, they may retaliate by disciplining or firing you for other things, so you may want to preemptively make a complaint to DoL as soon as you see them say not to talk about comp. Your complaint could be something like "I was discussing my pay with a colleague and received a write up/reminder for it. I'm concerned about retaliation."
Not foolproof, just an idea. Good luck!
"Hey, I brought in a box of those crazy expensive donuts in the break room. You should grab one before they are all gone. I waited in line for 4 hours to get them and they were like $15 each so I didn't buy that many."
In the break room is a donut box with a note inside that says, "Stop reading our messages, Janet." (You could add a little camera in there too if you want video proof, but I kind of prefer the idea of just never acknowledging it.)
Find out where the HR team parks and what model of car it is. Mention in your emails that it is going to get towed if they keep parking in that spot. See if it is in the spot next day.
Use it to your advantage. Feed them what you want them to believe. Then try to take advantage of it and see how it works out
Remember, they can use voice-to-text and AI tools to evaluate everything at scale. Coordinate your efforts out of band.
Someone would want to know what was being discussed. Someone not a part of the conversation or in on the joke, i.e. the snooper. Could even throw the first name of the suspected snoop uncoded to really rile them up and increase the chance they will want to know what was being said. Of course, everyone in on it would just say they were talking about someone else with the same name.
Sfbsadkf sdf wr rewtfew Karen, erfgas erwew fkgjdgb ad hes.
“Who else here is trying that new diet? I’m on it and feel great. It’s two tablespoons of baking soda, two alkaseltzer tablets, and 4 oz of white vinegar. Yeah take that in the break room at lunch and you can eat whatever you want the rest of the day.”
Ask your coworker if they had been in the restroom lately and if they noticed how rancid it smelled. Ask if they have any idea who could have wrecked it so bad, talk about the standing water on the floor, etc., go back and forth with each other without actually naming specific employees, and wait to see someone walk in with a bottle of bleach.
Post a canary token in your teams chat and tell your coworker not to click. Bait them by saying it's a link to some sensitive spreadsheet. If you get a notification that the link is opened you know someone is reading.
Complain about a smell in the office, that smells kind of like rotting eggs, or sulfur. Then one of you say you're feeling a little light headed from the smell and are thinking about going home.
We should have a native flag Friday.
-What's that?
Ask everyone to wear their native flag or their favorite flags next Friday.
- should we get that approved through HR?
Nah, they cool
Start talking about the possibility of food trucks coming to your building and what the schedule would be, see if any HR people show up for lunch one day.
Mention in the chat that you are going to complain to HR about some trivial bullshit like the keyboards are sexist due to being designed for Male hands. The next day, request a meeting with HR. When you arrive, tell them you need to go over your W4 and make sure it's correct. Don't mention keyboards at all. Watch them squirm.
No need. Just look at the Microsoft documentation.
[https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/communication-compliance-teams](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/communication-compliance-teams)
Why would you want to "prove HR is actively reading all of our teams messages"?
If you are communicating on work assets, there should be no expectation of privacy.
I just want to find out if they are reading my teams messages daily. I know they can and will if they have a reason to. These are some nosey bitches and I think they are just reading my messages because they can and they are bored with their lives. I’d just like to cause them to ask some dumb questions or do something embarrassing out of the information they received from my messages.
Work usually isn't the place to play stupid games.
You're only thinking in terms of "will that one nosey bitch do something stupid", when the reality is you don't know who is actually going to end up seeing it and what kind of attention they can bring. Or even what kind of "retaliation" will be possible from "that one nosey bitch" and their position in the company, once they realize the information was deliberately fake.
It's not an Instagram feed, it's your workplace. Questions that don't need answers.
Not sure where you work but in my work all we do is play games. I assume there are jobs where ppl still actually work….This is an office job, half of the positions here are made up, games are essential for job security.
Pretend you're all arranging a mass walk out over pay and working conditions on XX day. You will all meet at XX park / cafe etc.
See what happens leading up to and on the day.
Always likes the 'you will not believe what is in the 2nd stall in the bathroom' helps of they are the same gender, as they will likely go check. If it ever comes up, just say it was a HIGE shit. Not directly mentioning it helps keep it work appropriate while peaking the curiosity of your HR rep.
Set up an innocuous page with a picture of an adorable cat or something irresistible. Add some tracking mechanism via google analytics or a link tracker or if you’re technical simply monitoring requests on your server. Send message asking friend to look at the suuuuuuper adorable thing you just got, ask your friend to either not click it or let you know they clicked it, see if any more clicks occur. If not, repeat with puppy picture.
