Loyalty is what your name sounds like when you’ve left the table.

What people say once you are gone is the only unedited version. In front of you everyone is generous, while the honest account happens in your absence, assembled from how you have treated people rather than what you claimed. You will never hear it, which is part of why it is accurate.

Decide how you speak about people who are not present, since that is the same behaviour from the other side. Defend someone who is absent once this week, even mildly. It changes the room, and it slowly changes what gets said about you when you are the one not there.