You Did What? Spare The Office the Detail

Patti Sweeney and a dozen of her coworkers recently went out to lunch to celebrate the completion of a project. Over burgers and salads, they chitchatted about their work, their families and their hobbies.

One colleague mentioned that he was training for a 20-mile bike race, adding that he had just purchased a new helmet and Lycra shorts. To the group's mortification, Ms. Sweeney says, he then described shaving his entire body to reduce aerodynamic drag.

"Why, why, why do we need to go there?" says Ms. Sweeney, a 36-year-old financial analyst for a communications company who lives in Bartlett, Ill. "This is information about a coworker, not someone I really consider a friend, and now it's forever burned in my brain."

It's official: The TMI phenomenon—as in "too much information"—has invaded the workplace. You can thank reality TV and social-networking Web sites for creating a culture where people are encouraged to share every sordid—or boring—detail of their lives. They have desensitized us to the idea that some things are meant to be private.