"Should I Follow My Boss On Instagram?" and Other New Workplace Etiquette Conundrums

I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab.
Hey, money rehabbers. It's Morgan, who's been filling in for Nicole this week while Nicole is out on mat leave.
And it has been so much fun guest hosting. Thank you so much for hanging out with me this week.

And maybe I'll see you again soon. Next week, the guest host is going to be Nicole, kind of.
Next week, you're going to hear Nicole's favorite episodes of Help Wanted, the podcast that she co-hosts with Jason Pfeiffer, editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. Help Wanted is like money rehab,

but instead of answering all of your burning questions

on money and personal finance,

Help Wanted answers all of your burning questions

on career and business, starting a company,

excelling in a company, and everything in between.

And so to close my week and start the next,

I wanted to share an episode of Help Wanted that I was on. Enjoy and see you soon.

this is help wanted the show that makes your work work for you i'm jason pfeiffer editor-in-chief of entrepreneur magazine and i'm money expert nicole lappen on tuesdays jason and i answer the helpline

and help callers solve their work problems. And on Thursdays, I give you one way to improve your work and build a career or company you love.
And it starts now. Hello, Morgan.
Hello. Nicole and Jason.
Jason and Nicole. It's Nicole and Jason.
You know that. Actually, it's Jason and Nicole on the cover art because Jason has more airtime on Help Wanted.
So I'm like the sidekick. Oh, I didn't even notice that.
I will take it. What a big deal I am on this show.
That's exciting. Morgan, welcome to my show where Nicole occasionally appears too.
Perfect. Happy to be here.
Well, let's just start out by saying, you guys, it's 2024. It is a new era for a whole lot of things in our life.
There's AI. People are wearing baggy pants now, like it's the 90s.
My wife is very obsessed with that. Yes.
Yeah. There's a whole lot of newness going on.
And that has also translated into the workplace. And so today, what I'm going to do with both of you is take you through some workplace etiquette that people have some questions about.
And I'd like for you both to weigh in and share what your thoughts are around these etiquette questions. Are you ready to rock? All right, I like it.
It's like it's the digital age Emily post. Exactly.
Great. All right.
Here's the first question for you both. Should you follow

your boss on Instagram? Should you follow your boss on Instagram? Here's a question back to you.

Has your boss followed you on Instagram? Let me paint this scenario. Your boss has a private

Instagram account. He or she has not followed you.
Should you hit that follow button? I feel like it depends on like what kind of vibe you have at work. Like if it's a small company.
Yeah. If it's a big company, probably not.
But also then it becomes you just open yourself up to more drama because like what if then he or she doesn't accept you? And then you're like spinning about it and then they have to decide. And it's just like, I don't know.
If it's a big gigando company, then I say no. I think that it depends upon the kind of relationship that you have with your boss.
My boss's name is Bill at Entrepreneur. I thought I did not follow him, but I just checked Instagram and actually I do and he follows me.
So maybe it's not so bad because I didn't even notice. But I think that the real issue here is how much should you be thinking about people that you know professionally when you are posting on social media? And I think the answer to that is all the time.
Because even if your boss doesn't follow you, they could see something that you post. So you should probably act like your boss follows you regardless of what you do.
This is a funny offshoot of this. My boyfriend runs a company and they have about 50 employees and they had an executive offsite recently.
And one of his employees said like, oh, I'm doing more running on this. I think it's like a running app or like the Apple watch.
Clearly I'm not a runner. So I don't know where you can like follow everybody.
Yeah. Yeah.
You can follow. Right.
There's like a whole ton of them. Okay.
You can follow your, when you're working out and like, if you've reached these benchmarks and he made a big deal about like, oh my God, I'm so excited. I'm on this thing.
We can connect on it or follow each other. And he's like, cool, man, whatever.
And so then he accepted him as part of it. But then the guy blocked him.
What? What? Maybe he thought, oh, well, if I'm working out in the middle of work, is Derek be annoyed or like is he gonna see this now and so he probably marinated on it and was like nay better not that's fair i think that the the blocking is an aggressive move so you'd want to be careful about that i mean it was aggressive it was like our pillow talk discussion of the other night so if you do follow your boss on instagram don't block them well i don't know if somebody's gonna know if they block if you blocked them if it's like a smaller little sort of community or something yeah don't be weird it just it it opens up a whole pandora's box of issues. So like, I would say default to no.
I would say default to no too. I would also say it shouldn't matter because the things that you're posting on social media are so work safe that anyone can see it.
And this is why you should just create group chats with friends where you can really do all your shit talking.