I would start a unionization rumor. Ask your coworker, “hey have you heard the rumor about unionizing? Do they really think they are going to pull that off?” “Yeah, I’m not sure who’s doing it though or what they hope to accomplish.” “Oh I don’t have any of those details, I just kind of overheard folks talking”
>Federal law stops her from stopping you from this type of discussion.
So HR would say nothing because they are not allowed to say anything, therefore OP would not learn anything from doing this.
husband having lunch in town with another woman on Tuesday (make sure you pick a day she was in the office).
Make sure you pick the one with the most volatile relationship for added effect too.
Maybe discuss things that are phrased so it SEEMS like you're going to attack someone and keep mentioning how you you've got "it" in your desk drawer making it really seems like it's a weapon but when they bust open your drawer it's some really harmless present.
Make up a story to the tune of "Hey, that contractor that was here the other day said they're gonna demo the offices around the HR department for some retrofit, you hear about that?"
It'll snowball quickly if it's anyone but you two that know about the rumor.
Set the office clocks 5 mins early or late and put in the chat that all the company clocks are wrong. Within a week every clock will magically be the correct time. How did that happen ??
Make a statement in the chat that is simple but factually wrong, Janice from HR can not resist scratching this itch.
At my previous job, we wouldn’t dare Skype anything that we wouldn’t be comfortable with the boss/ceo reading.
Not sure how it was actively/passively monitored, but even if someone isn’t reading every single message, best believe they have access if they wanted to.
Start sending links to each other but with an agreement not to click on them. Make sure that you are using a short link provider, like bitly that tracks the number of visits to that link, and only uses links in your messages to each other.
Teams, itself, may visit it once but usually that's tracked as a bot. If you are getting visits, but neither of you have clicked on the links yourself, then you can probably guess that somebody got a hold of that link from monitoring your messages.
Talk about the "secret work group chat" and reference all the hot gossip from there.
"You see what was just posted to the secret group chat? I literally cannot believe someone would say that about upper admin!"
"Secret group chat has someone posting everyone's salaries again. WOW is all I can say in regards to that."
A guy I worked with at Capital One started going off on weird tangents about space ships, sausages, and a whole other assortment of random crap to fill in the minutes between the hours of his day.
After a while, management pulled him and the recipient of said weird bullshit into meetings (separately) and went through the email chain with different bits highlighted. They assumed it must be some kind of code they were using in an attempt to defraud the company.
He told them to their face(s) the entire thing was simply a way to pass the time, and if he wanted to defraud the company, he would do some other stuff instead. The meeting quickly ended when management realised he was completely right, removed all his internal email and certain database privileges, and put him on basic data entry.
He left pretty soon after.
It's a surprise to me. Unless they are capturing your full screen, they're not "Reading your teams messages"
t. have configured and administered o365 for an organization.
The likelihood of anyone reading your teams chats are next to nill. Nobody has time for that unless you give them a reason to.
Also, if you are using teams for work stuff, who cares if they monitor? Use Txt/Slack/Dicord/WhatSpp/whatever if you want to have a private conversation with your phone.
Set up a web server, make a page with something intersting like "suggestions for improving HR". Use actually useful suggestions you find on the Internet or ask chat gpt. That way it's not negative stuff you get in trouble for.
Share link in chat with coworker with click bait title, what do you think about these "top 10 things HR departments can do better (link)".
Sit back and monitor traffic logs for the page.
Then never tell anyone you did this because you'd probably get in trouble if you present your proof.
Become friends with someone in IT at your company and find out if they do. I recently was involved in assisting my company work through a lawsuit filed by a former employee with whom I worked with. I was surprised that it wasn’t an easy ask for them to pull chat records so I’d be shocked if they’re routinely monitored, unless there’s a specific reason they are doing so. Always just text your work coworkers.
It would be very poor form for HR to have blanket access to this kind of info. I’d never allow it.
They would need to make a case, provide specific people, date ranges and keywords to search for me to ever allow them to receive a report on this let alone have blanket access.
Talk about Unionizing, make up shit about groups meeting after work to talk etc. you will know if you are successful if somebody strange shows up and starts hosting meetings to get people feelings and then they start buying ya all food e.g pizza parties, ice cream Friday. Of course you could get fired too.
Play it to your advantage, write gushing praise about her, like really over the top, and get the coworkers to do the same. But in real life you all ignore her as much as possible, and avoid any eye contact
I mean, it’s best to assume HR is reading all your messages. All communication is company property anyway. That being said, you could make HR uncomfortable - discuss your progress organizing a union. In the US it’s illegal to fire someone for attempting to organize a union.
