cellio | tale-bearing

Entry tags:

behavior

tale-bearing

Suppose you are, say, at a convention in another city. You step into a room to hear someone you know talking with a group of people you don't know. The person you know is griping about his landlord (without naming names). The landlord is a friend of yours and is in a nearby room.

Do you (choose all that apply):
(a) listen in unobtrusively;
(b) fetch the landlord and tell him to listen in;
(c) repeat the tale verbatim to the landlord later;
(d) give the landlord some general feedback (e.g. "have you fixed that roof yet?");
(e) approach the group with some general comment about dealing with landlords;
(f) approach the group and say something like "how dare you talk about Joe Blow like that"; or
(g) shrug it off; it's up to the person to approach the landlord himself if he wants things to change?

It would never occur to me to do (b), (c), or (f); it seems like it can only cause hurt to the landlord. Depending on how close my relationship to the landlord is and what else I know of the situation, I might do (d), (e), and/or (g). I suspect I am not always strong enough to avoid doing (a), though walking away is the correct thing to do most of the time.

I'm sure that at times people say unflattering things about me outside of my hearing. That's a fact of life. In some contexts I am a public figure and have to expect that, and anyway, people talk and rant and gossip and that's just something we all have to live with. I figure that if it's important, the person with a complaint will find some way to let me know about it. And if not, well, I can't address problems I don't know about and the other person just has to realize that. No one told me about any telepathy requirements in human interaction, and I don't buy the approach of "leaking" the gripe to mutual friends and relying on it getting back to the person. That kind of sneakiness bothers me.

I have had an encounter with someone whose beliefs about such situations are very different from my own. I thought that by writing this down I would come to some understanding of why the options I find obviously incorrect might be obviously correct to others, but so far that insight is eluding me.

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I think there are two types of tale bearing:

a) I want to tell you about Joe Blow because I can't/won't tell the person I'm upset with.
b) I want to tell you about Joe Blow because Joe Blow isn't here to tell you himself.

What's the difference? In (a) I've made a specific effort to exclude JB, whereas in (b) he happens to not be around. If Suzy tells JB you were talking about him, in (b) it's okay, but in (a) it may or may not be.

So how does Suzy know to mention it to JB or not (assuming she's that type of person)? In LJ it's actually a little easier, becuase you can filter against that person and by letting your readers know your filtering against them, let Suzy know you don't really want this to get back to JB.

Okay, that turned out more random than I planned.

If you're talking about what I think you are, the only thing I can suggest is to look at this statement again.

I figure that if it's important, the person with a complaint will find some way to let me know about it.

Important can have different values for different people. I may not like the way Sorcha's garb, but it's not important enough for me to mention it, even though I know a few historical inaccuracies she's bought into. She may take an extreme amount of pride in her garb and be upset that I knew a few ways she could make it better without telling her; especially when I've turned down her assistance in making a similar garment for myself without a reason.

The accuracy of her garb was of minor importance to me, but major importance to her.

If you ask someone the above question about a situation that is not important they may give you a different answer than they would about a subject that's important to them.

People are inconsistent, and I bet that's why insight is eluding you.

She may take an extreme amount of pride in her garb and be upset that I knew a few ways
she could make it better without telling her

Oh, really? Funny. Most people I meet tend to think offering unsolicited garb authenticity advice post hoc is ge nerally not only not required, but actually rather frowned upon. As I understand it courtesy demands waiting to be asked (or offering it most extraordinarily humbly) before correcting someone else's work. Your Sorcha seems to be getting bent out of shap e for other people following basic etiquette.

The only cause for Sorcha to object is if you were mocking her garb behind her back. Sorcha doesn't even have a cause for complaint if you were to ask around to find out if there were someone closer to So rcha who might be able to pass on some garb advice, without making her feel confronted or embarrassed. Nor does Sorcha have cause for complaint if you were to explain your problem, to others in hope one might have a suggestion for how best to deal with i t. Nor, in fact, does Sorcha have cause for complaint if you simply say to others "There's someone going around teaching people to put contrasting color gores into their t-tunics; I wish she'd stop doing that because it's not period."

Indeed, Sorcha mig ht want to stop and spend a moment in gratitude for the person who did thus, for by that means, she might get the knowledge in the most face-saving of ways. But if Sorcha continues to feel that other people are required to confront her every time they find fault with her work... she might succeed in convincing them. Won't that be simply delightful for Sorcha.

