Apologies, I misread your comment and though you said protonvpn was untrustworthy. I’m not a VPN user so I’m not up to date with the rep of any of them, but I am a proton mail user so I was worried about the technical integrity of one of their products
You’re descriptions kind of make your coworkers like NPCs. If you want to have better conversations you should probably get to know them better as people. That can allow you to understand the why of their particulars and eventually guide your conversations more organically.