I hear a rumour that you’re having to re-engineer the centre-section ;).
In my work we have a crew of four people sitting in a metal tube for seven hours at a time with nothing to do other than talk to each other, yep the rumours flow. On the positive they’re generally true and aren’t negative but rather just a side-effect of people not being able to make it to company meetings. I’ve normally taken the horses mouth approach, if I’m interested in something I’ve heard and I don’t know the facts behind it, I’ll go straight to the people concerned and ask directly. E.g., “Boss, is it true that new hires are getting paid more than the current employees?” “Death Ray, that would be very foolish of us, imagine the uproar. No, all improvements in conditions will be available to current employees as well as new hires.”
As far as negative rumours go, it’s like office politics, you can either play the game and join in the crap or just ignore it.
I’m in a academic chemistry lab, so things are set up a little different, but there are definitely some rumors. My boss is actually somewhat of a gossip, not with us, but with other faculty. Every once in a while we catch wind of something. The funny thing is that it’s usually completely off-base. It’s often something to do with various lab-members hooking up with each other. Granted, some of us don’t exactly help dispel these rumors. Hell, I live with one of my coworkers (I’m male, she’s not, we’re both straight), but there hasn’t been, isn’t, and never will be any funny-business going on.
I don’t think I’ve heard any rumours at all in the six months I’ve been at my current job. I don’t imagine that there aren’t any, they just don’t bother gossiping with me, I guess. Good. Let’s hope it stays that way. I think all you can do with rumours is take them with a grain of salt, and forget about them. Don’t completely disregard them, but don’t take them too seriously.
One place I worked at was really bad and one day I found myself in the midst of their subject of the day/week/month. I was one of the first people there that owned a home computer AND had internet. People would ask me questions - mostly how do chat rooms work and the such. Well, the next thing I knew I was going to move away and shack up with some guy off the internet… so I heard, anyways. It got to the point where I decided to just run with it and have some fun of my own since management wouldnt address it <all rumors>. The office was small and filled to the brim with mostly “small town folk” who’s used to being in everyone elses business. I was an outcast because I despised rumors/gossip.
I ended up having a lot of fun for some time up to the point where I gave my notice… and a year later I made sure I dropped a seed that I was moving to another state… but due to a promotion, not a love interest.
When I was in management and caught wind of such crap it was addressed and I forewarned them that I would not hesitate to write up anyone I found to be spreading gossip/rumors.
At my last job, one guy automatically hated white guys over the age of 30. One day he’s in the locker/store-room/side office (before his shift) when I stopped in, spritzed my hands with hand sanitizer and left. Two days later, there’s this “big rumor” going around, which obviously got started on HIS SHIFT, that I’m drinking on the job, because I ‘smell like alcohol’.
No, no, it couldn’t be him. :rolleyes: Accusing a minority employee of anything is racist, Chimera. We’ll get to the bottom of this (We’ll completely bury and ignore it) immediately.
I think all the sniping between employees was because the environment was so completely toxic due to hostile and inept management and it had been made abundantly clear to us by HR that nothing was ever going to change. So lacking any ability to change the poison raining down on our heads, people turned on each other over the slightest little thing, real or imaginary.
Sooner or later, a poisonous environment means poisonous employees.
In my department we’re a tight lipped bunch. Boy scouts on work stuff - at any rate. One guy gabs and management knows it. The beauty of it is that he’s always the last to know - sometimes by MONTHS.
We know a lot about each other and there’s some things I’ve figured out on my own and pinned people on, but… I’m not talking, so… I’m not sure where that fits.
If it helps, these are people I’ve worked with over 6 years.
I switched jobs about a year ago. I am working in essentially the same kind of company, doing essentially the same thing, but my last job was RumorLand, while in this job there’s virtually nothing of the sort, and whatever management says is believed.
Why? I can only assume that in this job, management has a track record of honesty. In the last, management had a track record of dishonesty.
I worked at a place (in South America) where rumors were disturbingly rampant, and being a foreigner, many were about me. They were almost always false, and I didn’t find out about them until much later. Actually, it seemed like I was being spied upon.
So when I finished my contract there, I and some other foreigners decided to take advantage of the gossip mill at the Christmas party, and staged a large-scale disinformation campaign. Separately, we each told ridiculous falsehoods about each other to our Colombian co-workers, who probably got even more gullible as the rum continued to flow. Some of the stories:
The Canadian guy said that my sister was in prison for killing her lesbian lover.
I said that the English guy was really a millionaire who was really just trying to “get away from it all.”
The English guy said that the Canadian guy was Celine Dion’s ex-boyfriend.
I said that the “Virgina” gal was really from New Jersey, and from a mafia family.
We told these stories to different people, who then started to spread them to others. By the end of the party, there was a lot of heated whispering going around.