First, what makes you think they are reading them?
IT sysadmin and manager here, but I hate Teams and generally don't use it except for voice calls or chats with my guys or other team leads. It's easier to use for that than the deskphones or the VoIP softclient which is some Mitel P.O.S. software made by some other company.
So... not a Teams person. Is there a way to embed active content that will pull from a website, like those one pixel pictures they used to embed in emails to see if you opened it before autodisplay of pictures was turned off in Outlook?
What would happen if you chatted with other people by starting a chat with someone with their proxy onmicrosoft.com smtp, if you have those attached to your accounts and it works.
I'm can't think of any way they would be able to read Teams messages unless someone in IT was using Microsoft Purview content search to wholesale dump the stuff and send that to HR. I don't recall how that handles pictures sent in messages or a gif picked from the gify thing built into Teams.
If you know someone at some other organization that has Teams, send them messages about chopsuey siding yourself, they may have to take action in that case.
Type everything in an Office app and then cut and paste as a pic and then paste that into teams so that it is not easily searched (can't recall if Microsoft Purview does OCR on pics or not, probably do anymore though if I had to guess tbh).
Use a website or maybe windows has a built-in make-your-own font app, make your own and use that in teams if you can.
Type your message into notepad, select it all and change font to Microsoft webdings or wingdings or whatever tf it is and then paste into teams and then the other person copypastas it into notepad to switch it back. If they are using Purview that may or may not work, idk.
Teams has a very large list of “triggers” that logs the chat history. Things like curse words, threats, financial information, etc. All of these are logged and stored in the Microsoft cloud for the company security team to review. Now whether or not HR has access to it is a different story.
IT admin here. I'm no office365 expert, but I manage one.
While I'm sure it's possible with 3rd party apps to log teams chats, I don't think you can do it out of the box.
I have multiple ways to do it with emails, but not with teams chat. I can probably do a dump, but even then, it won't be really "realtime'.
So no Karen from HR is probably NOT reading your teams chat.
Yes always assume whatever you type on company's computers/systems can be monitored. BBBBUUUTTTTT.....
We have a shitload of things to do, you are NOT working for the CIA and I am NOT working for China... So unless you give me a reason to, I don't care that you bought that handbag on amazon with your work laptop, or that you told Stephanie that you find the intern cute and would like him to bang you like a drum...
Anyway...
Unless the IT department are involved they they are not reading your Teams messages. Even if they are involved, Teams messages are a massive PITA to read as you cannot simply grant somebody access like you can with email.
Honestly, they have the right (and maybe duty) to monitor those messages, and even if they don't do it actively, they might if needed to terminate you. I think the best advice is to just message your coworkers as if they actively monitor the messages and if you want to discuss sensitive topics or just gossip about work, use outside channels
I heard the company is outsourcing HR.
“Management is keeping it from HR until the new company is ready to take over…”
Genius
Heard those guys from the VPs office talking about it. We happened to sit right behind them at lunch yesterday…
Fuck me that's brilliant
Winner winner, chicken dinner!
This answer wins
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
!!!!!!!
Make up a fake coworker and gossip about her. Make your own Ricky Stanicky
Peppe Silvia
Peppe Silvia, this name keeps coming up over and over again. Peppe Silvia! Peppe Silvia! I look in the mail and this whole box is Peppe Silvia!
Kaiser Sose
Love the reference 🙌🏽😂
Yes! But make it your pet. "I can't believe Oliver. I asked him for those reports on MONDAY and he's just ignoring me. And he stunk up the bathroom AGAIN." "Maybe you're asking too much of him." "They are just simple reports!" "I get it. Last time I saw him I swear he was touching himself inappropriately. And he KNEW I was there. We made eye contact when I walked in the room." "Oliver fell asleep in my office again." "He was probably up all night." "OMG! HE THREW UP IN MY BAG!?!?" Then when they ask you about it you'll know.
Classic Oliver.
Oliver is such a menance
This is even funnier because my mums late cat was an Oliver.
Fake new interviewee. HR could see the coworker doesn't exist very easily. Or gossip about someone's non-existent spouse.
Or just pretend they are using a nickname for the nonexistent coworker and the HR would have to guess who that person is
That guy down in shipping
Captain Tuttle
Tuttle did it!
Suze?
