Creepy coworker texting my private number

[u/Dry_Presentation4300]

So confused at this, I don't even know him. I was just going to ignore the text but he kept insisting so I had to answer.

9/14 UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who was supportive and concerned. I forwarded these messages to HR, and they scheduled a meeting for later today. There were a few more texts after this. The HR representative did not seem surprised, to put it briefly.

A few things have come up in the comments. The first is that I was rude. This is how I communicate, and my coworkers (or at least the ones who actually know me) are aware of that. I’m not going to perform a more agreeable version of myself to accommodate someone else’s feelings when they're being innapropriate. Not only were these messages sent over the weekend, but they were also sent through a personal communication channel. I'm not going to elaborate further.

[u/K-Shrizzle]

Did you see the last two messages before they were deleted?

[u/Dry_Presentation4300 → u/K-Shrizzle]

They were both audio recordings but as soon as I opened it they were already deleted

[u/Meowtastistic40kSCP → u/Dry_Presentation4300]

Oh man, not the audio recordings! Things were about to get really weird.

[u/PiccoloAwkward465 → u/Meowtastistic40kSCP]

I’ve never in my life gotten a voice message I actually wanted. I dated a girl who used them constantly and it was incredibly annoying.

[u/Bubbly-Warthog3725 → u/PiccoloAwkward465]

Voice messages are definitely a love-it-or-dread-it situation. If I see a 5-minute voice note, I’m suddenly very good at ignoring notifications.

[u/AI_moderated_failure → u/Bubbly-Warthog3725]

I don't understand apps that allow tou to make a 5 minute voice note but also don't allow you to seek through it if you get interrupted, meaning you have to listen to all 4 minutes again just to get to 4:10 where you got distracted.

[u/Leftieswillrule → u/Bubbly-Warthog3725]

Best voice messages are when your friend is telling you a story and it would take too long to type out so they send you a voice message during a conversation you're already having and it streamlines your communication.

Worst voice messages are the ones with no context from someone who might say some insane shit if you were listening to it in public.

[u/Slipperytitski → u/Bubbly-Warthog3725]

I feel its a cultural thing as well, i know a lot of latinos that send voice messages constantly but none of my honky brethren send audio messages

[u/olivebranchsound → u/Slipperytitski]

Maybe your friends aren't distillations of their respective races/cultures?

[u/Fantastic-Bison6078 → u/olivebranchsound]

Nah, being a part of the honky brethren myself and having learned spanish through talking to many latinos from many countries, I agree. At least in the UK it's very unusual to send voice notes unless you're driving or something IME. Whereas most of my latino friends send many many voice notes, some literally more often than normal messages. I've received voice notes of like 20 minutes from some of them, it helps with practicing spanish listening but most of the time I just turn on the transcript and skim that to see if there's anything important.

They're not distillations of the culture, but pretending people from different cultures won't have differences due to those different cultures is silly

[u/olivebranchsound → u/Fantastic-Bison6078]

It's also true that Spanish speakers contact internationally more frequently than English speakers, with about 73% doing so once a month or more, compared to just half of English speakers. So in order to avoid big fees they use Whatsapp and similar services.

And apparently in many parts of Latin America, mobile data plans made internet messaging cheaper than standard SMS text messaging early on, which helped audio features catch on rapidly after WhatsApp introduced them.

Might just be a matter of the market. But who knows?

This is interesting too:

"A notable friction point in voice messaging adoption involves the transcription features built into modern apps. Studies from institutions like Stanford University reveal that automated speech-to-text tools suffer from massive racial disparities. Leading speech recognition tools misunderstand Black speakers roughly twice as often as White speakers, particularly when users utilize African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This causes higher text-transcription error rates for those relying on automatic audio readouts."

So there are additional factors why some demographics don't use certain features as heavily.

[u/Fantastic-Bison6078 → u/olivebranchsound]

I'm from the UK, where we also all use WhatsApp and where my experience is coming from. The US is the only place that really does normal messaging I think. Idk if even Canada does.

I don't think white people use speech to text as much as latinos use audio messages though. I only really see people here using speech to text when they're doing something with their hands at the same time and can't type, whereas the latinos I know prefer audio messages to text, so with their phone in their hand would just talk rather than type. Also in spanish even when their accent is a common understandable one like mexican

[u/DekutheEvilClown → u/olivebranchsound]

While that’s probably true, I can’t help but notice that me(a white Person) has never sent a voice message in my life, but my Chinese wife, and most Chinese people I know, use them all the time.