Ten Things Never, Ever to Tell Your Co-workers
- If you hate your job, keep it to yourself. Look for a new job on the side, but don’t tell your co-workers how unhappy you are. It can’t help them to know.
2. If you are not a fan of your manager or any other manager in your company, don’t talk about it with your teammates. If you do, it will be very easy for someone to spill the beans to your manager and put you in an awkward situation.
3. If you’re job-hunting after hours, keep it to yourself! You can tell your co-workers when you accept a new position. Until then, say nothing.
- Don’t tell your co-workers your personal financial situation, even if they talk about their own budgets and expenses. If you are doing well, people can get jealous. If you are struggling, they will talk about that. When people are bored and unhappy, they gossip. Don’t give them anything to talk about!
- If you feel your job is beneath you, don’t say a word. How would it make your co-workers feel if you told them that you and they are stuck in jobs that don’t require much intelligence or knowledge? It wouldn’t make them feel good!
- Keep mum about your long-term career plans if they involve stepping up and away from your current job. All you can do by sharing your glorious plans is making your co-workers feel bad about their own limited horizons.
- If you have a crush on a co-worker or if you and they are dating, keep it quiet with your other co-workers until the relationship is solid enough to tell your manager about. If you and your co-worker become a couple, tell your manager before they hear about it through the grapevine! The speech is simple. Just walk into your manager’s office and say “Sarah, I wanted to mention something. You know Arnie, in National Accounts? He and I are dating. I wanted to tell you before you heard about it some other way.” That’s all you need to say.
- Don’t tell your co-workers that head-hunters call you all the time, if they do. It’s no one’s business but yours, and if your teammates aren’t getting calls from recruiters they might get jealous. That would not be good for your team’s mojo!
- Say nothing to your co-workers when you break the rules at work — for instance, taking a sick day when you are not actually sick — or it will inevitably come back to bite you.
- Keep quiet about your plans to transfer to another department. Somebody in your work group will have a bad day before long and that’s when they will tell your manager “Guess who wants to leave your department, and hasn’t told you?”
The healthier your environment, the less you have to worry about a stray comment making its way to the wrong person’s ears and causing you strife.
The worse the environment, the more tight-lipped you have to be with your co-workers.
If things get so bad at your workplace that you can’t safely talk about much beyond the weather, that’s a sure sign it’s time to go!
www.forbes.com
