I would like to start with the disclaimer that any similarity to any actual incidents or persons, a current coworker or an ex, is purely coincidental. Though, I expect the gossip to follow this to be as surely deliberate.

I stepped into the professional world around three years back. Two of which were spent working from home which meant that I was not used to office gossip until two months ago. Not to mention that I graduated from high school nearly a decade ago.

Office gossip is one common trait at all workplaces ranging from multinational companies and non-governmental organisations to the government sector. It’s a vicious game of Chinese whispers that you are intentionally or unintentionally playing 40 hours a week.

There are several tiers of gossip in any office. Whether it is about who intentionally forgot to cc whom in an important email, or why did the boss schedule a meeting for the mere purpose of planning a meeting. Why does the newly hired junior have a higher salary than the one working there for much longer? Does the communications department intentionally delay approvals just to mess with us or did the technical team actually email them at 4.30pm on a Friday? The list is endless, and so is the possibility of where the story would go from where it started. You never know.

Idle gossip tends to take nasty turns and end up creating damaging and unrealistic speculation. It might give a momentary thrill to the people engaged in it, but it comes with the heavy cost of loss of trust in the same people.

That water-cooler talk can start to rear its ugly head when it stops being regular chitchat for socialising with your colleagues and becomes more of malicious banter. Such chatter tends to invade employees’ privacy. Idle gossip tends to take nasty turns and end up creating damaging and unrealistic speculation. It might give a momentary thrill to the people engaged in it, but it comes with the heavy cost of loss of trust in the same people.

Interestingly, this mindless banter is the one thing that employees missed the most during the Covid-19 lockdown. Harmless lighthearted banter is the kind of social interaction that we all craved during our work-from-home days. Perhaps, that’s a form of unbridled catharsis that we all need on a daily basis — whether it is about the amount of emails waiting to be checked in your inbox or the lack of support from a certain colleague.

It is true that this (gossip) has the tendency to turn incredibly nasty but responsible interaction can actually prove to be healthy and productive. In most cases, it is anyway harmless information being passed to the team. It can probably change shapes and the end result could most likely be totally different from how it started. Yet, the mere act of exchanging words about your team or office can actually act as a ‘bonding’ experience that all colleagues need to feel at home.

The writer is a training and development advisor at a German development organisation. She can be reached at saniyanasir3@gmail.com