I may not like the way Sorcha's garb, but it's not important enough for me to mention it, even though I know a few historical inaccuracies she's bought into. She may take an extreme amount of pride in her garb and be upset that I knew a few ways she could make it better without telling her;

In the absence of some evidence that Sorcha wants feedback, I probably wouldn't say anything either. People tend to react badly to unsolicited negative feedback. Now, if Sorcha has made it known that she's really trying to improve this type of garment and she wants people to talk to her about problems, or if I'm a clothing laurel (wait for laughter to die down) and Sorcha is my apprentice, that's different.

People are inconsistent, and I bet that's why insight is eluding you.

True. And you can't necessarily use "what X does" as a guide for "how X wants to be treated".

In the absence of some evidence that Sorcha wants feedback,

There are people who would say that by wearing garb out in public, Sorcha wants feedback. Sounds pretty strange to say it that way, but I've heard it before.

And you can't necessarily use "what X does" as a guide for "how X wants to be treated".

Unfortunately, yes.

And there are people who really would say, that by wearing certian garb Sorcha was saying that she wanted to be raped. I don't believe that, either.

Perhaps we should rely on words when trying to establish how someone wants us to treat with them, instead of making sartorial surmises.

I'd like to point that doing (f) is one of the cleverest forms of character assassination I know.

After all, if a person's not named in a gripe, their reputation is uninvolved. If, however, the gripes are already out and then someone identifies the subj ect, they have retroactively made all that went previously personal, and dragged a specific person's reputation into it.

Identifying someone under the guise of "defending" them allows you to stick a knife in their back in broad day light, while pretendi ng to be the "good guy".

You get extra bonus Machiavelli points for hijacking a gripe which was actually about someone else entirely, by naming a person you want to cast aspersions on, instead, and then, if corrected, apologizing and refusing to "say anything further" to fertilize speculation.

I'd like to point that doing (f) is one of the cleverest forms of character assassination I know.

Yes. That someone would do that when the object of the discussion is a friend boggles my mind.

Hmmm. What about (h) Take up the landlord's side in the gripe (tactfully, of course.)

That's so often what I do. There are two basic sorts of complaints, and in both cases, I am not necessarily (or even usually) a passive audience giving implied or exp licit uncritical sympathy.

One gripe is a factual gripe: Foo complains Bar did/does X, and it's a problem for Foo. When I hear one of those I (1) Express sympathy for Foo's unhappiness, and (2) ask questions meant to steer the conversation towards findi ng productive ways that Foo might be able to address the problem. I rarely recommend confronting Bar -- only in those cases where it's clearly optimal -- because that makes the problem Bar's, and the problem isn't Bar's, it's the Foo's! Telling Foo to d ump the problem on Bar's desk isn't helpful (unless that is the right thing to do.) I'm not talking to Bar; if Bar asks me, I might suggest what Bar can do to work on solving the problem. I'm talking to Foo, so I'm going to talk to Foo about what Foo can do to address Foo's problem, even if the problem is not Foo's fault.

The alternate gripe is the moral gripe: Foo says Bar is a Bad Person for doing X. In that circumstances, I (1) try to express sympathy that Foo is upset and validate Foo's feelings, then (2) ask questions that start exploring, calmly and rationally, and very, very gently, what motivations Bar might have had for X other than being Satan Incarnate.

In both cases, I wind up answering questions about, for instance, how to solve certain problems, or understanding other MB types.

Sometimes people don't want to hear it; usually because they are addicted to their self-righteousness, and don't want to hear anything which might solve the problem. If the problem were to go away, what then would they have to feel self-righteous about?

But I've generally found most people are willing to hear it, and actively prefer it. Most people seem to like being engaged this way, instead of just getting a "yeah, man, they suck" response. It makes the feel much more listened to, and can actually help people find solutions.

Hmmm. What about (h) Take up the landlord's side in the gripe (tactfully, of course.)

Heh. I have been in this situation (I have been the one griping about a landlord-whom-people-know, to friends, as a way of blowing off steam about the situation) and someone decided to swing into the conversation, tell me what the landlord was doing was perfectly legal (it was, but that didn't mean it was *right*), and that if I didn't like it I could lump it. Made me love them, let me tell you.

In general, one thing I'm coming to learn is that people often complain just to blow off steam, and that the best thing to do if one overhears a friend being complained about and the charges are not serious (e.g, "landlord hasn't fixed the roof yet" not "landlord is demanding sex acts for rent") is just to walk on by. Charging in to defend a friend does not usually help, and telling the friend they were being discussed usually leads to crankiness, not communication, between the people involved. Besides, one doesn't know the whole story. Maybe the landlord, despite being a nice person, *has* blown off fixing the roof, and the tenant is griping about having had to ask five times.

