A few years ago, I worked with a very nice man. At the time, I was quite young and, like many young people, quite reckless at times... One day, during my lunch break, a friend (also a coworker) and I went to a restaurant near our workplace. We were chatting animatedly, talking about work, and then we started talking about some of our coworkers, the office gossip. We started commenting on things that were said about some coworkers, their families, children, and the stories surrounding them...
I remember we were walking through a plaza when, in the middle of the conversation, this man, our coworker, came up, and we started commenting that he had only had one daughter, whom he occasionally brought to work because she was studying nearby. This girl was identical to her father, only a female version, but the thing was that her father wasn't very handsome, and guess who said it out loud? Me, with a sentence that went something like this: “That girl looks just like her dad, with no beauty at all!”... I'll never forget it, when suddenly he turned around and right behind me was this man with a look of displeasure on his face, because he had heard everything!
At that moment, I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. I immediately regretted it, but I didn't know what to do or what to say. The man walked past us, visibly upset, and never spoke to us again. From that moment on, I tried not to be so reckless, because I put myself in my coworker's shoes and I know he must not have felt good about our comments, because even though I didn't mean to say that in front of him, it was obviously quite insensitive of me and I regret it very much. Over time, after I became a mother, I understood more clearly how he must have felt.
But apart from that, I also realized that I had to control what I said and, above all, think before I spoke and, of course, look around when I felt like commenting on someone. Ha, ha, ha, that left me traumatized, and I still remember it to this day. Thank God, since then I have learned that gossip only causes problems and doesn't really bring anything good, and that you learn something new from every experience.
This is my contribution to Weekend-Engagement topics: WEEK 266. As always, it was a pleasure to share with you. Best regards!
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The photographs belong to my personal gallery.