Excellent.

Okay.

Now, as bosses, say one of your employees has a public Instagram and has not followed you. Do you follow this employee on their public Instagram account? No, no.
I actually make a very specific point of this. I do not follow colleagues unless we have like hung out and that colleague relationship is turned like friend-like.
Otherwise, I leave it alone. I do not follow them.
I don't want them thinking about me when they're posting stuff. I just, that is a, that is an intentional decision that I make.
So I didn't even realize this, but it came up in our group dinner when we were all in New York that Morgan was like, Nicole followed me after our first call. And I was like, I don't remember that, but cool.
I didn't know that that was like a big deal or something notable. And I also don't really use Instagram, as you guys know, for like a lot of personal stuff, it's really work focused.
And so

like I have really close friends that I don't follow. And I don't, I just like kind of don't care.
Yeah. You know, it means more to some people than it does to others.
And it can create like a bunch of drama and issues around did they like your thing back in that. So yeah, here's a non digital scenario that I expand into all of this stuff.
When I became the boss, I realized that my presence at a after work happy hour took on a different meeting. I think that people might want to talk about me and they might want to talk about some annoying thing that I did.
And that's the right, they should. And when I was there, now they all have to defer to me in some way because- His Highness.
But that's how I always feel like if anybody is above me in a hierarchy, I add this level of deferentialness to just general conversation just because I don't ever want them to be annoyed at me because that's the thing. It's like, even if it's a social setting, an annoyance in a social setting can now translate to the work setting where that person now has some, they can lord over me something.
So anyway, so I just thought I now don't belong here after a certain amount of time. So maybe if everybody from the office goes to the bar, I don't belong here after the first drink and then I should leave.
And I take that mentality and I apply it to everything with social media. If my presence makes you think twice about anything because I am no longer just a neutral party in your life, then I should remove myself.
So that's why I don't follow people. That's why I don't go and like their stuff or whatever.
I remove myself because I understand that everything that I do or don't do is going to be perceived differently. And I just want to leave you alone and let you do your thing.
Thank you, your highness. You are welcome.
All right. Moving on to Zoom, everybody's new office.
Got a lot of etiquette questions about Zoom. Great.
First, can you eat during a Zoom meeting? Say it's in all how much are you eating is it a whole tortilla fajitas situation is it a power bar like i eat power bars a lot but i'm not gonna bring out you know tiki masala and like tandoori bread and like i've done that i've brought out i've brought out indian food work Zooms. Here's my rule.
I have a very specific rule for this. The rule is...
So first of all, it depends on the kind of... It depends on the Zoom, right? If it's a client call or some important call, no, obviously not.
You just said it was all hands. Oh, all hands.
Well, sorry, I'm exploring all the options. I'm hungry.
Can you tell? I'm kind of hungry. Eat on this call.
That is fine. We give you permission.
So if I need to be presenting totally professionally, obviously there's no food. If it is just internal and it's casual enough, then my rule is very specific.
The rule is no food goes into my mouth on camera. I will lean off camera and take a bite and then come back on camera.
That's so weird. Why? Why? Because I find it unpleasant to see.
And this is like whatever. You go out to dinner, it doesn't matter.
But I don't like watching cooking, like TV, like the Food Network or whatever. I don't like seeing people eat.
Why do you want to see people take food and put it in their mouth? That's not a pleasant thing to see. It's not like what I'm going to choose if I'm like, you know, looking on YouTube to like watch people masticating.
But that's what people do. Like you watch Guy Fieri and it's just like him shoveling food into his mouth.
I don't understand. But I don't mind it.
Like, I don't, I'm not opposed to it so much

that I want to see you like go off camera like a weirdo.

And like, what are you doing over there?

Are you vaping?

Like, the food is, and I just lean out of frame

and I take a bite and then I come back in frame.

This is, I've always,

this is what I've been doing for years now.

Huh, I guess if we've never noticed it, Nicole,

maybe it's not that big of a deal.

Yeah, see, I've probably done it with you guys. It's not.
I mean, but also I get it from Jason's perspective because it's always a topic of discussion when Jason eats. So that is true.
It's like he wants to avoid the I can't taste discussion. Like inevitably I'd be like, so what does it taste like? Right.
Nothing. Does it taste like anything? For context, for people who don't know, I literally genuinely do not have a sense of taste.
I cannot taste food. So people who know this ask me a lot of questions.
Regular listeners know. Stick around.
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Welcome back to Help Wanted. Let's get to it.