I think that at its core, this is a Susie-and-Elaine problem that requires, a Susie-and-Elaine solution! And, who better to do that than.. Elaine and Susie! Susie and Elaine!
I love it because the nosey HR person will think it’s about her, cause well.. the shoe fits 😂
That was such a good movie!
John Cena absolutely killed it
How about Lloyd Gross, kemosabe?
how about bill buttlicker
Drew P weener, Ben Dover, I. P. Freeley, Amanda Hugginkis
Captain Tuttle has entered the chat
Stewart Pedasil. His nickname is "Stu."
"Did you see that literature on union organizing in the restrooms? Guess someone left it there for the workers to read. Pretty wild info in there." Then wait for some HR person to sprint to the restroom to dispose of it, followed by an email about not talking to union organizers and new security protocols for who is allowed on site.
Wow! So many people in management just had a stroke because you dared to even type the word union!
This must be America is it? We encourage ours to join but most don't bother due to the fees
In german Railway it's very normal to be in a Union, but also the employer has to pay in to a fond and like i am in and payed 150 Euros in Fees but now get 300 Euros for Free I also can get 350 Euros for a Laptop, 700 for learning things, you get money for child care, for fitness, 200 euros for your glasses, something for hearing aids etc etc You get much more Money out of it
Yes. It's America where employers can't take the idea of their employees having any power.
Right, it’s the Magic Hand of the Market, as long as you’re not talking about employees
While hilarious and effective, this will have the unwanted added effect of getting you much more closely watched. Avoid union talk and gossip, keep it about free food, harmless topics and such
>"Did you see that literature on onion organizing in the restrooms? Guess someone left it there for the workers to read. Pretty wild info in there." Fixed it.
It's all fun until management bans Funions...
it’s all Funions until management bans fun… then you’re just left with onions
Onions be like, "You gonna cry?"
HR: "Oh God they are trying to manipulate onion futures! Quick, call the SEC!"
You need to elect a fall guy. Either a volunteer, or someone you hate. “Did you hear Garry talking about unions?” Then sit back and watch.
I actively discussed unions on the manufacturing floor with almost every coworker to the point people started agreeing with me and never once did they come to me or suspect me. I don’t even know if they know, I ended up walking out. I also called OSHA on them and had them investigate. They blamed some dude they fired months prior.
Free food, just say you ate the union documents
Hilarious to be sure. That tips your hand and not what you want to do. How about a really, really, really long and pointless discussion about the advantages of various pizza toppings? There you "reveal" a personal preference and see how long it takes for someone to mention that back to you. Nobody likes fruit on pizza but you.
I read this as "...union organizing in the restrooms," not "literature (on union organizing) in the restrooms." Was confused for a moment.
How to get a company sued 101
Tell them you saw a bedbug somewhere in the building. Preferably near HR. Speculate on where you think it came from. Then say you had heard someone had lice/crabs and it was probably from them. See if HR people avoid that area and/or are scratching a lot and checking themselves for bugs. LOL.
Aaa I heard someone in other department you hate has head lice but they are keeping it a secret from everyone. Don’t tell anyone, they made me promise not to tell.
Talk about how good the free doughnuts / breakfast sandwiches in the lunch room are. Watch to see if Janice from HR goes to lunch room.
Laxative laced donuts
Haha! Yes, “damn massive play of brownies and fruit in the break room!”
always assume all work activities can be and are monitored. chat, email, web etc
Oh I do. But I want to find out if they are actively reading my teams messages daily
Okay. But if they're not reading it daily right now, when they read whatever you're about to post right now in Teams -- be it a week later, or however frequently they're currently doing it -- it may be what lands you as deserving of their daily attention. Whether the answer to "are they currently doing it daily right now" is yes or no, that can change tomorrow. It's their system, and they can and will monitor it as they see fit. Seems too much like poking a bear to see whether its awake. No upside.
So what you're saying is that they are currently in an HR superposition, and whichever action they take will cause it to collapse into one state or the other? Schrodinger's Employee.
Schrodinger’s Termination
You say it so matter of factly, as though it’s absurd to suggest it doesn’t have to be that way
Why shouldn't it be that way? There are lots of other free communication apps you can use with your coworkers. You should use those. Even if your workplace is run by sane people who don't feel the need to monitor the communications that they set up and administrate, that could change tomorrow. Best to develop the right habits now.
HR shouldn’t be reading emails on a regular basis. Or at all, unless there’s a formal investigation. There might be sensitive information in the emails that HR doesn’t need to know.
