March 29 -- How well do you keep a secret??
9I am good at keeping secrets, as long as I know they are secrets. I am a natural gabby person, so if you want me to be quiet about something, you have to tell me!
I remember blowing a surprise birthday party for my gram because I said “see ya, such and such day”… but no one told me she didn’t know about it and I talked to her every week. sigh…
A friend at work told me she is planning on quitting and asked how it is done – like I have quit – I have been here 2 decades!! I asked my old manager if I am morally obligated to tell my management and she said I am not… pheeewww…
This, I did not need to be told is a secret. So keep it I will. Although, I just shared it with thousands of people 
Have a brilliant day… only two more days of this goathood!!!
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I keep them, altho I have violated this I think twice when I thought actual serious life-changing harm was being done. In both cases, I repeatedly asked the originator to fess up, and told the originator that if someone else didn’t tell, I would have to.
I should mention that I when I was three this was a troubling concept for me.
The following conversation happened about 10 minutes before the reveal.
DAD: “I bought Mom a new car. It’s a secret. We’re going to surprise her.”
ME: “Can we tell her? I wanna tell her!”
DAD: “No, it’s a secret. You can’t tell. That way it will be a surprise.”
ME: “I’ll tell her! I’ll tell her we bought her a turkey. She wants a turkey for Thanksgiving.”
DAD: “Hmmmm. That might be really confusing. You don’t want her to be confused do you? Don’t tell her anything. Can you do that? Can you not tell her anything?”
ME: “No. OK, I won’t tell.”
What’s said to the Barney, stays with the Barney.
Oh… I should also say, everyone knows I do NOT keep secrets from my husband, and vice versa. I may not telllll him everything I know, but if it is important, he knows.
He snorts sometimes at the crap people tell me, other times I need advice, and then there are times where he fills me in on the big picture and I regret everything… and he holds me and tells me it will be alright … smh … sometimes I can be veryyyyy naive.
@mikibell
I think a lot of intelligent, responsible people with good relationships do that.
One brother is a lawyer. He won’t talk about his work at all, except in general terms or if he knows the client doesn’t mind being identified (he keeps the same clients for decades, knows them well). He won’t tell his wife that stuff either. He does work on real-estate projects. He doesn’t keep the name and location of the project confidential unless the client requests it; that info is usually public record anyway.
For personal stuff, if you start to tell him something confidential, he will interrupt to tell you that he doesn’t keep secrets from his wife. If you wanna go ahead after that, fine.
As is @shrdlu’s practice, if you say something that sounds like it might be preferably confidential, he will ask you how private that info is.
Can I keep a secret? I’m not telling.
It’s my superpower.
Tell me one, and let’s find out.
@mfladd I’ve never told anyone that you secretly said Jay Cutler is your actual favorite player and think that if he had Belichick as a coach he would be even better than the overrated Tom Brady. Never told anyone, never will.
Of all the things I’m sure about, keeping secrets is one of the things I do best. One of my favorite stories from my retirement was a person who should have known better who said “Cool. Now that you’re retired, you can talk about all those things you were working on.” Yes, that’s probably close to what he said, even though it’s from memory, and eleven years ago. It’s burned into my brain.
I don’t just keep secrets that I swore an oath to keep, though. If I suspect that someone is telling me something I should keep to myself, I’ll ask them (although mostly that sort of thing is obvious). Sharing something said in confidence is wicked, and cruel (although there are times when, as was already mentioned, a greater good is done by sharing information).
@Shrdlu
Hey! Tell us! ; )
No harm no foul, right?
I once met an engineer who worked on DOD submarine design. She could tell us that. And exactly nothing else. Nothing.
BTW, she got fired today…
@mikibell Oh dang, I’m guessing you’re not the only person she asked. Does she get unemployment?
@mossygreen I don’t think you get unemployment if you are fired…reduced in force, yes…Rumor has it she already has another job offer… I dunno. Was a weird day.
@mikibell Ah. I don’t really know how these things work. I was at a retail job awhile back where we were sure they would try to get people (mostly managers) to quit so they wouldn’t get unemployment (or too-high pay if they stayed). But maybe I completely misunderstood what was happening…
@mossygreen I think it would depend on if the company can prove the firing is “with cause”. Of course it could also vary somewhat from state-to-state.
@msklzannie Right. Being fired for cause, and “voluntary quit” are a couple of the prime grounds for being denied unemployment benefits.
Keep a secret?
I know some shit.