Gossip is actually ILLEGAL where I work. That sure doesn’t stop people though. Now I know people have a natural instinct to talk about eachother, and I realize that stories about romance or sex interests anyone over the age of like, 13 or so, but please. When it gets to the point where it may destroy your friendships with others, ITS TOO MUCH.
I will word this all carefully because this thing has gotten so bad I feel I can’t even make an anonymous post about it without someone seeing it. At work now if I want to talk to this one individual who is a friend of mine, I look around first to see who’s watching. Because as we all know, if I am talking to him it means we’re sleeping together!
In fact if I simply smile at him and say hello when he comes in, stories fly. If I avoid and refuse to talk to the coworker, I mean bitch, who started all the trouble, stories fly about this feud me and her are having…over the guy, of course. IT IS MAKING ME SICK and making me hate this person that started the problems.
Everyone tells me they see the way I look at so and so or the way so and so looks at me. If he gives me a ride home it means something. Other guys give me rides home too and as a result I stress that rumors will start about them as well. I may lose a somewhat awkward and dysfunctional but altogether worthwhile friendship as a result of totally juvenile nonsense.
What kinds of experiences have you had with the destructive effects of having nosy, immature asshole coworkers?
A few months ago, my husband and I went out with some of his co-workers to Applebees for dinner and drinks.
We were there for a couple of hours. I started getting tired, but the rest of the group wanted to leave and go to another bar. I asked my husband what he wanted to do, and he said he’d like to go along. We quickly made arrangements for someone to drive him home. I kissed him, said goodnight to everyone, and left.
Two days later, the story got back to us that we had had a knock-down-drag-out fight in the middle of Applebees because I didn’t want him to go, and that it ended with him saying, “Fuck that bitch! I’m going anyway!”
There have been malicious rumors that I am having an affair, that he is having an affair, that I’m pregnant, that I’m seriously ill, that we’re “having problems” . . . the list goes on and on. If he defends a female co-worker in a dispute, he’s having an affair with her, and if he defends a man, it’s because the guy “has something on him.” It’d vaguely amusing, if it didn’t get old so fast.
It’s to the point where we are starting to refuse to go out with co-workers, or socialize with them in their homes. We know that the next day, something nasty will be making the circuit, and it’s annoying.
I’ve told my husband that maybe we should make a public scene, because the problem seems to be that we don’t do anything worth gossipping about, forcing them to be inventive.
Yeah, no kidding. You get all the embarrassing moments and exposure of your personal life that you get in a friendship, compounded with the fact that deep down you pretty much hate and resent each other.
Anyway, acrossthesea, that seriously bites. It sounds like such a screwy little group. I dunno what it must be like to work in that environment.
I know what you mean. Gossip is fun at times, but most of the time it’s just plain evil.
The lab where I worked was notorious for gossip. Everyone (including me) hated this one girl, and all the stories seemed to revolve around her. I’d come in the morning and have to hear about yet another rude thing The Hated One did or said to someone. By the end of the day, the story would morph into a totally different animal.
The thing is, it was easy enough to hate the girl based on what I knew she did. The wild speculations only made me pity her.
That’s really messed up, its unfortunate that your workplace is like that, there is often a similar enviroment at my school but kids are kids, you are working with adults… humans :rolleyes:
acrossthesea, the best way to deal with gossip is just to ignore it, sadly. These people are so starved for entertainment, that the more you protest, the more they make up.
Walmart. The store manager recently held a meeting to blast us all about how if we are caught or suspected of gossiping we will be fired on the spot. However that of course never actually happens.
These two women doing the majority of the gossiping about me are 40-50 years old. Everyone else in the department are 20-50 in age, and the youngest person is actually out of the entire rumor loop. So it’s totally ridiculous because you have people who are undoubtedly adults doing it.