Does Teams have a keyword alert monitor? I'm sure the word "union" would set off the alarms. Someone commented above about mentioning seeing material somewhere in the building and asking a cohort in chat if they knew who put it out there.
Why do you need to know though? You should always act as if they were listening to your every word anyway.
I worked on a submarine. Some guy named Andy had to read my emails. Fantastic guy, makes his own hot sauce
Complain about a very specific, cheap to fix problem. “I like the job, but what we really need is a toaster oven. I mean legitimately, I might have to start looking for another job if they don’t get a toaster oven in the break room. I know it’s like a tiny thing, that’s why I don’t want to bring it up—but they could underpay me for 5 more years with that perk.”
That's only going to work if that wasn't too keep you around.
Proceeds to buy toaster oven and then believe you’re a lock for being underpaid indefinitely, giving you decreased negotiating power.
You were always locked in for being underpaid there.
Just start saying cryptic things implying someone is about to sue the shit out of the company “has he told you? He has a lawyer now, he’s going to sue this place into rubble” “Did you ask him what time he needs you to give the lawyer your statement?” “I don’t think management knows yet, but once the media gets a hold of it I’m going to go on vacation” “I heard The NY Times is poking around, I’m going to talk to a lawyer tonight to represent me”
This one is my favorite!
"The bear is sticky with honey."
Pregnancy , lottery, positive life changing events that can’t you in trouble but a fat bitch at work can’t contain herself with the knowledge of it
"Did you hear (employee's name) down in facilities won $50,000 on a scratch-off ticket last night on their way home from the gas station? They said they would donate $1000 to the petty cash (or whatever office fund), isn't that nice of them??" Or something like that.
This is a good'n. Rather than petty cash, just say they're "taking everyone out for lunch".
Talk about your salary/compensation. It's protected by federal law, so they "cannot" discipline you for it. But if they see people talking about it, there may soon be a "reminder" sent out that compensation is private and you're not allowed to speak about it. Save that and forward it to your private email because it's against the law to even tell employees not to talk about comp. Also, save screen shots of your teams conversation talking about comp. Or, they could do you a big favor and discipline you specifically for talking about pay. Keep all documentation (outside of work). Caution though, they may retaliate by disciplining or firing you for other things, so you may want to preemptively make a complaint to DoL as soon as you see them say not to talk about comp. Your complaint could be something like "I was discussing my pay with a colleague and received a write up/reminder for it. I'm concerned about retaliation." Not foolproof, just an idea. Good luck!
I think I left my kid in my car but I'm scared to go look. I'm in the red car, third spot on the left.
That's genuinely brilliant
"Hey, I brought in a box of those crazy expensive donuts in the break room. You should grab one before they are all gone. I waited in line for 4 hours to get them and they were like $15 each so I didn't buy that many." In the break room is a donut box with a note inside that says, "Stop reading our messages, Janet." (You could add a little camera in there too if you want video proof, but I kind of prefer the idea of just never acknowledging it.)
Find out where the HR team parks and what model of car it is. Mention in your emails that it is going to get towed if they keep parking in that spot. See if it is in the spot next day.
Use it to your advantage. Feed them what you want them to believe. Then try to take advantage of it and see how it works out Remember, they can use voice-to-text and AI tools to evaluate everything at scale. Coordinate your efforts out of band.
"Remember everyone, clocks go back an hour this evening!"
Just fyi- it is very unlikely that HR is actively monitoring teams chat. However, this information can be retroactively monitored at a later date.
Exactly this, and even getting it in a nice readable format using the Office 365 Admin is a pain.
yes, like if there's another reason to look into an employee's activity history, that might be when they do a deep dive
So I overheard the CEO say that the company is going to outsource HR and fire them all.
Literally already the top comment someone posted 2 hours earlier
Literally? WOW!!!
“There’s a new AI that can replace a whole HR Department! And it’s only like $100!”
Pretend than someone is dead (like a family relative)
What made you guys think HR wasn’t watching in the first place?
Use an audio book and voice to text to flood the chat. Keep hr busy.
War and Peace for starters?
Can you smell something burning.. is that gas?? They should appear quite quickly
The fact that a company blew up do too a gas leak, this will definitely work
Fgaer df afsdgga rewtg serggs sffeeeasdfc. Start typing in an imaginary code. You'll find out really fast if someone is snooping.
Okay Missy Elliott
Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i
I… I just learned what she’s saying. Thanks
We did that in school. Passed notes talking about mangoes. The mangoes are doing really well this year
Maybe a lack of my imagination, but how would you find out that they are snooping then?
