Loshon Hora at work

amother

Thu, Jan 22 2009, 3:18 pm

I need help handling a situation with a coworker in our Yeshivish school who just unloads LH so much of the time.

Any normal conversation about our school day routine is suddenly twisted into her making negative comments about coworkers, students, families of students, administrators, board members - you get the idea.

I have tried staying away from her, but there are times we need to speak or it would be just to rude to not speak with her.

I have tried many times to say that I'm working on myself not to talk about others and I don't want to continue the conversation. She just says, "no I'm just saying how I feel" or "I just thought you should know"

I feel like I'm regularly getting drawn into conversations I don't want to have. I have to nod and not say anything but that seems like agreement, and I don't want to agree. I tell myself I'm not mekubal what she says, but AAARGH! Exploding anger

Any other ideas for handling this?

I'm posting anon b/c people here know me IRL and know the school I work in and I don't want anyone to guess who I'm talking about.

freidasima

Thu, Jan 22 2009, 3:23 pm

Amother, I have a similar problem with a colleague from an office in another city. Luckily she was tranferred out of the Yerushalayim branch of where I work but we are still in the same big outfit and get together and she has this habit of always finding the nastiest thing to say about people...looking for gossip etc.

And I know that every time we are thrown together in a business meeting I will end up having to hear tons of LH about everyone and everything...and if I try to stop her which I do all the time, she keeps going back to it in one direction or another.

I have never found what to do about it except to keep my distance as much as possible. She is a very unhappy person, divorced for many years, no social life, but as much as I have rachmones on her, I have more rachmones on her and my neshamos and I hate hearing LH...

I would also be happy for any suggestions...

amother

Mon, May 16 2011, 11:17 am

I also once had to work with someone who spoke open LH in front of me... I asked my Rov what to do. His answer was: sur m'ra v'asey tov.... I eventually ended up leaving that job, and found something else that was much better.

I guess the idea is to run as far as you can from that person.... but does H-Shem hold you responsible if you can't?