Horror movies can keep their jump scares. There are few things more disturbing than seeing your boss’s name pop up under “Seen” on your Instagram story. Nothing makes your blood run cold quite like realising your Saturday-night reel has just become Monday’s performance-review material.
This was not always the case. Adding your boss online used to be unthinkable. In creative industries it was normalised first because designers, writers, and photographers were using Instagram as their portfolios, so the follow requests made sense. But the lines blurred. Now it is not just the creatives showing off their work online. Even bankers, lawyers, and dentists are finding polite pings from their managers. Your feed is no longer just brunch photos and memes; it is practically a work annex.
When Jenny Matthews*, fresh out of college, landed her first teaching job at age 25, she was still figuring out the unspoken rules of workplace etiquette. So, when her department head sent her a social media request, she didn’t think twice. She was even flattered. “I thought it would be nice to connect on a personal level,” she laughs. That optimism lasted exactly one month. Matthews posted an old holiday photo of herself with her then-boyfriend...the kind of harmless, lowkey PDA, couple shot that usually earns a few heart emojis from your friends. Instead, she was promptly summoned to the principal’s office and told she was “setting the wrong example.”
The kicker? None of her students even followed her on social media
And so begins the dilemma. Do you post freely and risk becoming the week’s water-cooler story, or do you hide everything like you are in witness protection? Most people choose the latter. And the tricks are endless. Some mute their boss from stories, others restrict them, and many go through the ritual of tapping “Hide From” every single time they post. It is basically thumb yoga. Then there are the extremists. The Zero Posters, a new and growing cohort of digital natives who have decided the safest post is no post at all. Their feeds are barren, but at least they will never have to explain why they were too sick for Friday’s shift but mysteriously fine to upload beach throwbacks.
Some workers voluntarily open two accounts. The main one is squeaky-clean, filled with sunsets and motivational quotes. The close-friends account is where the real party’s at. Think of it as the corporate version of Batman and Bruce Wayne, one identity public and one private, and you pray the boss never stumbles on the wrong one.
The timing of all this could not be worse. Work has already spilled into every corner of people’s lives. Burnout mentions on Glassdoor jumped 32 per cent this year, the highest since 2016. And with quiet vacations on the rise, those sneaky breaks where people pretend to be working remotely while actually recharging, having your boss camped in your story views means even that sly escape is harder to pull off. In fact, a single brunch post can undo a week’s worth of careful camouflage.
Some go nuclear, quietly unfollowing or removing their boss altogether. Risky, yes, but sometimes easier than explaining why you ignored their Sunday call while clearly online, liking reels. A brave few even take it upstairs to HR, though lodging an official complaint about someone double-tapping our margarita photos seems a bit extreme, even by Gen Z standards.
The truth is, the workplace has officially followed us into our feeds. What started as portfolios for creatives has become a mainstream expectation, turning social media into yet another office corridor, only this one is open 24/7 and comes with analytics. Which brings us to the horror stories. Because as much as you can strategise and mute, things do go wrong. And when they do, the results range from awkward to hilarious (at least for one party).
Sumaiya Ahmed
27, doctor, Kolkata
“I once accidentally sent my department head a reel meant for a friend. It was a foot fetish joke about my ex. I didn’t notice until days later, but she suddenly seemed cold, and at one point I caught her glancing at my feet. I wanted to sink into the floor. Thankfully, I was rotated out of her department two weeks later.”
Sanjeev Sharma*
32, F&O trader, Mumbai
“I shared a slightly ranty article on LinkedIn about toxic leadership, just because I agreed with some of the points. I completely forgot that I had reached out to my current manager through LinkedIn to land this very job. He saw the post because someone tagged him in the comments and called me into his office to say, ‘So, should I be taking notes from this article?’ I have not posted anything remotely controversial since. I still work under him, so fingers crossed he never reads this. Pro tip: do not let the LinkedIn finance bros convince you that oversharing online is good for your ‘personal brand’.”
Alen Joy Joseph
26, sales and marketing associate, Toronto
“I had tickets to a Kendrick Lamar concert and there was no way I was missing it, so I called in sick. I completely forgot to hide my Instagram stories and of course my boss saw me singing my lungs out in the crowd. On Monday he did not say a word, but I have not been able to take a single sick day since. Totally worth it, though.”
Nikita Singh
29, PR consultant, Delhi
“I once worked at a PR firm where my manager turned all of us into unpaid influencers for her daughter’s beauty pageants. She followed every employee on social media just so she could DM us voting links and then stalked us until we liked, commented, and shared. It was awkward enough for me, but downright bizarre for my male co-workers who had to keep engaging with a 12-year-old’s pageant posts. And when it wasn’t the pageants, it was her lockdown bakery. She would walk up to our desks and ask, ‘Are you following my bakery page?’ until we did. By the end of it, I had liked so many of her daughter’s posts and cake reels that I felt like I was on payroll for both businesses. Honestly, it was diabolical.”
Karan Mehta*
26, copywriter, Mumbai
“During my probation I posted a meme on my Instagram story about surviving Monday meetings with alcohol in my coffee mug. It was obviously a joke for friends, but my manager had just followed me. The next morning, he walked into the office holding his mug and said, ‘Anything you want to tell us, Karan?’ The whole team burst out laughing. It was mortifying, and three years later he still teases me about it.”
Rohit Nair
27, graphic designer, Newcastle
“My college friends once made a sticker of me from an old photo where I was in cartoon-print boxers, holding a beer bottle, and grinning like an idiot. It was the kind of thing that should have stayed buried in a hostel group chat, but of course they kept it alive for years. The sticker somehow followed me to Instagram, and one day I tapped it by mistake in my office group chat. Two colleagues and my manager saw it before I could delete it. My manager replied with a polite laughing face and before I could delete it, my colleagues had taken screenshots. Now I live with the knowledge that the boxer-sticker version of me is floating around the office forever. I have seriously considered making a fake account just to access work group chats safely.”
*Some names have been changed upon request