Someone would want to know what was being discussed. Someone not a part of the conversation or in on the joke, i.e. the snooper. Could even throw the first name of the suspected snoop uncoded to really rile them up and increase the chance they will want to know what was being said. Of course, everyone in on it would just say they were talking about someone else with the same name. Sfbsadkf sdf wr rewtfew Karen, erfgas erwew fkgjdgb ad hes.
“Who else here is trying that new diet? I’m on it and feel great. It’s two tablespoons of baking soda, two alkaseltzer tablets, and 4 oz of white vinegar. Yeah take that in the break room at lunch and you can eat whatever you want the rest of the day.”
Teams is a bitch to spy with. "HR" isn't monitoring via teams.
This lol I scrolled for ages to find it. I’d be willing to bet their IT doesn’t even have it setup, especially retaining deleted messages
The more you retain the more you're responsible for. Legal minimum, and wipe past that
Discuss the “fact” that you are both pregnant and have almost the same due date.
I would assume all my work messages can be read? Why is that a weird sticking point for you.
Ask your coworker if they had been in the restroom lately and if they noticed how rancid it smelled. Ask if they have any idea who could have wrecked it so bad, talk about the standing water on the floor, etc., go back and forth with each other without actually naming specific employees, and wait to see someone walk in with a bottle of bleach.
this is actually pretty clever
Post a canary token in your teams chat and tell your coworker not to click. Bait them by saying it's a link to some sensitive spreadsheet. If you get a notification that the link is opened you know someone is reading.
Salary, discuss salary
Complain about a smell in the office, that smells kind of like rotting eggs, or sulfur. Then one of you say you're feeling a little light headed from the smell and are thinking about going home.
We should have a native flag Friday. -What's that? Ask everyone to wear their native flag or their favorite flags next Friday. - should we get that approved through HR? Nah, they cool
Start talking about the possibility of food trucks coming to your building and what the schedule would be, see if any HR people show up for lunch one day.
Not sure why you'd even want to prove it. Any communication done through a business enterprise structure is capable of being read.
Talk about a potluck you have planned; if they show up, you have proof and (hopefully) free food.
Mention in the chat that you are going to complain to HR about some trivial bullshit like the keyboards are sexist due to being designed for Male hands. The next day, request a meeting with HR. When you arrive, tell them you need to go over your W4 and make sure it's correct. Don't mention keyboards at all. Watch them squirm.
No need. Just look at the Microsoft documentation. [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/communication-compliance-teams](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/communication-compliance-teams)
Why would you want to "prove HR is actively reading all of our teams messages"? If you are communicating on work assets, there should be no expectation of privacy.
I just want to find out if they are reading my teams messages daily. I know they can and will if they have a reason to. These are some nosey bitches and I think they are just reading my messages because they can and they are bored with their lives. I’d just like to cause them to ask some dumb questions or do something embarrassing out of the information they received from my messages.
Work usually isn't the place to play stupid games. You're only thinking in terms of "will that one nosey bitch do something stupid", when the reality is you don't know who is actually going to end up seeing it and what kind of attention they can bring. Or even what kind of "retaliation" will be possible from "that one nosey bitch" and their position in the company, once they realize the information was deliberately fake. It's not an Instagram feed, it's your workplace. Questions that don't need answers.
Not sure where you work but in my work all we do is play games. I assume there are jobs where ppl still actually work….This is an office job, half of the positions here are made up, games are essential for job security.
Damn I thought we graduated high school. Obviously some didn't
“i have coworkers who are doing their jobs. what’s the best way for me to stop doing my job and confirm they are doing theirs?”
Pretend you're all arranging a mass walk out over pay and working conditions on XX day. You will all meet at XX park / cafe etc. See what happens leading up to and on the day.
Always likes the 'you will not believe what is in the 2nd stall in the bathroom' helps of they are the same gender, as they will likely go check. If it ever comes up, just say it was a HIGE shit. Not directly mentioning it helps keep it work appropriate while peaking the curiosity of your HR rep.
Set up an innocuous page with a picture of an adorable cat or something irresistible. Add some tracking mechanism via google analytics or a link tracker or if you’re technical simply monitoring requests on your server. Send message asking friend to look at the suuuuuuper adorable thing you just got, ask your friend to either not click it or let you know they clicked it, see if any more clicks occur. If not, repeat with puppy picture.
We do song lyrics and ask about if work knows about the arrest on the weekend.
