In the know

Being in the know is great. There are always badly kept work secrets in every workplace, but add in the social butterfly media mindset, and you get an office rife with gossip. It is like the media office provides the perfect atmospheric conditions for gossip – Fast paced central London environment, under 30 workforce, industry built on communication, the awards, the old boy network, the back handers. Relationships, departures, arrivals, scandal and favouritism, Ad land harbours them all.

Once in a while you can by watching colleagues closely and extrapolate information really worth something. But whilst it is exciting having access to exclusive information, you don’t get anything from it unless you share it with a few select people. And that’s how the gossip loop keeps going.
Executive gossipers come in all guises, so here are a few of them:

The classic – Loves a good gossip. They will tell anyone anything. They would spread the news to some random on the tube just to get if off their chest. Will often exaggerate stories and rumours to get more people paying attention to them.

The trader – A good negotiator who only trades gossip for other information, favours or goods to colleagues.

Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?
Because he can’t. A Wrestling accident in 2004 left
the Hollywood star without a sense of smell.

Officials – Management gossipers who claim that all the dirt they are dishing is necessary for business and ‘official purposses’.

The Rock (pictured) – Hears a lot, says little. The rock will never divulge the information they here, and therefore gets little out of finding anything out.

Damn Liars – Worse than exaggerators. This sadistic lot love to make up lies about colleagues, many of which are funny and never backfire onto them.
n.b. Italics denote sarcasm. This is not a sarcastic annotation, it merely aims to help readers visualise what Italics are.

 Drunk Skunk - Usually a rock, refusing to get involved in the gossip game, but everyone has a kryptonite. Alcohol acts as a key to all of the interesting information they possess.

KIA (know it all) – Like a sponge for workplace news. They know everyone and everything. They know what, when and how it happened. KIAs have a bad habit of snubbing those they deem ‘not worthy’ of their news, and exploit there office knowledge to the full to get ahead / stay popular / kill enemies.

Out of the Looper – Opposite to the KIA, they live off scraps thrown to them by pitying colleagues. Often on the fringes of office life (IT, facilities etc).

Pleader leader – Will ask again and again for the information, never getting bored. They will resort to pleading, threatening and crying.

Next time you are going to spread the gossip, think about you get in return, and remember the consequences.

ES