bitching and backstabbing...

Is this not a sport for the school playground? I completely understand the logic behind why people participate in this cruel activity. In those naive years of ones life, fitting in and belonging is esstential. When threatened or isolated, the survival mechanism of making those around us kicks in. In a small way, we lift our own social standard slightly by decreasing another's.

Having given and received my share of bitching, I have always assumed that with age this behavior would cease. I thought the hassle of fitting in would disappear when the pool of individuals who we are able to communicate with grew. With age, we longer have the desperate need to feel "apart" of a certain group. The groups we can join with age are endless and the choices are all ours. Not determined by the size and location of the school, or the external factors which are more important when younger

Having considered this and dwelling on the matter intensely, I have come to the conclusion that, humans like to bad mouth others humans! Instead of an adolescence playground sport, age just varies the environment. Whispering under teacher's monotone voices has moved to gossiping over coffee before the next meeting. The sport of bitching is still a highly participated game in the work force.

At no intersection does bitching cause positive interaction in the workplace. Those hungrily feeding upon the backstabbing are (in my experience) lazy, unmotivated and restricting the growth of the work team around them. Those who are resisting the urge to spread hideous rumors often avoid working with know culprits of the cruel games played. This creates a team who are non-cohesive, each side resisting the other. Result - unproductive, unhappy and an uninviting workplace.

Maybe it is my naive view on society and its members which cause me to think that the sport of back stabbing and bullying should only be associated with the school playground. Maybe my next job will open my eyes wider to the "real world." More positively, maybe my next workplace will have a group of homogeneous workers whole strive for honesty, respect and small touch of empathy, openly communicating with knowledge being spread; maybe. No one enjoys people talking about them, with this in mind why does anyone do it?

Another social mystery unsolved...