Amongst elitist circles, it’s (problematically) considered inappropriate to accept the Facebook friend request your driver, cook or tea-boy may have sent you, but it appears that making Whatsapp groups that include the homemaker, driver, cook, maid, and security guard is not only socially acceptable but also fashionable.

"How else will the maid realise that the cook isn’t coming in today and that she must come earlier to help out with the kid’s breakfast?" asks a Lahore-based school teacher who is also responsible for delegating duties to her household staff. "Before we had the ease of communication through Whatsapp, the cook would call me to tell me she’s sick and then I’d have to call the maid to tell her to come early. Then I’d have to call my driver to inform him to pick up the maid earlier. Now we are saving time and money those calls would cost us."

From managers of households to managers at multi-national companies, everyone seems to be a Whatsapp group convert. The brand manager of Karachi-based soap manufacturing company explains that Whatsapp added an astounding amount of efficiency in her work. "Before Whatsapp, when I would be on field visits, I’d take notes of the problems in every shop where our product is placed. Then I’d come back to the office and draw up reports of the problems, the reports would get approved by my supervisors and then warnings would be issued to our distributors. The whole process would take 24 hours, at the very least," she explains.

Now, she walks into a shop, takes a picture of the problem, hastily writes a caption explaining the issue and dispatches it to a Whatsapp group that comprises her supervisors and distributors. "The problem usually fixes itself within the hour," she says.

However, not all Whatsapp groups were created equal, and this means that although they may serve their function by helping us save time by conveying messages to large groups of people very quickly, they also take away from our time if the group does not lay down its policies from the get go.

"When we first made the group, one of the distributors would randomly share a photograph of himself or a poetic verse, on the group and this would create a lot of confusion," says the Karachi-based brand manager. She recalls an incident when a distributor once shared a photograph of his baby daughter accompanied by a teary-eyed emoji and the CEO of the company thought the child had died and issued condolences.

Such awkward miscommunications and confusions are the very heart and soul of most Whatsapp groups. "When we speak to each other, the tones that we use are very important in conveying the message," says a financial analyst at a Lahore-based multinational company who has many superiors to report to and many employees to delegate tasks to, on Whatsapp groups. "Of late, the majority of our correspondence has moved from group emails to Whatsapp and this is causing some disciplinary issues in our company. For example, some bosses don’t like being responded to with ‘K’ in lieu of a ‘Yes, sir’; others misread the severity or urgency of a task I have delegated and perform the less important tasks before the urgent ones," he explains.

He goes on to add, however, that despite this problem, Whatsapp groups are considered the most efficient mode of communication amongst his peers.

Sometimes, he says, the groups are too daunting. What he means to say is that if there are too many groups and too many messages, it becomes cumbersome to separate the important from the trivial messages.

Apart from his professional life, the financial analyst also has separate Whatsapp groups for his friends and family, all of which he complains are constantly buzzing. He explains, however, that on busy days he just mutes those groups and skims the messages in the evening. "Missing a friend’s joke or an aunt’s taana, is no problem. But I also have a group with the travel agents who are arranging my visa and my hotel bookings for a foreign trip," he says. "This group has crucial information about my trip, often buried among a series of dirty jokes that they are forwarded on the group."

He is not alone in finding Whatsapp groups highly useful but simultaneously annoying. Sonia Qadir, a member of a feminist movement that has a Whatsapp group with over 200 members. The movement also has a Facebook page and holds regular meetings. "But communication in a Whatsapp group is a lot more intimate and personal than on a Facebook page because in a sense the conversation is happening in real time," says Qadir.

Other advantages she cites are speedy responses, and a larger reach since many of their members don’t have Facebook and can’t attend meetings. "But it’s also a real headache," she concludes.

"It’s emotionally draining to listening to 200 people’s opinions and feelings all day long," says another Lahore-based member of the same feminist movement who chose not to be added to the Whatsapp group. "We stay connected to so many people through Facebook, Twitter and email. I don’t want to allow all these people into my private personal phone space."

This begs the question of who should, in fact, be allowed in our personal phone spaces? For most the answer is friends and family. But even this has problems: A Pakistani investment banker based in UAE is part of a Whatsapp group with many other Pakistanis based in the UAE. Some are college friends; some are friends of friends. Every once in a while, a person who shares too many jokes is kicked out as "punishment" for oversharing. They are, invariably, added back a few hours later.

The banker tells a tale of how a few days ago someone made a sexist comment, when another member called out the first member for his sexism, an argument began. Eventually, the person who had the problem with the sexist comment, which was meant to be a "joke", was asked to remain silent since he was "being annoying, too politically correct and limiting free speech". He decided to extricate himself from the group.

Annoying or not, it appears that Whatsapp groups are here to stay. Sindh’s Chief Minister has one to stay connected to his cabinet. The Rangers media spokesperson has one to dispatch press releases to journalists. Foodies have several where they simply share pictures of food -- no captions, just food. Expecting and first-time mothers have groups to stay connected to other first-timers to share tips and tricks for child bearing and child rearing. It seems that’s Whatsapp groups have superseded email chains, Facebook groups and old fashioned telephone networks to disseminate information -- it’s up to all group members, though, to use their privileges wisely, otherwise they may get kicked out for being too annoying.