Trust

This one makes me sad to write, but:

I've had two people who worked for me who told me early on that their previous manager was terrible, horrible, a nightmare, etc.

This instantly activated a visceral protectiveness in me, and made go out of my way to give them a better experience this time, sometimes at great personal cost.

Eventually, they each decided that I (as a manager) was terrible, horrible, a nightmare, etc.

It's possible they are just serially unlucky and that both me and their previous manager were truly nightmares, but for obvious reasons I was less convinced the second time around.

I've heard similar stories in social and romantic contexts: someone's new friend or partner tells of ex-friends or ex-lovers who were [various bad things], and this initially rouses great sympathy, but within a short time the sympathetic someone is being described in exactly the same terrible terms.

When I first had this realization I felt pretty horrible about the prospect that I would be shut off to people who tell me terrible stories about their ex-whatevers: surely that would also mean wrongly cutting out people who have truly suffered a lot, and truly deserve a bit of karmic redress?

This is definitely a risk; you can imagine that some people really are just super unlucky in work/love/friendship, and really do just attract a series of bad workmates/lovers/friends, and really don't deserve it. I deeply don't want to end up pushing away those people, and in fact I'd love to in-some-small-way help them have a better time in life, which I guess is how you fall down the hole in the first place.

But recently I've noticed something that makes me slightly less worried about becoming suspicious of people with endlessly negative stories: I've noticed that many of the people I know who've had the worst, most-unfair life experiences talk about them in shockingly even-keeled and un-blamy ways.

In fact, my experience talking to them often involves me saying "wait, what the hell, this person was terrible to you, I'm angry on your behalf," and then them saying "oh, I mean, I guess so," but still maintaining a balanced view on both themselves and the person who wronged them.