Researchers at Georgia Tech looked at 600,000 work emails and found that people spend a LOT of time at work gossiping.
--They looked at all the emails left over when Enron collapsed, and found that 14.7% of them . . . or one out of every seven . . . were GOSSIP about other coworkers.
--But they used an INCREDIBLY broad definition of gossip. If the email talked about someone other than the sender or receiver, they called it gossip.
--So even something like, "Check with Phil. He should have the old accounting files" would be considered gossip.
--Not surprisingly, the gossip was spread throughout almost every level of the company. The low-level worker bees were most likely to gossip, and the next biggest offenders were vice-presidents and directors.
--Gossip emails were nearly THREE TIMES more likely to be negative than positive, but the researchers said that a large percentage of them were neutral.
