Wanna know one of the most interesting books I've read in the past five years? Know why? It explains gossip. It explains why we care about people we don't know. It explains why Entertainment Tonight exists. And it explains why you shouldn't feel ashamed about gossiping at work. Gossip is cultural currency. We use it to express allegiance and affinity. Our tribe is who we gossip about, and if we are talking to someone not within our tribe, gossip about someone more important than either of our tribes gives us a cultural thread to pull ourselves together with. When Joe and Jane talk behind Jerry's back, Joe and Jane are forming an ingroup. Jerry may or may not be a part of that group - If Joe is letting Jane know Jerry has a crush on Janet, and Jane interacts with Janet, Joe is giving Jane a piece of cultural currency she can use in her relationship with Janet. Within small groups (like your workgroup), gossip is the fundamental tie that binds you all together. It's the free-form voluntary information that connects everyone. Within large groups (like, say "Ohio"), gossip is the coin of exchange between tribes. You may not know Biff from Centerville but if both of you have a negative opinion about Michigan you're buds. So don't sweat the gossip. Sweat slander, which is gossip that isn't true. The negative impact on emotions and drive is your ingroup effectively shunning one or more people from the tribe. This is management's problem, not yours (I'm assuming they're management). Management needs to make sure that the ingroup includes everyone in the organization. And if y'all are shunning someone who isn't management, someone needs to sack up and get management on the page. Don't fear gossip. Don't denigrate it. We need it. It's what makes us social, and being social is what makes us human.
I’m inclined to be open to this line of thinking. I wonder if you’ve run into Bourdieu and his theory of social capital. I’m tending toward the idea that maybe one explanation of current nation-wide social dynamics could be that with neoliberalism there is hyperfinancialization, or a focus on economic exchange over social exchange, due to the decentralization of relationships in production chains that bleeds over into communities. Basically, people have underdeveloped social skills leading to a focus on politeness over depth of exchange, manifesting in White Fragility/SJW-type intolerance of anything but PC orthodoxy. I know that contains a bunch of logical leaps, and sketchy ideas, but anyway, social capital makes me wonder if our frames of different types of exchange in American society are linked in ways that aren’t so obvious.
This stuff is squarely not my wheelhouse but the minute you talk "internet" and "socialization" you get a whole big bunch of people saying all sortsa stuff. I made it halfway through Bowling Alone before recognizing that an 18-year-old book that hasn't so much as been revised to address, oh, I dunno, September 11 or Facebook might not be fully applicable to our modern situation. The constellation of reading I have done leads me to support the following: - Income inequality is socially striating and income inequality is increasing. The rate of increase is increasing. - In-person community involvement is plummeting. - Social engagement now happens across channels that we have no basis of understanding for. There is nothing in our social makeup that prepares us for parsing MMS for subtext. The signaling qualities of Snapchat are not homogenized. If you gave a chicken peacock feathers it would not know how to dance with them and we've whipsawed from email to IM to text to Facebook to Snapchat in the amount of time it's taken me to wear out a pair of boots. We're spiders in space these days. I mean, we can get the job done? But it ain't the way our parents did it and you give up on nuance when your whole environment has shifted. I also know that when you're alone in your car everyone else is an asscamel but when you're sharing an elevator you don't make eye contact and the whole western world right now? They're alone in their car with a keyboard and an opinion.
"Spiders in space". I dig that It really captures my feelings on what to do with this degree at the moment, but I guess that's something that happens when finishing a degree. Actually, I think that's a problem endemic to linking the literatures of various disciplines. Anyway, while it is a bit exciting that there's so many new social dynamics emerging, the question of how to study these things and then what to do about/with them is a bit daunting too.
Yeah. That's kind of the problem we're finding ourselves in. I wouldn't mind if we talked shit about the company or the people who run it, though I'd still feel guilty about that. I'm concerned because we're starting to voice our frustrations about each other, behind each other's backs, instead of finding ways to address issues. That's both not healthy and not fair, because in all honesty we're all doing our best and circumstances being what they are I'm surprised we're doing as good. The fact that everyone still shows up for work every day, and at least tries to do their job, speaks a lot to everyone's maturity and work ethic. The gossip though is starting to create some rifts and resentment and as I was saying to humanodon, I don't think there's anyone that can come in and fix it and the way things are right now, I honestly think they'd actually make things worse. This is hard to talk about and honestly, I'm nervous even making this thread and having this conversation on Hubski, even though this is a pseudonymous website. Like, what if by some weird way my current or a future employer sees this, links it to me, and ask why I'm discussing this shit? A) Fuck those guys for being snoopy bitches though and B) this feels like a pretty big issue that it warrants discussing because I can pretty much guarantee I'm not the first and won't be the last person to be facing this scenario in this countriy's current job environment.
You have an outsized sense of responsibility to your employer. Trust me - they give no fucks about you. That the environment has turned toxic is evidence that they give no fucks about anyone else, either. You have a big heart. If you feel uncomfortable saying mean stuff about coworkers, try to come up with something nice to say about coworkers. I had a supervisor who was somewhere on the autism spectrum. During times of stress he would verbally berate me; send me long emails about how much I suck, and make me do menial crap for no good reason. But I knew he was going to be my supervisor for the foreseeable future and I knew he was good at other parts of his job. Most importantly, he was the target of incessant griping by about five other people. They kept thinking they could gang up on him and get him fired. I knew (knew) that what they'd do is blow up the department, get a bunch of people fired, and cause everyone to lose their jobs. So I started sharing my perspective. I started pointing out that he was an "outdoor dog" - he was really good at some stuff, but he'd make the couch cushions muddy. I pointed out that he was doing stuff none of us wanted to do and that if we were gonna blow shit up, someone else would have to be that guy. Everyone you're griping about? They do something right and they have reasons for doing other things wrong. Find the humanity. Find the excuses. And make them. You're still gossiping, yeah, but you're no longer doing it solely to cut someone down.
