Two town employees fired for gossiping about their boss have lost an appeal to get their jobs back. Four women were fired in April after a closed-door vote of the Town Council. Two administrative assistants appealed their firings earlier this month, but Jessica Skorupski and Joanne Drewniak learned late Friday night that the council had rejected their bid to be reinstated…. “I was not surprised at all. I didn’t think they would give us our jobs back,” Skorupski said Saturday. “Their minds were made up even before we had the hearing.”…. According to a lawyer’s fact-finding report, the women lost their jobs because one of them referred to the town administrator in derogatory terms, and because they discussed a rumor that he was having an affair with another female employee. The women say they neither started nor spread the rumor, merely questioned why another employee seemed to be getting preferential treatment. No one has said there is any truth to the rumor.
There are few things more potentially destructive to relationships- particularly in the workplace- than gossip. When people begin discussing the affairs of people which they have no right or business discussing, there are a lot of things that can happen, few of them good. I’ve seen workplaces poisoned by gossip, and I’ve had to deal with fallout from unfounded yet pervasive gossip. So when the four women in question complain about their being fired for engaging in gossip, you’re not going to find any sympathy here. If they’re going to engage in that sort of hurtful and potentially destructive behavior, they need to accept the consequences for doing so. Claiming the mantle of victimhood is merely a cheap and disrespectful way of attempting to evade accountability for their words and actions.
Granted, we don’t know the whole story, and I doubt we ever will. From where I sit, though, if these four women were engaged in gossiping about others while they were on the clock (and by all indications that’s the case), they should have been fired. Yes, there’s a fine line between innocent daily conversation and gossip, but when you begin discussing whether a co-worker is having an affair, that to me is jumping over the line with both feet.
If these women wanted to engage in gossip, they could have done so on their own time. They chose to do so while on the clock, and they suffered the consequences for doing so. As far as I’m concerned, that should be the end of the story.
At least they can share their DUMB@$$ AWARD as consolation….
