How to rise above this with a bit of dignity?

[OkilyDoke]

Someone at work was "kind" enough to tell me that a group of workers from the same department had been discussing me and erroneously blaming me for something really bad that was most definitely not my fault. The whole thing was extremely unkind and really upset me massively. I'm still reeling. Unfortunately I now have to walk past these people every day knowing what they have been saying and I can barely look them in the face. I hate confrontation, and confronting them is a bad idea if I want to keep my job, and I do need my job unfortunately. How do I keep my dignity and rise above it? I can get behind "turning the other cheek", but honestly it really hurts, badly.

How do you know that the person who told you isn’t just a shit stirrer?

what reason would you have to take their word as the gospel truth?

As the previous poster said, I would be doubting it's the people you are walking past that have been talking about you - I'd be looking a bit closer at the person spreading the news.

What I would do is be speaking to my boss OP. No way I would be ignoring that shit at all.

Depends on what is being said I think and the potential impact. If it jeopardised my job or made it difficult to continue I would talk to my manager and ask to have a meeting with the ring leader to clear up what has/hasn't happened.

Why didn’t the person who was ‘kind’ in telling you, simply tell these people that they were erroneously blaming you instead of telling you and making you feel worried and anxious?

Report this to your manager.

If it were me, this would also bother me, but I would try to reduce my own emotional involvement. Quite literally, someone thinks you've done something that you haven't. At most all this needs to be is awkward for them. Your emotions make it bigger for you unhelpfully. If there's anything you need to do you can do it dispassionately, i.e. quick email to boss " Hey Boss, rumour has it that xz and z think i did something i didn't do. Let me know if it needs to be discussed".

They told me they did "put them all right that it wasn't my fault".. however, even if that actually happened I could have lived without the knowledge that it had happened in the first place. They should not have told me. It was very unkind..but deliberate or unthinking I don't know.

Leave some laxative laced brownies in the office fridge...

You need to make your manager aware. Let them handle it. An email could read:

Hi Manager

I need to bring this to your attention as I do not want false information to negatively impact on my work or our department’s reputation.

”Kind person” has disclosed to me that a group of workers (name them) have been discussing me and erroneously blaming me for (the thing that was wrong).

Aside from the discomfort this causes me, I don’t think this is a conducive way to address the issues. We should be working as a department to understand what lead to the (thing) happening and how we can avoid it in the future.

I would ask you to address the issue of the informal discussions about me as this is not the type of atmosphere I find productive in a work environment.

@Rainbowshine is spot on, great email!

Bring it up with your manager, and get this sorted, the person who told you might not even be telling the truth, deal with it properly like this.