by Frances Meupe

Created on: July 12, 2009

If you are experiencing stress and maybe even some degree of depression, take a quick general assessment of what's going on in your life. Are you suffering from frequent headaches that usually start when you get to work? Have you been disciplined at work? Are you having difficulty sleeping? Are unpleasant scenarios from work playing over and over in your mind? Are you constantly trying to figure out why management can't hire more dependable, goal oriented, efficient employees with good work ethics and pleasing personalities? Hire someone...well, more like you.

More than likely the sources of your maladies are the gossip and the tattletale. Sometimes they are one in the same. However, the gossip is the lesser of two evils. Gossips can be destructive if their stories, that are drawn from rumor mills and spewed from their mouths, are received by credulous people who can't discern fact from fiction. Their mission is aborted if people would turn a "deaf ear" to them. As a child I remember listening to a conversation (gossip) by grown-ups and at one point someone inevitably said "if a dog brings a bone, he will carry a bone". I remember thinking that some grown-ups are crazy; a dog bone had nothing to do with what they were talking about. But I couldn't inject my two cents because at that time the rule was-children should be seen and not heard. Not until later did I learn that idiom meant that if a person brings gossip to you, the same would gossip about you.

The mission of a tattletale is to seek out and destroy, (leave no prisoners). They tattle to belittle others and make themselves look big and important. The work place is better served without these people. They are not efficient workers because they are too busy watching the actions of others. Anything a person does can be used as fodder in an attempt to undermine and discredit. A tattletale reports to the boss with an innocent face and an insidious nature. Oh what characters they are! They know how to turn molehills into mountains and they stretch the truth until it becomes a lie. And what great thespians these people must be, because their performances are always believable. The tales they spin are accepted as fact, so much so, that management will mete out consequences accordingly. Sometimes the accused is not even allowed to defend the allegations or accusations. There are two sides to every story. You would think that management would be intelligent enough to know that, if you can't believe one story or the other, then the truth lies somewhere in between.

No matter where you work, there is one or more among you who tattles. It is a childish behavior that can have devastating effects. Some people have been demoted, suspended, or fired because of tattletales. What if, because of a tattletale, a single parent with several children loses his/her job? Can you imagine the ramifications if another job is not quickly found?

Usually management won't listen to gossip, but they do listen to tattletales. They can't be everywhere at all times, so they think that type of employee is beneficial to the company. If one was to believe that old adage- what goes around comes around- then it would be safe to say that what they make happen to someone else will one day happen to them.

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