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

[alienor.livejournal.com]

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.

[siderea]

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.

[siderea]

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.

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

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

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?

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

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.

[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.

Oo, I thought of another one.

[siderea]

(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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