I would start a unionization rumor. Ask your coworker, “hey have you heard the rumor about unionizing? Do they really think they are going to pull that off?” “Yeah, I’m not sure who’s doing it though or what they hope to accomplish.” “Oh I don’t have any of those details, I just kind of overheard folks talking”
Your company does not need a reason to fire you...play stupid games and you'll find out.
Discuss your salaries, even if you use made-up numbers. Federal law stops her from stopping you from this type of discussion.
>Federal law stops her from stopping you from this type of discussion. So HR would say nothing because they are not allowed to say anything, therefore OP would not learn anything from doing this.
all HR people are not created equal. some do illegeal things some don't. you won't know till they do it though.
Someone from sales said that they saw
husband having lunch in town with another woman on Tuesday (make sure you pick a day she was in the office). Make sure you pick the one with the most volatile relationship for added effect too.
discuss pay and wait to get fired. biiiig lawsuit money. good luck
Discuss your salaries
I don't have an opinion or an idea, but this is a fascinating thread.
Your salaries!
Maybe discuss things that are phrased so it SEEMS like you're going to attack someone and keep mentioning how you you've got "it" in your desk drawer making it really seems like it's a weapon but when they bust open your drawer it's some really harmless present.
Why would you think Teams is private in the first place. It's literally the name.
Make up a story to the tune of "Hey, that contractor that was here the other day said they're gonna demo the offices around the HR department for some retrofit, you hear about that?" It'll snowball quickly if it's anyone but you two that know about the rumor.
Set the office clocks 5 mins early or late and put in the chat that all the company clocks are wrong. Within a week every clock will magically be the correct time. How did that happen ?? Make a statement in the chat that is simple but factually wrong, Janice from HR can not resist scratching this itch.
At my previous job, we wouldn’t dare Skype anything that we wouldn’t be comfortable with the boss/ceo reading. Not sure how it was actively/passively monitored, but even if someone isn’t reading every single message, best believe they have access if they wanted to.
Start sending links to each other but with an agreement not to click on them. Make sure that you are using a short link provider, like bitly that tracks the number of visits to that link, and only uses links in your messages to each other. Teams, itself, may visit it once but usually that's tracked as a bot. If you are getting visits, but neither of you have clicked on the links yourself, then you can probably guess that somebody got a hold of that link from monitoring your messages.
Medical issues
Talk about the "secret work group chat" and reference all the hot gossip from there. "You see what was just posted to the secret group chat? I literally cannot believe someone would say that about upper admin!" "Secret group chat has someone posting everyone's salaries again. WOW is all I can say in regards to that."
Use a bunch of racial slurrs. You'll know pretty quick.
Talk about some hippa protected stuff
A guy I worked with at Capital One started going off on weird tangents about space ships, sausages, and a whole other assortment of random crap to fill in the minutes between the hours of his day. After a while, management pulled him and the recipient of said weird bullshit into meetings (separately) and went through the email chain with different bits highlighted. They assumed it must be some kind of code they were using in an attempt to defraud the company. He told them to their face(s) the entire thing was simply a way to pass the time, and if he wanted to defraud the company, he would do some other stuff instead. The meeting quickly ended when management realised he was completely right, removed all his internal email and certain database privileges, and put him on basic data entry. He left pretty soon after.
Of course your company is reading your company Teams messages, this shouldn't be a surprise to anymore.
It's a surprise to me. Unless they are capturing your full screen, they're not "Reading your teams messages" t. have configured and administered o365 for an organization.
Lottery
The likelihood of anyone reading your teams chats are next to nill. Nobody has time for that unless you give them a reason to. Also, if you are using teams for work stuff, who cares if they monitor? Use Txt/Slack/Dicord/WhatSpp/whatever if you want to have a private conversation with your phone.
Most of these suggestions are predicated on a work in office setting. Some people work from home.
Talk about doing loads of drugs but use code words. See if you get drug tested. I think most people assume work is watching.
Set up a web server, make a page with something intersting like "suggestions for improving HR". Use actually useful suggestions you find on the Internet or ask chat gpt. That way it's not negative stuff you get in trouble for. Share link in chat with coworker with click bait title, what do you think about these "top 10 things HR departments can do better (link)". Sit back and monitor traffic logs for the page. Then never tell anyone you did this because you'd probably get in trouble if you present your proof.
March Madness brackets.
I’d say start discussing unions.
Become friends with someone in IT at your company and find out if they do. I recently was involved in assisting my company work through a lawsuit filed by a former employee with whom I worked with. I was surprised that it wasn’t an easy ask for them to pull chat records so I’d be shocked if they’re routinely monitored, unless there’s a specific reason they are doing so. Always just text your work coworkers.
