Busted!

Speculating that your coworkers are talking about you behind your back might be a paranoid perspective. Still, in professional situations, you really can’t know for sure how your coworkers feel about you or what your management will do next. You can certainly guess, and sometimes your guesses are right. If you have the instinct that you’re about to get fired, you might want to start looking for a new job so you can beat them to the punch. If you get a new job and accept it, your current boss might tell you that they had big plans for you, and weren’t planning to fire you after all. At the end of the day, you have to make calculated choices as a member of a workplace. Whether your choices ultimately benefit you or the company, you need to stand by the choices you make in your career. The only wrong choice would be to tell your coworker that they’re going to get fired before it happens, because that will certainly put your career in jeopardy.

The manager in this story is positive that her direct reports are talking about her behind her back, and she’s unsure how to proceed. After all, she didn’t hear exactly what they were saying.