Gossip and why YOU must care.

[tec0]

Gossip is normally informal but almost always a malicious attempt to discredit someone. Now how far can gossip go and how much damage can it cause you as a person and more importantly how much can it damage your company?

Well for one, you may agree that any office block is talking about something or someone. This can be a boss or an employee that is under the magnifying glass and sometimes the damage done is serious and costly.

In this scenario I will point to a young woman that stated working for a big company here in our aria. She is a single mother of two children and no husband or partner. She is your everyday office worker working hard to provide for her family.

Then the gossip started, people assume all kinds of things including that the children might be from her boss that is an elderly married man. One of the children had blue eyes as did the boss and this was basically the connection the gossipers pointed out.

This continued for about six months and eventually the boss’s wife was told about their suspicions and she demanded a DNA test. Now the young woman had nothing to hide and she allowed for the testing to be done knowing that the boss is not the father nor was there any affair to start with.

When the results came back there were no apologies and the gossip simply continued making statements that "the test was somehow doctored" Almost a year in the young woman objected to the gossip and demanded that it stops. But as usual it didn’t... So in the end she just had to quit her job and find something else to do.

Now her second job was a dead-end job and had no real future so she finally did the right thing to my mind, she got herself a lawyer and given her stories with the “evidence in the form of DNA testing and frightening e-mails� she demanded compensation and a written apology “that kind of stuff�

Now in 2007 she was awarded her job back and 4 other employees was given “a six month written warning� Now this was some years ago but it held its relevance. Gossip can cost a company money and not to mention the mental health of your employees.

So don’t think for a moment Gossip is innocent because it is NOT! It is harmful and deliberate... I write about this today because yesterday I was asked to recover e-mails of a similar nature and I thought to myself this is history repeating itself...

In the end if you are the boss its is your responsibility to stop gossip and make sure that it doesn’t get out of control and more importantly to protect your employees and your company! In the end if you don’t it may end up costing you more than just “putting your food down�

[twinscythe12332]

At the end of the day, everyone likes a good story. Especially when it has information to do with another person's life being in some sort of turmoil. the same is true with news reports, the more outrageous it sounds, the more it is eaten up. Whether it is true or not, that's another story.

I've been the focus of gossip before. One of my friends started working at a company I was working at, and we instantly were seen as "together," with people openly talking bull in front of us.

Gossip goes hand in hand with the phrase "I'm only joking" or "I'm just playing with you." The phrase "comments made in jest often strike true" couldn't be any more correct. The statement made is a reflection of what the person has said and thinks of you. "I'm just joking" is the response to try and get out of trouble. The scariest thing is how often this is said, and ACCEPTED.