THE BUZZ

A few weeks ago, I was making an entry about the kind of life we have in our workplace…I saved it as a draft…I was having second thoughts about publishing it…not that I am hesitant in exposing the harsh realities of life there (it was not about the dangers of chemicals, heck…why would I want to write about that…well not now, I’d probably write about that after I pass my Toxicology class…hehe)…it’s just that I was not in the proper mood when I started clicking the keys that day and so I thought that I was just blabbering. So it remained as a draft.

A while ago I read a blog entry with this title: When The Smoke Comes Out of the Chimney and Touches the Clouds. Hah! Very nice and creative title…well I thought that it was a poem. But no…it contained the same thoughts present in my draft (recall: "the harsh realities of life there"). I am not the only one affected after all. You see…this reality is disturbing to some extent…even more deleterious than the the stuff we deal with in the labs.

Our workplace is slowly becoming the microcosm of the Philippine showbiz industry in some aspects…where *everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his own. I do not know how other people react, but I find it as a poignant situation. I can no longer distinguish genuine concern from simple meddling. I do not come clean. If lightning strikes at people guilty of meddling even once in their life, I’d probably be one-fourth sunog.

If I am coming across vaguely, this is what I am talking about: G-O-S-S-I-P. It may upgrade your social status or destroy you as it acts as a social weapon.

**The word "gossip" originates from god-sib, the godparent of one’s child or parent of one’s godchildren ("god-sibling", see also sabhā), referring to a relationship of close friendship. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the usage of godsib back as far as 1014.

It is quite ironic that ***in modern times, "gossip" is now often commonly understood to mean the spreading of rumor and misinformation, often through exicted conversation over scandals. Well, there is the thing we call evolution.

Anyway, life goes on in the workplace no matter what. I’d like to parallel the situation to a networking business…when the product is good, analogous to a "hot" issue, there is an exponential growth in your downlines…only in gossiping, we don’t earn anything, we don’t earn bucks…even the respect of other people.

* Coelho’s The Alchemist

** and *** Wikipedia