The Filipino Crab

The Filipino Crab Mentality gets me all crabby! It’s incredibly funny yet annoyingly irritating when people decide that they know you better than you know yourself. It is one thing when people form first impressions or give their opinions about the person they think you are but it is an entirely different story when they gossip and spread baseless rumors about you as if it were fact. Your simple statement of “I got the job” immediately gets translated to “She slept with the boss” or “He bribed someone to get the job”. It makes you want to wring their necks and stuff the rest of their body in matchboxes.

What is it with these people? If they have nothing better to do with their time, it doesn’t give them license to talk about other people. Will it kill them if they stop talking? If they are unhappy with their lives, jealous of a co-employee or unproductive with their work, they are solely to blame. If they are unhappy, maybe they should find something that will make them happy – gossiping should naturally be out of the question. If they have been consumed by the big green monster, then they should find ways and means to improve their lot in life. Gossiping is not going to make them richer, more attractive, more popular, smarter or whatever it is they envy about another person. It only makes them greener – not a pretty sight by any human standard. If they feel that they are being underutilized then maybe they should take the initiative and prove that are an asset to the company. The problem is they complain when they are given work, and they complain even more when are not given any work precisely because they complain too much.

Gossip is a pastime better left to fishwives. A certain amount of decency and professionalism must prevail the minute one enters office premises. Gossipers are like gaggling geese. They have no direction and when someone does guide them, still they continue to gaggle. What a waste of energy! However, humans are supposed to be smarter than animals. We are supposed to know that making too much noise, as in complaining, is a useless exercise.