When is it appropriate to come to a Zoom meeting with your camera turned off? Oh, I have strong feelings about this too. When you're naked? Yes.
Or when like somebody else is naked. I used to work from my bedroom and my wife would come in after the shower and she would always be like, is the zoom off? And I'd have to, you know, I'd have to turn it off.
So I feel like companies, I feel like I'm going to deputize everyone listening to slowly, slowly try to drive your company culture towards camera off. What? Yes.
Camera off. We don't need this.
We don't need to be on camera all day to see each one. What if we have a nice sign and a mic flag? Well, that's wonderful for filming, for making podcasts and stuff.
But like, you know, if you were just talking to colleagues all day, I just don't think that you need to see their faces. And whenever I have a meeting and I tell people, you know, we don't need it.
You don't need another Zoom meeting in your life. I am sure we can do camera off.
They always say, do you know what they say to me? They say the same thing every time when I say, I'm sure you don't need another zoom meeting in your life. We can keep the cameras off.
What do they say? Thank you. Thank you.
They always say, thank you. Thank you because they don't want it.
Nobody wants it. I have found that entrepreneur there, there were a couple colleagues who just started showing up with their camera off.
Shout out Deepa. Deepa's cameras off and off.
And it inspired others. It created permission for other people to keep their cameras off.
And now most in a lot of meeting settings at entrepreneur, cameras are all off. I think that is wonderful.
Cameras off. That is so surprising to me and the complete opposite of what I thought you were going to say because, okay, so imagine a scenario in which you have somebody on your team who has kind of been slacking.
Everybody's working remote. You have your suspicions that they don't work at all.
They are actually a very prominent member of a bowling league and they're bowling professionally and not doing their work. If they come to a meeting with their camera turned off, are you thinking that they're distracted? They're not focused.
They're not actually engaged. Oh, I think it's entirely dependent upon the existing set of expectations.
If this person works well and shows up and there's just never a question about whether they're working, like Deepa is a example of which is just a colleague of mine, Deepa. Deepa is the Swiss army knife of entrepreneurs.
She does everything. And there is never a question of whether or not Deepa is on it.
Deepa is always on it. And as a result, nobody cares if Deepa's camera is off because she's there.
Everything will get done. There's just no worry.
So in a way,

you almost have to earn the camera off.

It's like Morgan is the Swiss army knife of M&M.

Keep your camera off, sister.

We know you're on it.

Keep your camera off.

You earned it.

Wow.

But generally, I will not put my camera on

if I'm naked.

Nobody needs to see that.

Although I have seen your children naked a lot, Jason.

You're too little boys.

It's fine. Or if I'm driving, you guys know I'm a.
You're two little boys. It's fun.

Or if I'm driving, you guys know I'm a terrible driver.

And so I keep my camera off.

Yeah.

Safety first.

Safety first.

Okay.

Next.

Is it annoying to type during a Zoom call and therefore should you not do it?

If you have to take notes for a Zoom call, should you instead record the meeting or take

