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.