tale-bearing

[cellio]

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.

Comments

[siderea]

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!).