NORMAS GENERALES DE TESORERÍA

The contest of reputations has a rotating set of champions and villains, and at one point or another, everyone becomes the source of another’s annoyance and is moved into centre arena. The office workers do damage where they can, but they also learn about opponents and devise strategies, “mapping out their territories" (Orbach 1994). These people will have to work together for the foreseeable future and if they cannot get along, it helps if they have a thorough understanding of their co-workers methods and agendas. By knowing about each other, they know how to successfully get what they want and how to keep relations at least superficially harmonious.

Gossip is a means for maintaining group mores and defending boundaries. Whether this is done by the group or the individual is a matter of debate. Gluckman wrote that gossip and scandal "maintain the unity, morals and values of social groups", are used to control the behaviour of competing

groups and to curb the ascension of certain aspiring individuals within a group. (1963: 308) "The more exclusive the group, the greater will be the amount of gossip within it" (309).

Paine (1967) criticised Gluckman on this issue because his analysis was centred upon the idea of “the community". On the contrary, Paine believed that the focus should be upon the individual. He accused Gluckman of over-emphasising the importance of maintaining community unity, whereas he believed that gossiping individuals "regulate their gossip, to forward and protect their individual interest". (280) While Paine agreed with Gluckman that gossip is informed by the contextual norms of society, he disagreed that these norms are what gossip is about. It is the individual who gossips - "what he gossips about are his own and others aspirations, and only indirectly the values of the community." (281)16

The debate between Paine and Gluckman highlight two further functions of gossip not yet covered in this chapter: the maintenance of group boundaries and the defence of morality. Since morality is often unique to a particular group of individuals and may even be a criterion of membership, it is appropriate to discuss the two together.

Office mores are developed and maintained through office gossip. Though everyone is familiar with the formal rules of employment, the common sense rules that help the workers to co-exist harmoniously on a day-by -day and minute-by-minute level are unwritten. In fact, they usually are unspoken, and if any of the people in the office were asked to define a few such rules, they probably would find the task extremely difficult even though they execute them flawlessly. One such set of rules regards work. How much, when, and the required frame of mind while doing it. The job contracts give explicit though bland descriptions of what employees are expected to achieve. These descriptions often do not provide clear guide-lines however. For instance, they do not say "The employee should not distract fellow

1 6 In a subsequent retort, Gluckman (1968) noted that while the individual may be the one who gossips, he only does so within social relationships • not alone.

employees and prevent them from working" or "The employee should not read materials that do not relate specifically to assigned duties". These rules exist nonetheless and are followed or subverted depending upon the moods of the workers. Since the rules are unwritten, they are difficult to enforce. There is little here that could be taken up with formal disciplinary proceedings. Yet all agree most of the time to follow them by way of an unrecognised mutual collusion.

An example of this collusion can be drawn from the experience of one young man who found it very difficult to adjust to the work routines of the office. Intolerably so. Though he didn't realise it at the time, he discovered while working in this office that his former job had been preferable to the one he had now. He had taken the present job with the expectation that he would have all the benefits of his last one with more beside. All he got however was the salary. Not only that, but he and his line manager found that they did not much like each other, the senior of the two continually assigning him work that he wasn't interested or experienced in doing. As time wore on, the young man began to hate every moment of his job. The evidence was clear to see. He read his newspaper from cover to cover at his desk throughout the day, read comic books, held innumerable and raucous conversations with his friends over the telephone. His work was slipshod and poorly conceived. He came in late and left early and his colleagues suspected that he was only able to do this because he lied on his time sheet. His behaviour became increasingly unacceptable to those who worked with him. They didn’t always like their jobs. They too thought that they could be doing more interesting and challenging work if only given the chance. But they still came in and worked regular hours, still did the best job they could, still tried not to waste too much time, and kept their personal phone calls to a minimum. They became frustrated that he was not dealing with his disappointment in the same manner as they. They started gossiping about him.

Over the period of about three months, common perceptions of this man changed from that of an acceptable colleague to that of a perfect example of the skiving cheat, a person to be looked down upon and to shun.

The telephonist complained that she was sick and tired of passing through all his personal calls. His line manager complained that his work was of poor quality. His colleagues from nearby desks were distracted by the way he freely turned the pages of his newspaper. His peers were annoyed that he came in after them and left before them, so obviously not doing a full day's work, and evidently getting away with it.

They talked about him constantly and devised a series of standard jokes and stories about him that could be pulled out in any social setting and were guarantied to get a laugh. Through the process of talking about him, they became increasingly convinced that they would not behave like that. They weren't going to let people think about them in that way. Nobody was going to be telling any jokes at their expense. And so the less he worked, the more they worked, or the more they thought they were working. The worse he became, the better they became. Because even though they may not have changed their habits to any great extent, they grew self-righteous in their conviction that they knew what was right and what was wrong.

The preceding is an example of how one individual was excluded from the “in crowd” because he failed to follow their moral code. This is one important means by which gossip forms group boundaries. A more subtle moral code can also be identified that also serves to mark group boundaries, in this case, the manner in which it is executed. Put another way, different office groups gossip differently. The social structure of the office is accurately expressed by the use of gossip and the forms that it takes. Each group gossips about certain things and at certain frequencies. More importantly, the subject of gossip is typically restricted to certain classes of people.

