By the time this column is published, this piece of juicy gossip will probably no longer be accurate.
Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson are dating!
Fortunately, the level of truth in this tasty tidbit doesn't really matter. As essential as it is for you to spend oodles of time considering what well could be a momentary conjunction of two fascinating people who certainly deserve all the happiness they can muster, it is even more important that this information be shared with everyone you know and a few people you don't.
Let's be honest — spreading rumors, true, not true or completely ridiculous — makes you feel connected and powerful. The triumphs and troubles of others can also be a soothing distraction, especially in your work life, and, frankly, in these troubling times, we need all the distraction we can get.
The good news here, beyond the existence of KimPe in our lives, is the fact that the amount of workplace gossip is likely to increase significantly — and soon. With more workers leaving their home offices to return to "real" offices, sitting cheek to jowl with "real" people, we can safely predict that gossip inflation will go through the roof.
It certainly makes sense. When locked in our covid-19 caves, communicating by email, Slack and Zoom, even the chattiest of our work friends might think twice before committing a particularly juicy piece of gossip to a medium that is written in stone (or electrons). No one who values his or her job wants to make it easy for the role as the source of gossip to be traceable, and, if the gossip relates to office life, punishable.
(Even an app like Snapchat, which makes salacious communications disappear within 24 hours, will not keep you 100% safe. In 24 hours, the disturbing dis about your co-worker's dalliance at the team's off-site can circle the globe twice and still end up in the inbox of your manager.)
Surprisingly, the act of spreading rumors can have major benefits. According to "The Return-to-Office Perk Your Boss Won't Mention: Gossip Is Back On," a recent article by Lisa Bonos in The Washington Post, "gossip helps workers form bonds, know whom to trust and whom they might want to avoid."
"Gossip, in moderation, can be good for business," agrees Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University. "You really want employees connected and feeling some sense of loyalty to the organization."
It's the moderation part that is the problem, of course. After so many months of not enough gossip, can there ever again be too much gossip? If we are to be forced to return to a bleak environment of cramped communal desks and soulless cubes, should we not be allowed to spend ample time spreading unfounded rumors around the water cooler?
It depends, kinda.
Knowing what's actually going on with your projects, your co-workers and your company's chances for survival can be essential information if you are to reach your career goals. On the other hand, if the gossip in question has a high truth content and directly affects your work life, it might be better for you not to spread it, or hear it. If you ever found out the people you think are out to get you really are out to get you, it could make it very difficult to come into work.
On the other hand, whispers about who in the team is shagging whom definitely qualify as great entertainment, as long as it isn't your name involved in the shagging. It could happen.
You might think that your co-workers are so dull that not even Shonda Rhimes could cook up a juicy story out of the gossip wasteland, but after so many months in exile, it just might be that you have lost the ability to read the signs.
With everyone back in the office, Bonos writes, "it's harder to hide the smiles, winks and the vibe two enamored people give off." Learning that her boss was having an affair with a client, a 23-year-old who works in a state tourism office found that "observing something potentially salacious at work allowed her to feel more powerful."
Discovering that her boss is "just another person," with feet of clay and morals of Jell-O, she reports "she'll be more confident the next time she asks for a raise."
To this illustration of the positive power of gossip, I can only add one caution:
It works even better with photos and video.
Bob Goldman was an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at
bob@bgplanning.com