Out here in the wild and woolly retail landscape, it’s often unclear whether keeping these incidents to oneself is the right thing to do. You could certainly advance a valid argument that sweeping something like this under the rug is not in the company’s best interests. Yet to run and complain to Duane about it wouldn’t really feel right, either, would leave Edgar feeling more like a third grade tattletale. He is seriously trying to picture a scenario that would find him contacting Human Resources about somebody, and is drawing up nothing but blanks.
But this opens a whole other dilemma concerning what’s to be done about someone, then, instead. He’s not really a complainer or a gossip. So far he’s found three or four trusted allies here whom he might privately speak his mind to, and that’s about it. Even while recognizing that gossip may in fact serve a legitimate purpose in the workplace, for this very reason — it’s one of the least complicated and possibly only viable outlet they have — if it reaches a fever pitch, if enough people form an accurate consensus about someone. He just can’t bring himself to bitch to random employee A about random employee B, because it feels unprofessional, and just not how reasonable adults should handle things.
This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/04/17/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-34/