notes in a notebook so that you're not clackety clacking? I have thoughts on this too. Oh, I didn't know I have strong feelings on all these subjects.
I think Morgan does a nice job too on our Zames where she announces that she's taking notes. Yeah, that's a nice thing to do is to be clear about it.
And if you're taking notes and people know you're taking notes because you care about what is being discussed, then I don't, you know, it's like, whatever, there's a little clacking and that's fine. But a couple of things to say.
Number one, you can always mute. I do that often.
If someone's going to be talking for a few minutes and I'm typing, I will just mute myself and then type away. But also, shout out, we are not getting any money for this, though we probably should.
I have been using Fathom. Fathom is an AI note taker.
It joins my meetings. And I think it's fathom.video is the website.
And it is awesome. It's just there in the background.
It transcribes all your calls. But it also does this great job of organizing all the main points using AI.
And it's really impressive. So now I have it in all my calls and now I don't need to take as many notes.
That's cool. I mean, I guess like I will generally take notes or notes adjacent if something's being said in a meeting and it's like, oh, the follow-up is you have to email or something like I'll do that.
But who knows? I could be sexting. Could be.
I don't know. So so maybe it's worth announcing what I'm doing on my telephone.
But also sometimes I'm not taking notes and I I'm not sexting, but I'm like dealing with the dog walker right now or, you know, multitasking. I actually think that this is a really good move for anybody, which is to think about how other people perceive seeing you on the phone.
So if you're in a meeting and you pick up your phone and you're taking notes, it's worth saying, sorry, I'm just taking notes. And that way people don't think that you're sexting or texting the dog walker.
What do you think of my phone usage? Like when you do it when we're recording or whatever? I always assume you're dealing with something and it's fine because you also, again, this comes back to like, what have you earned and what's the set expectations? I know that you're not going to pick up your phone and disappear into it in the middle of a conversation. And therefore, if you pick up the phone, it's not like a problem.
But when my eight-year-old son, Fenn, picks up his iPad in the middle of a conversation, I know we have fully lost him to Roblox and therefore we got to pull him back. But when I go and I give a talk, like a keynote somewhere, oftentimes I'll see people on their phones and then they will come up to me afterwards and they will show me the notes.
And they'll be like, I'm sorry if it looked rude that I was on the phone. I was taking notes.
Like they want to show that. And I think that that's a good instinct.
That's cool. So that they're like, I wasn't on Roblox with Fenn.
Yeah, exactly. Right.
I hope not. We are really hoping that the other people that Fenn is interacting with on Roblox are also eight, but it's possible that they're 50 and at a convention listening to me give a keynote talk.
All right, this next one, I'm going to start with you, Nicole, because I know this is a topic, Nicole, that you are very passionate about, which is small talk. On Zoom, it's particularly terrible.
There's always those first couple of minutes in a Zoom meeting where there's like fumbly small talk where someone asks like, where in the world are you based? Or how's the weather where you are? Doing anything fun this weekend? Yeah, I hate it. Hate it.
I don't like anything about it. I would rather be silent.
So say you're on a Zoom call that has five attendees. You're waiting for the last two people.
You sit in silence. Just really awkwardly? Just glare at each other? No, because inevitably they're going to fucking ask me, where are you in the world and like oh my god you're in LA isn't it raining yes are you a meteorologist like got it so I will not sit in silence because someone will say some stupid small talk zoom thing but honestly we had a recording earlier today and Jason was late and we were waiting for him and I just sat silent.
And I fumbled through some small talks and I asked where they lived. Morgan did the small talk.
Oh man, I'm sorry about that. Yeah, I was just like, I'm done.
I'm good. I'm comfortable with myself and the silence.
I don't feel like I need to fill the void. Morgan's face right now.
Because you had to do all the small talk, Morgan. What was your question? I'm sorry.
Do anything good this weekend? I did the exact cliche thing that I was like, so are you, do you guys live in New York? And they were like, nope, just outside of it in Jersey. And I was like, ah, okay.
Morgan's terrific at the small talk. And truly, I just want no want no part of it i like big talk but i don't know what that big talk is because there's a balance between like super big talk like you don't want to be like hey so tell me about your childhood trump like we're just waiting on this other person like let's get deep like there has to be a middle ground all right i'm gonna give it to you you.
Here's the solution. This is the solution.
The solution is this. Tell a story.
So this is what I always do is if I'm on a call, I share whatever the latest amusing or random thing is. I just start telling that to people.
And the reason I do it is because I know that everyone on this call hates Zoom small talk, but also will feel obliged to do it unless somebody just fills the void. Somebody needs to fill the void.
And I, you know, I know that I, for better or for worse, a thing I can do is fill a void. And so I'll just start talking.
I'll just start, I'll just tell some random story until everyone's there. And then I will exit the story and we'll, we'll get on.
And it's like, look, as long as you know that you're not it, like you didn't just launch your own private version of the moth and like people aren't there for your stories. So they don't want it any longer than necessary.
But like, you know, if you tell a story and then as soon as the last person shows up and the meeting is supposed to begin, like wrap your story up and move into the thing, everyone will love you for it. Yeah, no, I like that.
