Hi everybody. This is Cole Bennett. Welcome back to The Everything Blog. Today, I’m going to discuss workplace drama.
We have all dealt with this. Every workplace has it. Doesn’t matter your job, or the industry, or how much you make. You put people in a building, or an office, or a community, and drama will just show up on schedule, no matter what.
And there’s all types of people that make this happen. There are the gossipers. There are the pot-stirrers. There are people who genuinely just wake up out of boredom and want to do this. Now, I don’t get it. I kind of just want to go to work, do my job, be friendly, and go home and live my life.
But at my job, people just tend to like to gossip and cause drama. And these are mainly grown men at my place, and they’re just catty. I can imagine all the offices and warehouses and buildings probably have the same thing, those catty people who like to stir the pot.
Now, I’m not perfect. If I hear a good rumor, I’m sure I’ll listen to it and maybe tell somebody. So I’m not innocent. I definitely have partaken in some juicy gossip from time to time. But I’m definitely not the pot-stirrer or anything like that.
At my place, gossip will travel at light speed. You tell one person one thing and the entire building knows in probably less than a day. And it’s crazy.
I never understood why you hear about some offices being more chaotic than others. Because the drama in my building is just kind of gossip and people talking behind each other’s back, and “did you hear what so-and-so said,” and “this person said.” I hear of other instances where people write people up and go to HR and do all this stuff. Not at my place. We’re just kind of like catty high school girls.
My only take on this is: we are stuck with these people for probably the majority of our day, and most of our lives. The average person works, what, eight hours a day, five days a week, and you’re with these people. So you kind of have to learn to navigate around it. It took me many years to just roll with the flow and not believe everything I hear, even if it’s about me, and just roll with the punches.
A lot of times, my management team pretends not to see it. I feel like they could probably stop some of it, but I think they generally like when we’re gossipy and kind of at each other. I don’t know, maybe not, maybe that’s just my take. But they don’t ever really tend to stop the gossip stuff.
Then again, the gossip at my building is kind of small. It’s usually about scheduling, or the amount of work one person has versus the other. It very rarely is personal, like so-and-so is getting a divorce and did you hear this guy got caught with this. It’s very rarely that. It’s mainly just work crap.
It’s kind of hard to ignore it and mind your own business when you’re hearing all this in an office the size of about 80 people, like mine is.
I always wondered why people do love this. I think it’s boredom. I think it’s drama. I think it brings life to their day. And again, like I said, I’m not perfect. Every once in a while I hear a good one and I jump on it.
So I don’t know how your workplace is. Mine could definitely be worse. It’s a little catty, but that’s okay. I would love to know how your workplaces are. Super curious about who has it way harder than the others when it comes to drama. But we’ll save that for when this blog can accept questions and messages and stuff like that.
So as always, it’s Cole Bennett. Appreciate you listening to me ramble on, and hope you enjoyed this. Bye now.
P.S. Remember that line above, about saving your stories for when this blog can accept messages? It can now. Have something to say about this one? Write me at [email protected]. I’d love to hear how it is at your workplace.