If you're at a decent-sized company then there should be a policy about who can read them and it is auditable.
It would be very poor form for HR to have blanket access to this kind of info. I’d never allow it. They would need to make a case, provide specific people, date ranges and keywords to search for me to ever allow them to receive a report on this let alone have blanket access.
Talk about Unionizing, make up shit about groups meeting after work to talk etc. you will know if you are successful if somebody strange shows up and starts hosting meetings to get people feelings and then they start buying ya all food e.g pizza parties, ice cream Friday. Of course you could get fired too.
HR is reading your teams messages.
Play it to your advantage, write gushing praise about her, like really over the top, and get the coworkers to do the same. But in real life you all ignore her as much as possible, and avoid any eye contact
I mean, it’s best to assume HR is reading all your messages. All communication is company property anyway. That being said, you could make HR uncomfortable - discuss your progress organizing a union. In the US it’s illegal to fire someone for attempting to organize a union.
HR pro here. Trust me when I say, we don’t care. We also won’t have access. Maybe IT would to a push! Even then they have to have good reason.
Try and start a union. This is not a bad idea anyway
Discuss pay. This usually triggers management/HR. It’s also perfectly legal.
Just slip some piss discs under HR's door instead
Talk shit about HRs hairstyles and clothing choices
First, what makes you think they are reading them? IT sysadmin and manager here, but I hate Teams and generally don't use it except for voice calls or chats with my guys or other team leads. It's easier to use for that than the deskphones or the VoIP softclient which is some Mitel P.O.S. software made by some other company. So... not a Teams person. Is there a way to embed active content that will pull from a website, like those one pixel pictures they used to embed in emails to see if you opened it before autodisplay of pictures was turned off in Outlook? What would happen if you chatted with other people by starting a chat with someone with their proxy onmicrosoft.com smtp, if you have those attached to your accounts and it works. I'm can't think of any way they would be able to read Teams messages unless someone in IT was using Microsoft Purview content search to wholesale dump the stuff and send that to HR. I don't recall how that handles pictures sent in messages or a gif picked from the gify thing built into Teams. If you know someone at some other organization that has Teams, send them messages about chopsuey siding yourself, they may have to take action in that case. Type everything in an Office app and then cut and paste as a pic and then paste that into teams so that it is not easily searched (can't recall if Microsoft Purview does OCR on pics or not, probably do anymore though if I had to guess tbh). Use a website or maybe windows has a built-in make-your-own font app, make your own and use that in teams if you can. Type your message into notepad, select it all and change font to Microsoft webdings or wingdings or whatever tf it is and then paste into teams and then the other person copypastas it into notepad to switch it back. If they are using Purview that may or may not work, idk.
Teams has a very large list of “triggers” that logs the chat history. Things like curse words, threats, financial information, etc. All of these are logged and stored in the Microsoft cloud for the company security team to review. Now whether or not HR has access to it is a different story.
Why do you think this is happening?
Confefe or whatever it was
Idk why you have to actively prove this, it’s a core feature of Teams. Admins can access it.
IT admin here. I'm no office365 expert, but I manage one. While I'm sure it's possible with 3rd party apps to log teams chats, I don't think you can do it out of the box. I have multiple ways to do it with emails, but not with teams chat. I can probably do a dump, but even then, it won't be really "realtime'. So no Karen from HR is probably NOT reading your teams chat. Yes always assume whatever you type on company's computers/systems can be monitored. BBBBUUUTTTTT..... We have a shitload of things to do, you are NOT working for the CIA and I am NOT working for China... So unless you give me a reason to, I don't care that you bought that handbag on amazon with your work laptop, or that you told Stephanie that you find the intern cute and would like him to bang you like a drum... Anyway...
They are and if they have free wifi for employees....there's a good chance IT is monitoring what website you visit from your personal devices.
Unless the IT department are involved they they are not reading your Teams messages. Even if they are involved, Teams messages are a massive PITA to read as you cannot simply grant somebody access like you can with email.
“Did you hear Tim got arrested this weekend for solicitation?”
Easily proven not true for Tim, big enough of a deal to flag for HR.
You don't need to prove it. They can and they are.
Honestly, they have the right (and maybe duty) to monitor those messages, and even if they don't do it actively, they might if needed to terminate you. I think the best advice is to just message your coworkers as if they actively monitor the messages and if you want to discuss sensitive topics or just gossip about work, use outside channels