Yeah. I'm gonna try real hard to be more positive, about everything, because I think if I'm being honest (and this doesn't excuse my behavior) my participating in gossip is due to feeling and trying to release myself from stress. I think it's pretty easy to say that the more frustrated I'm feeling at any particular moment, the easier it is to let my guard down.
I excuse your behavior. Somebody should. Look - you grunts are a team. You can either fractionate or coagulate. Either way it's a "team building exercise" it's just a matter of who's on the team. I'm willing to bet that you find saying positive stuff about coworkers when others are being negative gives you the energy you need to get through your day.
Eh. While I agree on major aspects of what klein has to say, it disregards gossip as occurring in an environment in which negativity is seen as "unprofessional" and you can't necessarily trust everyone you work with (who isn't management) simply because you work with them. It's unwise, for instance, to gossip about a person to someone who is that person's friend - whether or not your observations are true, you run the risk of upsetting various precarious apple-carts of social interaction layers in such and similar cases. For the most part, I agree we're social creatures and talking about each other is a major component of interacting, of caring, and of life. I agree gossip is not inherently bad; we should embrace that we do it, and maybe not sweat over it so much (on the day-to-day). However in rd's post he indicates discomfort. With the level of gossip, with the tone of gossip, with the negative impacts of the gossip in his workplace. To me that says this has gone beyond what klein is talking about and the "talking about humans to bond with other humans cuz we're human and we care about humans" has evolved into something a little less group-psychology-garden-variety-friendly. Something that probably feels good in the moment, but maybe afterwards, maybe leaves one feeling bad. Something that's not friendly conversational heads' up about who's having a bad day or who messed up majorly on one project once...something that is turning into trenchant negativity which no one can or will dig out of. Once you get a solid negative atmosphere going in a work group, it is haaaaaaaaard to get out of it. Like shovelling up through the pile of shit twice before you breathe fresh air hard. For the record, and illustratively: my anti-gossip rep at work stems from an incident where one team member(PC, for Problem Child) was telling other members of the team a certain worker's(MT) year-end rating. PC was telling the truth about the rating...however the rating was unfavorable. Like, really unfavorable. Like, "PC had to have heard this from MT's lips and now is going around passing the information out like popcorn and I know for a fact MT wouldn't want that to happen," sort of 'unfavorable.' Like "this has crossed the line from gossiping, to telling details which should be kept private when/if/until the person who had to live that experience is ready to talk about it." There are degrees of tact and appropriateness even when it comes to healthy, relationship-building gossip such as klein addresses above.
Mmm... So, I guess the next question is what defines 'positive' gossip where the end result is still speaking of others - if at all. There are degrees of tact and appropriateness even when it comes to healthy, relationship-building gossip such as klein addresses above.
Here's the problem: When you put your foot down and say "I won't engage in this immoral claptrap" you've automatically added yourself to the outgroup. Unless you are in a position of leadership, or have enough charisma to assume the mantle of leadership, or are a compelling enough orator that you can make everyone cease and desist in the behavior without resenting you in such a way that they never again want to gossip, all you've done is made yourself the enemy. Period. Full stop. The gossip shall continue. But now it's about you. Unhealthy work environments? I haz them. I had a boss single me out for drug testing because they realized too late that I wasn't a born-again Christian like everyone else they hired. I worked at a place where one of my coworkers had to go to HR because he was sick of being shot in the face with airsoft pistols (it didn't change anything). Same job? I was the only person that hadn't seen Melissa's tits multiple times because when we went to trade shows I walked the floor like a citizen, gathered information like a citizen, and then went back to my hotel to rest; I didn't spend all day at bars and strip clubs. And when it came time for layoffs, the guy who hadn't seen Melissa's tits was the first to go, even though it cost the company $20m in billable clients. You can't fight the tide. If you aren't management, stop. You're participating in a work environment, not policing it and when you try, you simply reveal yourself as a narc.
Similar experience happened with my cadre in HS. They burned out faster than I had, allowing underclassmen to take up their would-be positions. Sucked since we were the core crew that got shit done, but I grew more closer to my staff that picked up where they left off. I kept noticably quiet around cadre as they ragged on the new staff, and eventually we fell away. Shortly after I got some cute pranks pulled on me until graduation with some palpable snark from the latter group about it. Curios on what your take away from the 'Melissa' layoff was in terms of how did that affect your decisions in future jobs/interacting with co-workers.When you put your foot down and say "I won't engage in this immoral claptrap" you've automatically added yourself to the outgroup.
That job was such a fucking catastrophe. It was one of those jobs where you could get the 25-sheet design done three months in advance and you'd still get in trouble because the project manager ended up air-freighting 5 racks to Fargo, ND. Know what it costs to put 5 full-size APW racks in a plane and get them to Fargo overnight? Me, neither. But I know it's more than the profit margin. They laid me off and lost $20m worth of business which was pretty rad. It was my last "job" prior to running off and joining the circus (working in Hollywood is what all the people who were going to join the circus but realized they needed to eat did). I have not had steady employment since 2007, but I've also had no problems making ends meet since 2007. And, you know, you casually discover that your supervisor mixed Decade of Aggression while sending him stems for Black Hole Sun because, well, it's never come up before. So I can't really say. I basically never worked a jobby-job again, which kinda fucks up the object lesson I guess.
Meh, still a nice story to compliment the prior statements, and always get a kick out of the way you write. Glad things are working out since then, guessing since things are more project based in Hollywood, it's one of those 'wait [insert mid-term length of time] and you'll have a new boss/co-worker' deals anyway.