Gossipy Gasbags

Has anyone else heard about the proposed anti-gossiping rules for the workplace? I'm not sure if they're really enforceable and workable. What's one person's malicious mudslinging is another person's garrulous gossip around the water cooler.  It's human nature to gossip, although I did once work in an office where the senior secretaries did nothing BUT gossip all day. And not the chatty fun type of gossip, either. They'd crowd into their coven, er, the manager's office, and indulge in the most catty and pointless sniping I've ever known. I'm not sure I was ever the target of the invective, but it would have been fun to have lived rent-free in their otherwise empty heads.

To tell the truth, I don't like being gossiped about at work. Many years ago (I was aged 22 - that's many, MANY years ago) I had Friday night drinks with some workmates. We ended up at the Wentworth Hotel, which from memory is in Phillip Street or Macquarie Street, Sydney. I don't even know if it is still operating, but can't imagine why it wouldn't be. Our group ended up chatting with a bunch of suits from somewhere, and I was talking - just TALKING! - to a man many years my senior. He seemed to like talking to me. That was the extent of the evening, and I caught a taxi home.

As the Jimmy Buffet song goes, 'come Monday' (and it's on my iPod) I went to work, and made my way to my desk, which was 'down the back' with other junior clerks.  At the time, I was working with a bunch of bleached blonde bimbettes beamed direct from Planet Airhead in the Vacuous Solar System.  'Hey, Simone!' chortled one, 'I hear you were being chased around by a 40-year-old man last Friday night!' (Nowadays being chased by a 40-year-old would make me feel like a Mrs Robinson type).

I demanded to know what they were on about, and then saw the culprit who had started the bunkum. She was sporting the smile of one who has swallowed a packet of Zoloft and washed it down with a long draught of stupid. And my friends, I sure did feel like kicking her arse in. I'm not sure what her problem was. She used to tell lies, which in itself offends me. She also used to ask inane and personal questions all day. I dunno, mebbe she thought of me as some kind of older sister type. The only way I would have any type of sisterly influence over this twit was if we were the Manson family. All day, she'd ask questions about - wait for it - sex. Yes. Wanting to know this and that and the other. On the one hand, I'm a fairly broad-minded person; but on the other, there is a time and place for discussions. One day I got fed up and snapped at her to just find someone and fuck them, and let me get on with my work in peace.

Yeah, she was a total dimwit and one of the reasons I'm not fond of being gossiped about. Perhaps if people told the TRUTH, it wouldn't be so bad.

Still, as Oscar Wilde said, 'The only thing worse than being talked about is NOT being talked about.'

Anyway, good luck with enforcing the anti-gossip rule in the workplace.  #ItWontHappen