“She always asks so many questions. I thought she would have learnt by now.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t have common sense. Just tell her to ring the information line, we can’t always help her.”

“That’s right, who does she think we are? How are we supposed to know if the Bentley campus offers horticulture?”

These are some of the comments that echo through my head when I think of my time at work before I came to AC. I was a customer service officer at a trade college. Before I arrived on my first day, I anticipated that there would be general banter of complaining and whining circulating through the office. Yet not to the extent that I encountered when I actually began work there.

Worse, though, was the gossip. It was at that workplace that I experienced one of human nature’s most enjoyable but destroying traits—talebearing. It was also at the workplace that I learned to despise gossip and developed a goal to quit it entirely.

Work would be a fresh start for me, I decided. It was time to mature and prepare for a possible future at Herbert W. Armstrong College. Surely adults would set a better example and wouldn’t be as callow as my peers at school. But this was not the case, as I discovered.

“She always leaves for lunch at exactly 12 o’clock. And she always arrives at exactly 8 o’clock. Why does she always have to have it her way? Why is she always on time?”

The “she” in this story was a British single mother named Sandra, and also the workplace victim. Sandra was slandered behind her back from the moment she started. At first I thought it was because my fellow office-mates didn’t like change, as she was replacing one of their friends. However, after a few weeks I realized that Sandra was being berated for her slow-learning capability. But it didn’t stop there.

You see, gossip is contagious. When you find one lesser quality in someone, every other little habit of theirs becomes contemptuous to you. This was certainly the case with regards to Sandra, who was oblivious to the atrocious commentary taking place in the back office about her. Once people got bored with criticizing her about how “slow she was,” they moved on to other aspects of her work life, even going so far as to disparage her about the time that she arrived at work. All of it was done in vanity, to “puff up” their self-image.

Understanding this was something momentous for me because I had been a gossiper all my life at school. I won’t deny it is “fun” in the process, but it is so damaging to someone’s reputation and eventually your own. Sandra was one of my favorite companions at work because she was always tremendously friendly and encouraging. Hearing her being belittled almost every day, and knowing what a benevolent person she was, made me feel strongly indignant against those who criticized her. It also made me question my own tendency to gossip. I hated hearing gossip about Sandra so logically there was no reason why I should accept that habit in myself.

I made it a goal to cease gossiping entirely. It hasn’t been easy—giving up slander is something that hurts your pride, which is like pulling out all of your teeth. You have to learn to bite your tongue though, and it will be rewarding in the long run.

Gossip is all about making one feel better about themselves. People pick up the most trivial issues of others and turn them into mountains, and this is supposed to provide entertainment. We are not exempt from this selfish, debilitating habit. Do we gossip because there is something lacking in our lives? Surely, if we have our future in mind we don’t need to denigrate those around us in order to raise our self-esteem. My job made me realize just how similar I was to my coworkers and it spurred me to sabotage this detrimental resemblance.

Gossip is not harmless fun. Rather, it is a deadly poison—spreading, seeping, destabilizing. The next time you open your mouth to spill some juicy comments, consider your future, and keep your mouth shut. You will not only save someone else’s character, but your own too.