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Friendly and smiling but gossipy and trouble making

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HouseOfMadpeak
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09 Feb 2017, 7:03 pm

People already offered good advice.

In my experience these types also try to get people to side with them against someone they have a problem with. So they might say "Oh my god, did you see what ___ was wearing? Is she working the streets tonight?" She would want you to be like "Yeah, that's not appropriate for work."

But it is better to say something positive about ___'s outfit. Like "I think she looks nice today. That skirt is really cute."

If you brush it off, or just politely laugh then you can be dragged into the mess by being told "OP agrees with me that you dress like a prostitute."

Don't be fooled by age either. I had coworkers in their 60's who gossiped with the teenagers and early twenties people.

Of course, that just depends on what your coworkers do or say. This is just from my experience.

If you add her to Facebook, make sure that any coworkers you add are shown a limited profile. It would be bad to share more with some than others. Or make an account specifically for work stuff.



Moondancer
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10 Feb 2017, 4:21 am

I work with just women and not one of them I can socialise with outside of work. I manage to make myself fit in by being busy at work, and quickly making excuses to miss the office chit chat that's about other co workers.
like others have said here, avoiding them takes tact and stealth, and even when I'm flying below the radar I tend to be seen as a nice workaholic, which suits me fine. I'd rather work with the kind of mental illnesses that don't have arsenic in the pot.
If I am in the unfortunate position to be working one on one with a goss, I just umm and arr and pull the kind of faces that show your getting their frustrations rather than egg them on.



Chronos
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18 Mar 2017, 11:17 pm

Amity wrote:
I work in a small place with an all woman staff, and there is one stereotype there that unnerves me (everywhere Ive worked tbh), the friendly and smiling but gossipy and trouble making woman. If I avoid her Im branded as odd and unsociable, so I take shorter breaks when I know I will have to interact with her.

Just curious if others have developed coping strategies for dealing with this type of person.


Be the friendly, but busy co-worker who doesn't have time to gossip.



Amity
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19 Mar 2017, 5:50 pm

Its taken me a long time to learn this, but the friendly workaholic seems to be the best option... better late than never eh.
Ive changed jobs since this thread started and thankfully don't have to take breaks with any co workers, but the stereotyped personality in the title is here too! They're everywhere :)



Chronos
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20 Mar 2017, 1:52 am

Amity wrote:
Its taken me a long time to learn this, but the friendly workaholic seems to be the best option... better late than never eh.
Ive changed jobs since this thread started and thankfully don't have to take breaks with any co workers, but the stereotyped personality in the title is here too! They're everywhere :)


I find that some people, when they spend a lot of time in a business office environment, and don't have much going on in their life outside of it, start to gossip a lot, and people with rich lives outside of work, tend to talk about themselves more.



Amity
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20 Mar 2017, 6:21 pm

Chronos wrote:
Amity wrote:
Its taken me a long time to learn this, but the friendly workaholic seems to be the best option... better late than never eh.
Ive changed jobs since this thread started and thankfully don't have to take breaks with any co workers, but the stereotyped personality in the title is here too! They're everywhere :)


I find that some people, when they spend a lot of time in a business office environment, and don't have much going on in their life outside of it, start to gossip a lot, and people with rich lives outside of work, tend to talk about themselves more.

That is a good observation, having an idle mind has always been viewed in a negative way with reason.
I hadn't actively thought about it before, but it makes sense that busy people who talk more about themselves could be less taxing company in chit chat situations.



RandomFox
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05 Apr 2017, 11:36 am

I quickly figured out what the gossipy woman's hobbies/ways of earning extra cash were - going to car boots and re-selling stuff on eBay, buying stuff from China and selling it here, furniture renovation and more, so we could have conversations about all that stuff (I had experience in purchasing from China too). Sometimes I asked her to look for something for me at the car boot sale, sometimes we talked about her son or boyfriend problems, but she never got any info from me about my own private life :)