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People all the time spread gossip about me. Nasty gossip. They took it to the extent of making me unemployable (can't get a job, have no choice but make money online.)
Well, at my company, they ask your peers for feedback on your performance. So it's open season at review time to rip on who you hate. Basically, the managers don't bother doing their job and rely heavily on comments from your coworkers. So if you are unpopular, you go byebye. Happened to one of my best friends.
And they wonder why nobody has any motivation or wants to take leadership of anything. **** I'm afraid to go to work in the morning.
Well, at my company, they ask your peers for feedback on your performance. So it's open season at review time to rip on who you hate. Basically, the managers don't bother doing their job and rely heavily on comments from your coworkers. So if you are unpopular, you go byebye. Happened to one of my best friends.
And they wonder why nobody has any motivation or wants to take leadership of anything. **** I'm afraid to go to work in the morning.
The feedback was weekly at my last job and I did hated going to work in the morning. I have always found it difficult to be around people that are full of crap and where you have to play the game to get along with everyone no matter how much they may turn your stomach. I really have to toughen up and deal with that much better without it affecting me physically and emotionally.
At my last job I worked with what you would call a "woman of loose morals". There were lots of rumors about her. Turned out they were true since a few employees showed up one Saturday to work on a project with a tight deadline. They walked in the office to find her butt-naked straddling the lap of the GM!
At another company I worked for, a guy was harassing a female co-worker for a date. She constantly turned him down. One day he accused her of being a lesbian (not knowing the boss heard the whole conversation)...he was fired in minutes.
There are all kinds of people in the workplace...you just have to know how to handle them on a case by case basis. It sucks in today's economy, because it's not like you can easily quit and find a new job.
I found the worst thing to do is ignore the gossip that is being spread about me by my coworkers. I use to think that my work would stand for itself. If I put in the hours and got results my bosses would love me and everything would be great. That was a terrible mistake. Instead, if you are in management your success is based on getting the cooperation and respect of others. If you **** off key people and they are able to destroy your reputation through the spreading of rumors and you are not hooked up to the rumor mill to determine your corporate reputation- you are in trouble. If your reputation is poor in the office you will not get things done and the help and respect of others. Keep your ear to the rumor mill! And if lies are being spread about you go into the attack mode.
I have to wonder what kinds of companies allow for such rampant gossip-- or where the employees allow themselves to do it.
At my company, regardless of the department (i.e. those that I have worked in), gossip is more related to work related things such as-- 'are we really going to move to that new application', 'are they really going to start back up the rewards program,' etc.
i think it is part of the territory. but responding to it in kind can backfire. I don't think it's always wise, since it can escalate and come back to you to haunt you.
I think either suck it up, and present your side of the story to your boss. if it is work-related, then provide an accurate record of tasks-assigned and work completed in a given period (create a separate folder in MS Outlook) and produce this to your boss as evidence.
Another option could be to confront jealous co-workers, especially if there is an issue of sabotage. Not confront in a hostile way, but calmly say why they are acting so. As a last resort, contact HR and file a grievance, but should that fail find another job.
Office politics can get hot and heavy in corporate America
Good advice but I usually find that when I go to the people who spread lies about me around the office is that they will deny to their last breath that they ever said anything about me. Then as soon as you leave their office they will walk the halls and complain about me even more.
Lots of the office politics that was directed at me in the past was subjective criticism to anyone who would listen. Basically the result of this was my reputation suffered because I was involved in controversy. Actually the fact that people were talking about me and expressing their displeasure about my personality and abilities was seen as a negative in my bosses eye. The appearance of a problem can be more powerful than the problem it self.
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Originally Posted by samston
i think it is part of the territory. but responding to it in kind can backfire. I don't think it's always wise, since it can escalate and come back to you to haunt you.
I think either suck it up, and present your side of the story to your boss. if it is work-related, then provide an accurate record of tasks-assigned and work completed in a given period (create a separate folder in MS Outlook) and produce this to your boss as evidence.
Another option could be to confront jealous co-workers, especially if there is an issue of sabotage. Not confront in a hostile way, but calmly say why they are acting so. As a last resort, contact HR and file a grievance, but should that fail find another job.
I came on here to post about the same thing. I am well liked at work by almost everyone, but there is one woman there who is a terrible little back-stabber and she is a good friend of my boss. My boss was very warm towards me last year and happy with my job performance, but this year she is considerably cooler. The woman who is trying to hurt me is a very competitive person, but our field is not one where competitiveness is a good thing (teaching) and she's hurting people. She even managed to get a student to drop out of school this year. It's true that the student was a pain in the tush, but it's not ok to push them to the point of blowing up and then getting suspended and I'd rather have her in school. I wish I knew what to do about this, and I suspect that any actions I can think of would backfire, so I'm keeping my nose to the grindstone and working at keeping the rest of my relationships there on a friendly basis, but I can't even look at "wormtongue," as I call her.
This woman is working at making it look like I'm a terrible scatterbrain--I heard her call me that to someone else last week. She's quite a lot younger than I am, so it may even be that she's trying to make it look like I'm getting senile. Thing is, I can't understand why she's doing this, b/c we can't compete on the same level--we're certified in entirely different subjects so aren't in line for the same jobs. Well I guess some just entertain themselves that way. Or it could be jealousy, b/c she's not that well liked.
Very poor quality managers and supervisors will "supervise" through tattle tales. This all comes down to leadership. Weak supervisors like to think they have eyes in the back of their heads through tatters who run to them with stories about the others, and the others come running also with their own stories.
The supervisor or boss likes to feel like the mommy of the workplace, constantly patching up things between the employees, and most often these bosses will sit inside an office, and often they actually believe they are holding things together but there is no team spirit.
You really can't blame the "gossipers" or tattlers because they are rewarded for carrying tales to the boss. When you have a good boss, this kind of thing doesn't happen.
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Office politics can get hot and heavy in corporate America
