When I was working two jobs back in the ’90s, I worked at a Nashville publishing house from 7am to 4pm, then came back to my town and worked in a record store (remember those?) until they closed at 9pm. One afternoon I arrived for work at the store. The assistant manager was on duty, and when I came in that day she simply glared at me and refused to speak to me and refused to tell me what was wrong. Clearly she was angry, but I had no idea why.
Turns out I was the casualty of employee gossip. This went on for several days—I worked nights and she was the night-shift manager—with her refusing to speak to me and me utterly clueless, until another employee who’d been present when the original gossip was spoken told me what happened and who said what. (This person is still a friend of mine, twenty-five years later.)
Aha. A guy we all knew to be a gossip/troublemaker/crap-stirrer—you know the type—told her that I had said something. I can no longer remember what it was. He was a college kid who did nothing but run his mouth, so he was just riffing. She was late twenties, married, no kids, and I liked her. I was forty-one or -two, a single mom raising a kid working two jobs, and here I’ll say that gossip is not a thing I have time for. Not then, not now.*
When I finally knew what the problem gossip was, I went to her and a) denied it, truthfully, and b) apologized for her being upset—but again stressed that I had not, in fact said it. She didn’t believe me.
How do I know? Fast forward ten or twelve years to the mid-2000s. Now, my son’s in college and I’m doing the work I was meant to do. And a note arrives in the mail from this woman. She told me she had come to Christ and was forgiving me. For something I didn’t say. For something she’s been holding on to all this time.
Friends, I can’t even.
I sat down and answered her, after working through several drafts. I told her I was happy for her but, again, the person who lied to her and involved me in it without my knowledge was the person she should be forgiving. I told her that I had gotten over the horrible way she’d treated me, because, you know, I’m a grownup. Life goes on.
I told her if she needed my forgiveness for behaving the way she had, I’d be happy to say that I forgave her, but since I had done nothing to deserve her antipathy, I didn’t need her forgiveness, and she could keep it to herself.
I was pretty angry at her smug little note. But she probably felt … strengthened, perhaps. She did what she came to do. God bless ’er.
NOTES:
*When I worked at the publishing company—a Christian publishing company—I was the butt of gossip, again from a gossipy guy. I understood this occasion better, because the guy reported to me and I knew exactly what I’d said. He just didn’t like how a decision of mine affected him, and he bitched to a friend of his, a woman who then turned it into gossip within the company. By this time I was already unhappy there, for precisely this sort of thing. Gossip! Backbiting! Bitching! Talk, talk, talk. And all under the guise of “love one another.” It’s probably best not to get me started.
**I continued to work there, and things settled down. I worked at the record store for six years, longer than any of the college kids.
Wanderlustful 