Frustrated woman tries to keep pregnancy a secret from gossiping coworkers.
Pregnancy is an incredibly personal issue and, when it collides with the workplace, navigating the topic can be very tricky. One woman took to Reddit after finding out coworkers were making guesses about her growing belly.
Lover2312 writes:
Work drama/rumours about pregnancy…what would you do??
So, I work in a restaurant as a server and supervisor. I'm 11w5d right now and have my 12 week scan tomorrow. I had a MC (miscarriage) in September.
Today I was informed (by a friend who knows I’m pregnant) that a girl I DO NOT like/get along with (call her Bailey) told another girl I do not like (call her Lisa) that she thinks I’m pregnant, along with another server. I guess there are a bunch of people who think that I am pregnant.
Now, I don’t know if I’m super ready to openly talk to people at work about my pregnancy since I had my MC and I only have a few close friends that I work with.
Bailey is obsessed with drama and loves gossiping about anything and everything. Lisa is new and is friends with Bailey. Lisa went to my friend and told her about this rumour and then went to our manager(who also knows I’m pregnant) to tell him what Bailey said.
So I am super angry about this rumour being spread around (even tho it’s true..) AND that no one has come up to me personally to ask. Lisa says she “doesn’t like gossip” but told said rumour to my friend and my manager, and did NOT come to me(I don’t like her, but that doesn’t mean she should tell other people about the rumour and not me)
My first thought was to send a message to Bailey, saying I’d appreciate her not spreading rumours because it is a sensitive topic for me. And that yes, I am pregnant, but not ready to talk about it and that I’d appreciate her not saying anything to anyone until I announce it personally. I was thinking about sending the same to Lisa.
Should I send the messages? Or should I just leave it because we originally planned on announcing on social media after our 12 week scan tomorrow. I don't want them to 'take away' the joy in my announcement, but this is making me not want to tell people at work. I just feel hurt that people are talking about this to everyone but me…
piperblue_ recommends:
Don't engage. Keep to yourself and stay out of pointless work drama. If you're being discriminated against because of the pregnancy that's one thing to bring up with your manager. Other than that, stay in your lane and keep your stress levels down. Not to mention, you say you are a supervisor, and thus professionally above all the servers gossiping. Professionally: stay out of it.
idreaminwords cautions:
There is no 'right' answer here, but you can bet almost 100% that if you send the message, Baily and Lisa are not going to keep it to themselves.
If it were me, I would go to management either way and let them know about what's going on, and that it's making you uncomfortable
IveBeenFab provides some professional advise:
OK so I manage people at work. I just called references on a candidate and was able to dig out their involvement in some stuff like this. We as employers don't care 'who started it', it's how you respond.
DO NOT reach out. The best response on this is to either tell your manager that you are uncomfortable with the gossip about you and are concerned about the work atmosphere it creates.
Or drop it. Does it suck yes but by reaching out to these women you are only feeding the drama. You aren't going to stop it by reacting. Especially when it happens to be true. You doing so is NOT going to stop them. Instead it will feed dislike between you and them and add extra incentive to gossip, when their speculation is proven true then youll really have lost that battle.
People will speculate, when it is cruel, work inappropriate, or causing problems, it is for management to step in and intervene and fix the work culture. The way to help is not to be adding fuel to that fire.
Stay out of petty personal dramas at work. Staying above the fray is a huge life skill that will serve you personally, and especially, professionally.
The OP updated after their initial post to thank readers for their help.
Edit: Thanks everyone for the great advice. I think I’ll just leave it alone for a couple days and if I hear any more talk about it going on I will talk to my managers and ask that they deal with it!!
What would you have recommended they do?