The Rules of Work - avoiding embassassing faux pas

You know the scene. Man meets female colleague by the water cooler. Man notices larger-than-usual tummy on colleague. Man congratulations colleague on impending birth of her child and asks when the baby is due and what food cravings is she having. Compounding his blunders he asks if she’s thought of a name for her child and is having a home birth, perhaps?

Colleague tells man she is actually not pregnant. It turns out she has just been overdoing it on the chocolate digestives and is wearing a slightly more figure-hugging dress than usual. Man is now stuck in a pit of horrendous embarrassment, from which there is no easy escape-route. As an added bonus, on some occasions the man will desperately try and extricate himself from the cavernous hole into which he has dug himself by telling his colleague she looks 'healthy'. Which can only be interpreted as telling her she looks fat, Nice.


Making assumptions about your colleagues, even if done innocently and with the best of intentions, can often lead to embarrassing situations. Offering congratulations on phantom pregnancies are one such pitfall. Others include misjudging someone’s age, qualifications, marital status, or family arrangements.


In the communal kitchen at work I witnessed a collague of mine, a lady of about 50, being asked buntly if she was pregnant. Incredible but true. She said ‘no’ and the lady who asked her had to apologise profusely. Luckily no offence was taken! I have to admit I walked off because otherwise I would have burst out laughing.


A good way to avoid this, if for instance you think someone is pregnant, or has bought a new house, or has just been to their daughter’s graduation, is the gambit: “So what’s new with you then?”


It opens up the conversation without creating too much expectation or piling on too much pressure. If they are pregnant they may tell you. If they’re not they obviously won’t. Or if they are pregnant but don’t actually want to tell you, you have respected that right. Similarly their daughter, whom you knew 6 months ago was at university, may have dropped out of her course. Asking "what’s new?" gives your colleague the right to tell you or keep quiet about this, without being asked about a graduation that never happened.


If you want to find out something about someone’s life after work, judge first of all how well you know the person. What kind of relationship do you have with them? If you only know them in a professional capacity, try the “what’s new with you” or “how was your weekend?” opener. Wait and see how much they open up.


Warning: if they often talk about their family it doesn’t mean you can steam straight in there and ask whether their child is eating solids yet. A safer option is “how are the family?” If you know they are in a relationship and you’re dying to know whether they’re engaged yet, first consider whether they have spoken to you about it. If they have you can say “how’s it going with Jennifer?” or whatever his/her name is. But consider this: if they haven’t actually told you about their relationship, but you’ve heard it on the office grapevine, or from other colleagues, should you be asking at all?


Underlying all this is the pernicious effects of gossip and noseyness, which we all succumb to now and again but which we should all strive to avoid. Why? Because of the negative energy it generates. Gossiping reduces the value of people, both the target and the perpetrators. It reduces our value as human beings and leaves us as objects tossed around at the whim of others. Remember the law of karma: what goes around, comes around.