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

[rani23.livejournal.com]

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.

[cellio]

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.

A flock of bad choices

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

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