I like a random story. The other day, I don't know if you were on the call, Morgan, but I got this little baby mic flag that I'm very excited about for our social videos.
And it had just arrived. And I was like, oh my God, I got this like baby mic flag.
I'm so excited about it. And was like an interesting show and tell.
So maybe now I'm just going to keep it here and like pretend like I just got it all the time just as my go-to story because it's interesting. It's cute.
It's not the weather. Yeah.
You know, I mean, another way you could solve this for people is put interesting things in your background and then people will ask about them. Oh, like a money roll? Yeah, let's do that.
Like a money roll? Yes. Nicole's got a giant money roll behind her, like a physical statue of money.
But then you need something amusing to say about it. And I found this to be the case often when I go and call somebody and I was like, oh, I like your wall of hats.
And then they'll be like, oh, thank you. And then they'll start telling me about the hats and it fills whatever time is necessary.
I usually have, depending on the angle that I'm in my room, I either have a large old timey typewriter behind me, which was my grandma's. And so I have a whole couple things to say about that.
Or there are some guitars hanging on the wall that people ask me about. And then I say some things about that.
So have something that starts a conversation. People will ask about it.
But now it is your duty to have some at least mildly engaging thing to say about it that can last 60 to 120 seconds. Yeah, I like it.
Lean on the props, not the weather. I like it.
We have one more that we can probably squeeze in. And it's, do you treat Zoom as a mirror? Which I'm doing right now because I fucked up my hair color.
So I actually, that's a pet peeve of mine when people do that. Can you tell though? Cause I move my screen around like all around here.
So you don't really know where my, where my screen is. Is it a mirror? Is it not? It's not about where you're looking on the thing.
It's about how you're behaving in the thing. And so if you're like adjusting your hair, I'm like, I know that wherever you're looking, that's where your video is.
It's not a pet peeve when you do it because nothing that you could do could ever bother me. But when I'm on like, when I'm on a bigger meeting and I just, I see people do it, it is a pet peeve of mine.
What percentage of time when you are on a Zoom call, for example, you listening at home, what you don't see is that we are recording. We're all in a Zoom together right now, me.
And I'm looking at myself in horror. Nicole is looking at herself and has checked her phone a couple of times.
But we're also recording locally, which is why the audio quality is better. Anyway, point is, on this call or on regular calls, what percentage of the time have you spent looking at yourself? Morgan, how much time have you spent looking at yourself instead of me and Nicole on this call? I'd say 25%.
I was going to go a little higher for myself, like maybe a third. Like 95%.
My hair is really fucked up right now and it is bothering me. And I know what you guys look like.
But it's not 95%, but it's more than 25%. Nicole has her video pinned and ours aren't even visible.
The small ones. Wait, Morgan.
I don't care if the guest is in the waiting room. What the fuck is shrimping? Oh, yeah.
This is at the end. Right.
Right. So there's a there is a just for context, there is a we're going to take another episode after this one, there is a guest for that episode, that person is in the waiting room waiting for us.
But also, Morgan had created a list of questions for this episode. And the shrimping was at the end.
What the hell is shrimping? Okay, shrimping is the is the word for when somebody somebody joins a Zoom interview like this. All right.
What are you doing? Explain. Yeah.
Describe that. I am sitting so low in my chair that only my head is visible.
Like I'm the Wizard of Oz. Right.
So this is, it is 95% background. It's just like your head at a terrible angle, which is what it always is.
And just like as a little nub in the bottom middle of the, everybody has seen that. Everybody has seen that.
And I think the question is, how much does your composition on Zoom really matter and make an impact on people? Like, do people really care? And does it actually make a difference? Nicole says yes. Yes.
100%. Yes.
100%. This is why I'm like, Jason, change your fucking cord to make it the white cord that we got you.
Like every little thing. Oh, really? I forgot about the white cord.
Where's your sign? Where's your money roll? Right. Yes.
Yeah. Nicole is policing what is happening in my, but yes, that is completely, you know, if you want to, if you want to appear better to people in meetings and probably even be taken more seriously, two things, improve the video and improve the audio.
And both are very, very easy. I will tell you what I have.
Again, I'm not getting paid anything for this. I have a Logitech Brio.
It is a 4K camera. It just attaches to, sort of sits on top of my laptop.
You plug it in. Instant, giant improvement in video quality.
It also handles lighting better. So like even if I'm in a semi-dark room, it looks better.
And then I have, for like important meetings that I take, I have a Lov, which is just the kind of little microphone that clips to your clothing. And it plugs directly into my MacBook.
It's called a Clip 2, Clip 2 something. And it is great.
It's so easy and it makes my audio much better and you get taken more seriously. So I think that's very important.
Sorry, I wasn't listening. I was checking out my...
What? The crazy thing about all of these questions is that they wouldn't have even been questions four years ago. And so the new normal, the way that we work is changing so much with technology and in a post-pandemic world.
And so as listeners have questions about new work etiquette that they want to ask, DM Nicole or Jason on Instagram. You can follow them.
Just maybe don't follow your boss. Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network.
Help Wanted is hosted by me, Jason Pfeiffer. And me, Nicole Lapin.

Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoie.

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Maybe a little dance?

Oh, I didn't sign up for that.

All right. Well, talk to you soon.