This, Tipples explains, is because people often need affirmation and reassurance about how they are perceived. “Leaving a group can be seen as rude or strange and taken extremely personally. If they do leave, there may be exclusion from further groups – some have reported that they are never invited again,” she says. “The idea of missing out on what might happen has happened or will happen, for some, is simply too much to bear.”

WhatsApp use increased during the pandemic, during lockdowns and when we were all working from home. It provided connection that we were sorely lacking, but that’s also when it started to feel like a full time job in itself. Conversations could no longer be had across the desk, and sometimes emailing isn’t instant enough. There’s Slack, but that’s just one more app – so we ended up with another group chat instead. I don’t actually mind the QWW (quick work WhatsApp), the ‘I’ve sent you an email, need your reply by 4pm’ stuff. I actually welcome it – it means that I don’t miss the important things, and nor do I have to check my email inbox every five minutes. But turn it into a group and the parameters spread. Messages that could’ve been sent to one person are sent to all 30 instead; “@Jess, can you update the spreadsheet to include next week?” Then comes the work-adjacent… “train strike!” “the air con isn’t working, BYO Calippos! *Melty face emoji*”. Next you’re getting updates on the cafeteria’s lunch menu, and before you know it, you have a CWW (chatty work WhatsApp) with 40 definitely-not-need-to-know pings a day. “Who’s watching Strictly?” “Just saw Duncan from Blue at Bristol airport!” “Guys, who wants to do an office Bake Off this year?”

If you miss nipping off to the tea-point to moan about a colleague, there’s a WhatsApp group for that, too. Take the time one female friend of mine filed a report on an ongoing work project that suggested an amendment, based on her extensive experience in the area. A male colleague posted her entire report, along with the comment “who does she think she is,” to a WhatsApp group – which she was also a member of. She replied, and he fell silent – but hasn’t apologised, and since it was said on WhatsApp rather than in the office or on an official channel, she hasn’t pursued it.

A freelance friend, meanwhile, privately quoted his fee for a job, only for the woman who’d asked for it to share it on a public WhatsApp group of industry contacts, asking if anyone would undercut it. He was a member of that group, too, and called her out for unprofessionalism.

It might not be the boring stuff of board meetings (especially if you’re watching this drama as a fly on the work-WhatsApp wall) but having your company chat constantly popping up means having thoughts about work constantly popping up, when you should be switched off from it. You (hopefully) wouldn’t check your work emails at 10pm on a Sunday, but most of us have WhatsApp set to flash up on our lockscreens – so little work niggles are suddenly reaching us in the middle of dinner, or a long bath. And you can’t mute your work chat, because for every 39 irrelevant messages, there’s one from your boss that you actually need to read and reply to.

“Please! Not another group chat”: inside WhatsApp’s slippery social politics