Gossip is a thing in every office environment, in any environment where there are multiple people who repeatedly interact with each other. Bad mouthing is generally a part of gossip — everyone loves dirt on other people. Some of us are more discreet about it than others. But isn’t it especially toxic when the bad mouthing is done from people who are in leadership positions, speaking this way to people on their teams and cross teams about people who have departed the company?

There’s a colleague of mine who was let go back in the autumn and I was really sad when he left because I got along with him really well. Ever since then, I can’t seem to go a week without hearing his former manager bad mouth him, or people who directly report to the manager saying derogatory things about a guy who they haven’t even met because they started after this guy was let go. It puts such a poor taste in my mouth and is just not a good reflection of a manager, who is supposedly a people leader, nor is it a good reflection of any any current employee who speaks badly about someone she’s never even met. Doesn’t this just go back to basics of what we were taught in kindergarten: treat others as you’d like to be treated? Are we really living in such a world where we can’t do or even think about that anymore?