Unprofessional Slack

I find that people can be rather informal on Slack due to people perceiving it more like an Instant Messaging client, rather than a formal communication channel like email.

Here are some examples words and phrases:

1. Words, phrases or spelling that I would consider “Baby speak”: Fanks, looksies,
2. Very similar to the point above: comedic phrases like Facejacker’s Brian Badonde: “Bwoh bwexcellent work”,
3. Switching letters for comedic effect: “fassive mailure”.
4. Old English phrases: “I say, old bean”
5. Regional slang. I’ve seen it all, from Geordie “howay”, Yorkshire “off t’meeting”, and Cockney “I’ll have a butchers at your report”.

When we are in a multicultural team, there is no way a non-English speaker understands this. I did ask the non-English members of my team, and they were unaware of Cockney rhyming slang. They did recall a few phrases from films that they had seen and were now enlightened.

Other comedic spellings/phrases/inside-jokes can be confusing or make people feel left out.

Other unprofessional examples:

1. People putting silly statuses including sexual innuendos. They would never do this on Skype.
2. People posting stuff they would never write in an email or say to your face. I was communicating in a thread with someone over the course of an hour. It was time to go home, so I left the office. He then posted some meme along the lines of “and he’s gone!” implying I fled because he asked me to do work. There is no way he would have said that to my face. I have never even met the guy in person or spoke on the phone.
3. Someone asked for help with putting a video together. For some reason he added a random swear word. One guy points it out that it is NSFW, then someone makes a joke about the video consisting of pornographic material, someone else makes a joke about a convicted sex offender. No idea why people thought any of these things were appropriate, and it is completely out of character for our company culture. If I hadn’t read it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it happened…

but I guess anything goes on Slack.