I will begin with those with least status and power: the women from admin. When the typists and the telephonist gossip they demonstrate that they know what's going on, know who is receiving calls from whom, see all secret memos, file everything. They enjoy discussing the managers but there is a tinge of respect in their voices as they consider their personal quirks, and how they are not in the office again, and the fact that they have missed the deadline for typing, and used the wrong format. Their gossip takes on a

different tone when discussing the junior technical staff who, though they are their formal superiors, are nearer to them in status and power. Here the women show less respect when gossiping and let go their reserve. “He spends more time doing his personal finances than his work." And, “she's been looking a little fatter lately - she must have put on some weight”. But these women close ranks amongst themselves. Only a typist that has been severely crossed will say a bad word about another typist. They usually only have complementary observations to offer, even if these are sometimes tinged with bile.

The more senior members of the admin team differ in their styles of gossip. They may know less in quantity than their junior sisters, they may not know all the whats, but they know more of the whys. Senior admin tend to be the ones who are in the decision-making forums as the silent witnesses: they make sure that there are enough photocopies of papers at the committee meetings, they take minutes, they are sent on errands. They have access to a higher level of information than the junior admin women. When they gossip about other people in the office, they tend to focus their attention upon the managers. They gossip less frequently about their admin colleagues. They do not often gossip with the junior techs who are on their level but in another discipline.

Beside the junior admin, the most florid gossipers are the techs, probably because they have the strongest bonds of pure friendship as a group. The junior techs spend hours in the pub analysing what everyone else is up to, either in their personal lives or at work. They criticise the people for whom they must work, they praise those for whom they do not, invent elaborate humorous stories about the admin’s incompetence. They discuss any absent member of their own peer group. But their main focus is the managers, as they try to find out what they are up to, and how they will react to upcoming situations.

The managers keep their gossip amongst themselves and do not share their observations with the rest of the office. Their staff know that they are the subject of discussions because the managers know things about them

that they were not told. But these discussions are not overheard because the managers are discreet. Managers who on occasion say something uncomplimentary about one of their staff in general hearing are censured by their subordinates. It is deemed to be inappropriate behaviour for a senior to speak ill of a junior, a violation of trust and a petty manoeuvre that is closer to bullying than entertainment. It is however entirely appropriate within office custom for the managers to gossip about their peers. It is therefore acceptable to gossip about those with equal or greater status. As with the admin women, the barbs the managers send towards the chiefs have a softer point than those they aim at each other, but the implied criticism is sharper. They fear to say what they want to, they hide behind gentle words. The others can feel their frustration however, and their suppressed energy. They sense the tone of the gossip if only the words would be spoken.

The chiefs are never heard gossiping, 17 at least not about anyone in the office, though they may tell the occasional story about the quirks of a colleague from long ago. If they are approached directly with a complaint or challenge from one employee about another, they will gloss over the accusation, they will say that the problem is temporary, or that they will try to do something about it. But they will never agree, never say anything to reinforce the accuser's views, never overtly gossip.

Since those at the top make all the decisions, and what they know is what it is important to know, or at least all they need for their decisions, they do not need to explore through gossip what is happening. At the other end of the spectrum however, the office juniors don't know much, either through their own inexperience or because information is simply not made available to them. They need to know about the personal motivations of others in order to better predict what they will do and to manipulate their colleagues into co-

1 7 Lest the reader find this too difficult to believe and conclude that I merely did not have access to them while they were gossiping about the office, I wish to clarify that I was in situations alone with both the Chiefs where I tried to initiate gossip and they would not oblige. This was unfortunate since gossip was my main research tool! I have concluded that these two men did not gossip about their subordinates as a habit. It may be expected that at least in some other institutional situations however, gossip amongst senior managers takes place, for instance at golf clubs or amongst Free Masons.

operation. There is therefore a direct relationship between power and the amount of time spent gossiping. Those who are most secure tend to do it least.

Conclusion

Office gossip proves a versatile tool which allows the office workers, from whatever position within the formal hierarchy, to advance their personal strategies of self-betterment. Depending upon what they seek, it serves a number of functions. It enables the overall functioning of the system by providing the workers with information networks and sources of aid that are absent frorn the formal system, allowing them to approach their work and their relationships with greater flexibility and resources. Conversely, it enables some members of staff to subvert that system when they choose, gaining access to information that their superiors would prefer to keep hidden, or making a mockery of their superior's attempts to maintain legitimate control. It also allows them human relief from their sometimes uncomfortable bureaucratic roles.

The bureaucratic and the social, the formal and the informal, the high and the low, are all relatively easy to identify when considering gossip. It is for this reason that I have begun my ethnographic examination here. In the following chapters, these issues will continue to be explored, but will also be more difficult to identify. Rather than focus on the communications and social relationships themselves, the focus of the following chapters will be upon the material world and how objects are manipulated in aid of communication and relationships.