Psychodrama: Just Say No. :)

Well, no. I'm not talking about telling someone "You're all wrong for feeling that way". You'll note that I always start out validating someone's feelings. And furthermore, not only is rebutting someone's complaint about their landlord's behavior with "It's legal" irritating and rude, it's also (1) a total non-sequetur, if the person wasn't talking about legality (2) is a totally pointless and useless thing to say, which in no way is helpful or furthers the conversation.

Now, if someone was goi ng on about how their landlord was unfair and they were going to take their landlord to court, I might observe "You know, I think you should ask a lawyer about that, because my impression that's one of the places the law falls down, and it actually is legal for him to do that scummy thing."

(You may be amused to know that in real life, having had some work experience in the regulations which govern certain parts of lessor/lessee relations, I'm the person at parties helpfully volunteering, "Hey, did you know in this state that's a violation of the sanitary code, and you could sue your landlord for the total of your rent while those conditions existed. May even be a triple damages issue." Yay MA.)

All this also brings up an option (i) turn the gripe to something productive, which perhaps should replace (h). I'm thinking about an issue I had with my landlord many years ago. I griped about it -- mostly making a humorous story about it -- at rehearsal, and someone volunteered the advice they'd gotten when they had griped about the very same problem, and which worked for them. I then turned around, and used the advice -- and it worked for me (no more hole in roof!).

(h): Good point, and one I shuld have thought of -- especially as I do, sometimes, try to explicitly explore favorable explanations for the observed-and-presumed-negative behavior. I usually do it in the form of questions, e.g. are the roofers in your area being slow because it's the busy season? In the public discussion you pretty much have to do it that way to preserve the person's anonymity; privately you can say to your friend "hey look, he called three different roofers this week and they all failed to keep their appointments".

Another way to accomplish this is to chime in with your own horror story, complete with explanation of why it wasn't unreasonable of the person responsible (i.e. "it took my landlord two weeks to fix my tub because it's hard to find parts for the odd plumbing any more.")

Alternatively, you can deflect the conversation with a "trump this!" complaint about a long-ago anonymous landlord ("Oh yeah? I once had a landlord who tried to upgrade the kitchen faucet themself, and left the sink unusable when they didn't have the tools to finish the job. We were washing dishes in the bathtub for a week until they gave up and called a plumber!")

Good point -- and the "trump this!" game works especially well for changing the subject, because someone will undoubtedly then try to trump you. Which, in this case, is good. :-)

I can see circumstances where (c) is may be appropriate, especially if the person speaking is advocating some action about which my friend should be warned. Say, someone's starting to lobby various officers to petition to have my friend recalled from an office; I may feel he should know such a plan is at least afoot. This is hazardous, and it's often appropriate to consider whether (g) is a better idea because I'm presenting here-say and am likely to accidently misrepresent at least some part of that (especially the nature of the particpation of the people being talked to) which will complicate the situation. But I can see how it occurs to folks, myself included.

In the varient of this where the person is named, I can see (f), and have done so, when I felt the conversation was unnecessarily catty. There's a milder case that's not so much "how dare you" as "you should consider extenuating circumstance X about Joe Blow" which still identifies the person, but has a less defensive tone. In either case,

siderea has a good point about the dangers of this in cases where the person isn't named, because you can end up (even if it's done in perfectly good faith) undercutting the person.

This then gets really grey and messy if names aren't mentioned but it's still arguably possible for a reasonable listener to discern the person being discussed. If someone discusses one of the many Pittsburgh consulting firms with a lot of Brazilian Java developers, for example, the fact that they don't name names is a technicality - anyone who has sufficient backstory to care would know who's being talked about. At this point, the argument that I'm undercutting rather than defending my friend doesn't carry as much weight. (For extreme cases, of course, it carries none, but again - this is a grey area. Which, unfortunately, also means its one about which reasonable people will disagree.)

The person discussing the landlord also needs to keep this in mind - they're assuming nobody they talk to (or few, who will be discrete) know who their landlord is. If the landlord is in fact at this convention, though, it's possible that a large number of the "flies on the wall" around the conversation know said landlord, and this starts having the effect (whether intentional or not) of character assassination which would inspire defense. Again, grey areas - how public is this discussion? How easy is it to figure out who's being talked about? At some point, reasonable people can start disagreeing about whether or not the speaker is (perhaps inadvertently) having the effect of "trashing" someone rather than discussing a problem in isolation.

