Workplace Gossip For Your Entertainment, in Books and TV

Forbes

30-05-2025

Workplace Gossip in Books and TV
We spend much of our adult lives working. And that comes with workplace politics and managing challenging personalities, all while diplomatically trying to hold back what we really want to say. Despite the huge investment it takes to cultivate these relationships, most of us had little choice in selecting these constant companions. Therefore, managing these relationships takes a suite of communication skills, including influence, persuasion, emotional intelligence, and gossip.
For those without formal power, such as a titled leadership position, managing horizontally and up can be an important communication skill to master. Without executive power that comes with formal leadership, employees need to rely on another source of power. That's where gossip comes in.
Gossip gets a bad name and can, indeed, often be toxic in workplaces. But dig deeper, and evolutionary psychologists argue that gossip developed and has continually evolved to police morality in communities by letting people know what is permissible, applauded, or tolerated. Those who violate these moral norms will face reputation damage, exclusion, or even expulsion from the community.
The most challenging workplace dramas can also be a source of entertainment and humor, as we, as humans, try to process and grapple with the great stressors in our lives. The TV show, The Office, masterfully turned cringeworthy office politics into comedy that so many of us could relate to.
As an example of policing moral norms, in the episode called 'The Secret', Michael overhears Stanley and Jim talking about having feelings for someone, which Michael interprets as Stanley having an affair. But, in fact, what Michael overheard was Jim sharing his feelings for Pam. Michael then spends the episode dropping hints to others in the office about Stanley's infidelity, and gossip whips through the workplace through whispers and speculations behind Stanley's back.
In a style classic to The Office, the truth was messily revealed in an office meeting, but the damage was done, in terms of Stanley's feelings of frustration and isolation caused by Michael's use of gossip to police what he saw as wrong.
This example shows an effective use of gossip to police moral norms, mixed with toxic side of gossip, exacerbated by the fact that it was based on a miscomputation, which is all too common with this source of behind-the-scenes power.
Some outstanding books about gossip include, Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, depicting the spread of gossip through a community of school parents, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, about how a career can be shaped through gossip, and a recent one by Canadian author Natalie Sue with the clever title for a book about office communication: I Hope This Finds You Well.
Imagine an IT mistake that allows you access to the private emails and direct messages of all your colleagues. You can know what people are saying about each other (and you) behind their backs, read their elicit communications with romantic partners, and keep abreast of all the gossip and scheming about looming job cuts. That's the basic plot of I Hope This Finds You Well, and Sue artfully makes the reader grapple the protagonist's dilemma to report the IT error or to use this source of information to her advantage.
Check this one out if you can relate to the burnout and disengagement felt by Millennials in dead-end jobs and if you're not too squeamish about witnessing the slow build and inevitable trainwreck that culminates in this office gossip drama.