On Tuesday, Corporate America tracked down the man responsible for the majority of workplace rumors spread across the country.
It turns out that San Diego accruals clerk Edward Mantell has started 78 percent of the rumors floating around US offices – ranging from improprieties at Fortune 500 companies to the shortening of lunchtime at a civil engineering firm in Duluth, Minnesota.
Prior to March 2020, he was spreading them from his work cubicle in the Texas city’s downtown. Since then he’s been doing it from home, at a rate of at least five per week.
“Because he makes most of the rumors up, the pandemic hasn’t impacted his effectiveness,” says Frances Williams, a member of the team of 14 Corporate Americans who tracked him down.
According to Williams, Mantell’s first rumor was about a co-worker setting clocks ahead so he could get off early. When the story turned out to be true and Mantell was given a plaque for bringing the issue to light, he began spreading more stories. His efforts soon expanded to other companies, and eventually across the entire country.
An initial estimate is that 97 percent of the rumors he spreads are false, although some have turned out to be true, including:
- That Sam Reeves and Mona Rivard of the Thompson Group in Boston lied to their spouses and took a trip to Mexico.
- That the McClure advertising agency would lose the Parker Pickle account to rival The Jorgensen Group
- That General Motors would declare bankruptcy
- That real estate agent named Rita Pollard would be caught with her hand in the cookie jar – literally, a jar containing Lorna Doones.
Since spreading rumors isn’t illegal, no action will be taken against Mantell – though Williams and her team advise people to watch what they say around him.
