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Sometimes, knowing a secret at work can put you in a pretty uncomfortable position.

One woman found herself there after a colleague told her she planned to leave when her contract was up.

Normally, that probably wouldn’t have been a big deal.

But part of her job is planning staffing for the next year, and lately, she’s noticed her colleague doing less and leaving problems for someone else to deal with later.

So now, keeping her plans quiet could end up creating a whole lot more work for her down the road.

Read on to learn what she plans to do.

WIBTA if I told management that my colleague is quitting?

My colleague has been expressing her dissatisfaction with our company’s new management team (which she is also a part of, but she is the old guard) recently, and she told me she plans to quit/stop renewing her annual contract after this term.

On paper, I’m a subordinate (below the management team), but I get elevated authority during a 3-4 month period every year where I am responsible for planning staff allocations for the next year.

When my colleague told me that she plans to quit, she didn’t specifically say that she wanted it to be kept a secret, but I understood that she told me her plan in confidence.

Under normal circumstances, this would be no problem.

Normally, her deciding to not renew her contract wouldn’t be a big issue because the company always asks us whether we’ll renew our contracts 4 to 6 months in advance.

The issue is, since she is fed up with management and with her job, she’s pretty much been doing the bare minimum.

I don’t mean just doing what her job description says and ignoring everything else that’s not in the JD. It’s things like delaying communications just enough that processes slow down but not enough to cause disciplinary action, sweeping things under the carpet for the next guy to deal with, etc.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t like management either, but she has a job to do.

On the surface, she’s doing her usual job, but there are subtle things that won’t get noticed if you don’t have to deal with them daily. And their effects will compound enough that a 4-6 month notice may not be sufficient to offset.

I personally am not that fond of our new management either, but I can work with them, and I think they’re just going through teething problems, nothing too major.

Regardless of my opinion, I have a job to do, and my colleague’s borderline malicious compliance behaviour is going to make my job more difficult in the near future.

Now, she’s torn about what to do.

On the one hand, I could just tell management what is happening, what I am noticing, and have them act early. That would make the transition from my colleague to her successor smoother and make my job easier in the future. But that would mean going against my colleague’s wish to keep her plan secret.

On the other hand, if I honour my colleague’s wish, I would be setting myself up for more work in the next few months. The company would probably recover eventually, but it won’t be painless.

I can’t let the company know without personally identifying her either because she has a unique role, and any detail I need to tell management to get them to plan ahead would give her away. Personally, I am tempted to just tell management.

WIBTA?

Eek! It sounds like she’s somewhere between a rock and a hard place.

Let’s check out what advice the readers over at Reddit had to offer.

Here are some valid thoughts.

This reader doesn’t seem impressed by her wanting to tell.

Yes, she should consider this.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who found a way around his company’s denial of company time to study for his Commercial Driver’s License.

This would be a good thing to do.

This is definitely a tricky situation.

Her coworker trusted her with something personal, so running straight to management probably isn’t the best move.

However, if she’s already seeing work get pushed off and problems being left for other people, that part is fair to bring up.

For now, she should probably stick to what she can actually see happening and leave everything else alone.