Wasn't under it, now I'm over it ...

Jabber - to talk or utter rapidly, indistinctly, incoherently, or nonsensically; chatter. rapid, indistinct, or nonsensical talk; gibberish.

Greetings WAISWTW followers. How I have missed you, sorry for my brief absence, trouble was a brewin’ on the career front.

The weeks at work have been ripe with rumors buzzing so thick you have to swat them away constantly. Unfortunately, they are menacing and causing panic and confusion at every step as if a monster was lurking at every turn. (hence my Jabber(get it?)wocky!)

The rumors in the workplace are that we are low on funding and everyone’s job is in peril. Each day there is fresh news to add to the dread. Granted, our head honcho gave an informative speech to the masses recently reassuring them that we were for sure going to have to cut about 20 percent of our workforce, but somehow manage this without anyone being forced out of their job.

WHAT!?!?! Not completely sure how that works, but it sounded very convincing. Pretty sure that if 150 people have to go, there are going to be a few in that many who didn’t volunteer to leave. (but that’s just me … )

The following week has birthed new information that slaps that language square in the jaw. But it leads everyone to question if it is official or if it is just the paranoid ranting of the office busybodies, doing their best to create a disturbance in the force.

Now the amount of whisperings is skyrocketing while trying to cover up the mass hysteria lingering just under the surface.

No matter how many of these websites and self-help advice tips I find, I know that they only work if everyone participates, otherwise no one will ever be truly free of this gossip disease. But I do always enjoy reading these and believing in a Utopian work society. Hey, a girl can dream right?

And yes, by telling this I am helping to continue the "talk", but I just thought an explaination for my absence was needed.

Whilst my job is laid on the chopping block in the turbulence of lack of funding, I shall try to think of other times when office rumors left my head spinning.

A few years ago I made friends with a girl in my office. She was a few years younger than me, yet was much more - shall we say – experienced in life. This girl had partied hard until hard was pummeled into dust. She had bedded more lovers than I would like to recount (because, oh yes, she did like to share those details … bleh). She drank, she skanked, she lived it up in ways that made me fear I would get an STD vicariously through her stories.

Now, while we were friends, I did not judge, I supported her in what she wanted to do with her life as long as it made her happy. I can’t say I had the wherewithal to live such a live-style, but I didn’t want to seem prudish and judgmental. But looking back on it now, knowing what I know of how our friendship ended and the horrible decisions she made, I can say I doubt those will be stories she would ever want her future children to know or repeat.

During our time as friends, new ladies came to work with us in our office. They were nice women in their 30s and 40s, who were desperately trying to know what the younger crowd was in to. Regrettably, their thirst for this knowledge also brought with it their imaginations and creative fictions.

I didn’t talk with them about my personal life because I was their team leader and wanted to remain professional. This only gave them the fuel they needed to start a brushfire. I learned within the next few days that they had hypothesized that because I am a blonde that it must be true that I “have more fun”.

I learned that they were saying that I must spend most of my time out of work partying harder than the Delta Tau Chi Fraternity and probably entertaining the male persuasion like Mata Hari. Let me be clear, I am just not that much fun.

My friend, who actually could have spoken to this lifestyle, heard these rumors at the time and tried eagerly to convince them that while I was a good friend, I was pretty much a stick in the mud. I both appreciated that, and felt a pang of depression knowing that I was in fact, kinda boring, but still satisfied with what I was.

Later on, when my friend and I stopped being friends, she became acquaintances with these ladies. They quickly learned of her extracurricular activities, but chose to applaud them and her. Though they knew this about her, they decided to put the reputation that would go with these life choices onto me instead.

I would hear my exfriend tell of her nightly escapades in the office then by the next week hear the same story retold somewhere else in the building, but this time with my name substituted for hers.

As I said in my introductory blog, my alter ego is having much, much, much more fun than I ever will.

What is told in the ear of a man is often heard 100 miles away. ~Chinese Proverb

Here is something a little harder than my normal music videos, for those who can appreciate it.

The indecency of others

I am going to take it easy today on my preachy anti-gossip norm. I am worn out after a long week, and yep it is only Wednesday. I have had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. So I don’t feel like thinking too much about writing, because on a daily basis it is brow beaten into my head that I am apparently in some people’s eyes not a good writer. Therefore, here goes with me not caring.

Today I will instead just tell a rumor that was hurtful but hit on a deeper, more sensitive level. This is not a happy story with a funny ending, just so you know. We will be back to our regularly schedule programming next week …

Last year around this time, my sister told me that her boyfriend, (practically my brother-in-law, because he is family to us, so we will call him Bro), was looking for a better job as the one he was in was going south. I looked around where I worked, and within a week had found one and he became my coworker.

My true intentions behind getting him this job were to have him work closer to home so that he could spend more time with my sister. Her health was never good due to a disease called Cystic Fibrosis (seriously, ifyou look at nothing else, please go to that link), and her health had been getting worse over the last couple of years. I knew she would be home over the summer because she was a teacher, and I wanted him to be able to eat lunch with her every day.

Until summer time came, Bro and I would usually have lunch together at work in the break room and just talk. It was nice to connect with him since we didn’t see each other very much. I knew people would talk, and sure enough, I was asked many times whom the new guy I was seeing at work was. As always, I would set the record straight and tell them he was my brother and they shouldn’t always assume the dirty deed.

In early June, just a week before summer break was to start for my sister, tragedy struck. We lost my sister very suddenly as she finally was overtaken by her disease. It was the worst time in my life and in that of my family. My sister was 30 years old, and should have lived into old age, picking on me and arguing with me every day until we were too old and tired to think up quick wit insults for each other.

It was incredibly hard to go back to work after losing her, it was hard to do much of anything, it felt like I had lost half of my heart. The pain for Bro was just as terrible, and was even harder to have him come back to work. When we finally did return to work I would pack both of our lunches and we would again meet up each day for lunch together.

Most of the people in the building knew at that point what had happened and would pass on their condolences.

Unfortunately, there were other whisperings that it is very lucky for people that I didn’t hear until much later. There were rumors going around that Bro and I had started seeing each other or sleeping together.

To say I was disgusted and upset with the situation is a gross understatement of the actual events. I was ashamed to call these people coworkers that they would ever believe such horrible tales.

The dislike of a job should be a reason to want to leave it, not the cattiness of one’s fellow employees.

People are truly hateful that they could make such a tawdry story up out of such heartbreak. What’s worse, I was told this months later by a coworker who had heard it multiple times. However, in telling me this story there was no admittance of denial on their part. There was no “Don’t worry, when I heard that I corrected them and set the record straight.”

No, instead it was just the “Oh yeah I heard that lots of times. Can’t believe you didn’t know that by now.”

Folks, if you are a friend to someone, you don’t even have to be a true friend, just someone who is a decent human being; when you hear something as nasty as that said about someone, and you know it to be false, SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT! Don’t just hear it and guffaw to yourself about someone’s ignorance, stand up for your fellow humankind, especially when someone is going through a hard, horrible time in their life. It is the right thing to do.

Bro no longer works with me, though as much as I miss having him there to talk to each day, I am glad in a way also, because it shuts the rumormongers up at least on that topic.

I miss my sister more than I can explain. I know, as she always did when I would complain to her of a nasty rumor that someone had started, that she would say “People are stupid and you shouldn’t let them get to you.”

It should be just as easy as that.