It pretty much got worse yesterday to a point where I’m not going to even associate with my “friend” anymore (the guy that I’m sleeping with, who I’m fighting with someone else over, and who I recently learned apparently also dumped me). Because it’s a bit strange to me that EVERY rumor is about him. Him and me, him and this other woman, and now these new stories about him and about five other women! Plus, while I only find out about it later and then go and tell him to warn him that they’re talking about him again, he tells me he already knows. I’ve got multiple reasons to believe that HE is in fact the source of most stories. So yeah you’re right, MEN DO START GOSSIP.
Of course, now that I’ve posted this, that will be the new story! Even though none of these people read here, they’ll find out anyway.
I once worked with a chick who was very highly concerned that people were talking about her. Her boyfriend worked in another department on the same shift, and she was always hearing that his co-workers were “saying things” about them. It was more than ten years ago, so I don’t recall what heinous things they were supposedly saying, but my feeling is that it was just petty stuff and nothing scandalous. She kept complaining to me (I was her crew leader); I don’t know if she wanted me to go out there and tell them to stop talking about her or what.
My question here is, why do you (and by “you” I mean anyone, really; not picking on the OP) care if co-workers are talking about you? Are they in your social circle? If so, why? Why hang out with people who spread lies about you? And if not, what do you care? Won’t your real friends know the truth about you? How does what some person is saying over there somewhere affect your life? At the same job, I was once the subject of gossip also, but I held the people who were doing the gossiping in such low esteem that I really didn’t care what they thought of me. Anyone who knew them and me would know that they did not have access to the type of “information” they were spreading.
Honest question: Why not just ignore it and live your life regardless of the gossips?
Where’s the fun in that? I say give the gossipers something really wild to talk about. Make a game out of what outrageous stuff you can get them to say about you, with as little input from you as possible. If you find out that you have become Alice Kravitz reincarnated, who slept with Bill Clinton but is now a spy from Outer Slobovia, you win!
Gossip can sabotage your career. A negative reputation caused by gossip could poison you with other coworkers and your superiors. You have to be pretty naive to believe that what we say to others makes no difference at all.
I once had a manager who would play employees against one another using this one. “The gossipping and backbiting has got to stop!” she would say at our employee meetings. We would all sneak puzzled looks at one another: it was one of the few places I have ever worked that didn’t have a problem with gossip: everyone there seemed to get along an genuinely like one another.
But my manager was one of those people who can’t live without turmoil. She would try to “plant seeds” that someone was talking about someone else behind their backs. Of course, when the two talked about it, they found out that their words had either been grossly twisted, or the *conversation never even took place!
Maybe it’s just my bitterness and the enjoyment one gets from a conspiracy theory, but I suspect that oftentimes managers of the Big Box stores give this little speech to make people paranoid and suspicious of their co-workers. Too much commraderie is not a good thing amongst the employees. First they get to chatting in the break room, then they’re “stealing time” by having conversations while they’re working, and before you know it, they’re trying to form a union.
You’re absolutely right. I don’t trust a single one of these people because their motives seem twisted. You kind of have to be paranoid and believe in conspiracy theories when you work in that kind of environment.
Part of the problem with my situation is that one particular rumor claims I started a rumor about the guy and someone else. If management heard that I started a rumor, I could potentially lose my job, get written up, or punished in some way. Despite that this normally doesnt happen, according to the rules it could. I didn’t start any rumors so I certainly don’t want to be the one taking the fall for the ones who are.
Plus originally I was trying to protect my friendship with the guy. They can gossip about me and me alone all they want and I seriously will not care, but he was getting pretty angry about it and I didnt want to lose a friendship because of others. He was pretty sensitive about the gossip. Which I think he may have started but am again unsure because he seems to kind of like toying with me, which is never good…
Was she about 5’8", curly hair? No? She must be related to mine somehow. All it’s managed to do is to make the 5 of us in my particular position united against her and the assistant manager of our department. We all honestly get along most of the time, and when we disagree, we usually keep it within the group and solve it on our own. She can’t function without the drama, so she tries to start it – our assistant manager is the same way, so they do well together.