Fortunately, we're talking about an overheard conversation in a room, something with no persistence. Similar concerns come up about blogging all the time - if I rant about my boss in my journal, in a way that's publically visible, but I don't name names, do I have a reasonable expectation that my boss will not see that as trashing him in a publically recognizable way? That's a matter of almost public record. Certainly, Murphy's Law being what it is, I should assume he will happen upon that rant.

More complications, more grey areas: I don't rant about my boss in public posts in my journal (my boss, should he be reading, is a fine and noble fellow anyway.) But perhaps some other employee rants about his boss over brunch and a movie with his friend Pam, and she publishes the fact that her friend (unnamed, but we all know who does brunch and a movie with her) was ranting about his boss at the aforementioned firm with a large number of Brazillian Java developers. Should I expect my boss to find out over a game of golf with Pam's boss (oops, not me, hypothetical other employee...)? Should I expect my boss may be perturbed?

And what fault do I reasonably have if I don't know she's going to put this in her blog, but it's out there at all because I initially talked with her privately? What if I do know she's planning to discuss it? Should I tell her not to? Is it enough to at least get her to take out the part about Brazilian Java programmers that pretty much nails me? Or is it enough, when it comes down to it, that there're no names?

I may feel he should know such a plan is at least afoot.

Agreed, but that doesn't necessarily mean relaying all the specifics of who said what. And as you say, it's hazardous.

In the varient of this where the person is named, I can see (f),

I agree. Once someone has named the person the damage has been done, so you aren't doing damage by jumping in with specifics.

This then gets really grey and messy if names aren't mentioned but it's still arguably possible for a reasonable listener to discern the person being discussed.

And this, in turn, gets into the gray areas of composition of the surrounding group. To use your example, for instance, if you're all off at a gaming convention in Wisconsin and the people you're talking to don't even know you're from Pittsburgh, then you're pretty safe in griping about the anonymous Brazilian Java consultants you work with. If there are 5000 people at the convention and two of them are your local high-tech friends, it's still fairly safe if you think your coworkers are reasonable people who won't do (f) -- because even if they overhear and can identify the situation, because they know where you work, no one else at the convention is going to get any new information about your company from your discussion. And even if the coworker you're griping about is here in Wisconsin with you, if he's just a gaming widow not attending the con (but is currently in the hotel lobby waiting for the dinner run), that's not obviously wrong to me. So it seems to boil down to layers upon layers upon layers of risk, and different people have different tolerances, and that makes everything gray and fuzzy.

This comes under loshon ha-ra, right?

1. If you can, leave the room. You don't want to hear what this person is saying. But few of us can resist listening.

2. Don't believe what they are saying. And since you don't believe it, you have no reason to say it to the subject of the conversation.

Spreading tales even to the person being talked about is bad, unless you are absolutely positive that it will have a good effect on that person. And I mean absolutely.

Right -- for listeners who are aware of and follow the laws of lashon hara, this is a pretty clear case. The world contains a lot of people who don't fall into that group, though. :-)

I don't think I would do any of the above. I think there's more solutions to this question than you've given. Hypothetical questions are difficult for me to answer as I always want more information than is given. So I'll give my answer on this one as best I can.

I guess I would wait and speak to the person speaking to the group personally, rather than confronting them in a group. I think I would pull them aside and ask if I could help the situation (since I am a friend of the person) or, if the discussion was derogatory, I would lay down some smack on the griper when I could talk to them alone.

If you forced me to make a choice of the choices given, I'd take D. That would be the least likely to cause hurt feelings and would be most likely to help the situation.

I didn't mean to imply that this was an exhaustive list. I should have included the "talk to the person privately" options, which should also be a component of the response if you think the person is off base.

Were it me, I would take the griper aside later and say that you couldn't help overhearing, and that whomever the complaint is about, it should go directly to that person. I would probably offer to go with the person if they're having trouble figuring out how to do it, but only as a boost of moral support, not as a moderator.

I think that encouraging folks to be up front with their gripes -- and if it's a strong enough complaint they'll be encouraged to do it, and if it's just meaningless griping, they probably won't -- is one way to get to a world I'd like to live in.

pat/siobhan

(j) try to change the topic of the conversation, to shut down the personal griping. "Hey, what did you think of the Field Battle at Pennsic this year?"

Of such things is graciousness made.

»™

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tale-bearing

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As usual, I get overly analytical about what's frequently complicated by emotional responses...

Re: As usual, I get overly analytical about what's frequently complicated by emotional responses...

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A flock of bad choices

Oo, I thought of another one.