maybe screwed up at work

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okay, so this is a long story, but i tried to include lots of details. hopefully i have kept everything general and unidentifiable.

at work today, two people were gossiping, which normally isn't too troublesome, but this was different. the two of them sit behind me (cubicle farm), and all 3 of us start earlier than the rest of the flock. they both applied for a higher-level position, and they both had temporarily worked in that elevated position as emergency fill-ins.

please note i didn't apply for that position myself. but lots of other people have done the same emergency fill-in position, and tried and failed to get that same promotion.

well, when these two people had worked in that position before, they had gotten *inside information* about other employee's performance, because part of the promotion involves performance reviews. and they also found out lots of stuff about other employees who had tried and failed to get promoted.

today, those two talked loudly behind me about all of these gossipy things. it was very personal information about why our other coworkers didn't do well enough to get promoted - stuff i should never know. i got more and more upset and finally confronted them. i wasn't very nice about it (i think i called them gossipy oldsters or something and pointed out that they had also been rejected from keeping that position when they filled in before). they tried to defend themselves but i had already heard too much.

i thought about it for a while and finally got advice from a coworker (without providing details), and i decided to report them to a team leader. it was upsetting, and i cried in the office. the matter is under serious investigation, as we are a government agency and we try to hold the highest standards of employee privacy (i.e. a team leader won't even tell you why a coworker is absent if they are away).

but.... i think i f*cked myself over. and i am not sure i did it for the right reasons. these people are aiming to become team leaders, or at least higher-level advisors, and they could be doing my performance reviews in future. and for the time being, we have to work very closely together.

plus, i don't *like* either of them. one of them is a jerk to coworkers by making them feel stupid and embarrassing them when they have questions. he is also terrible to his wife (he is abusive to her over the phone - told her several times she is stupid, and he even told her once that she deserves to get killed if she isn't more careful about security in the house. i know he was talking to his wife because he used her name).

the other one sabotages people by making sneaky remarks to her team leader about how she thinks some people aren't suited to working here, and she makes bad recommendations about anyone she thinks is competition. she actually said that she encourages people to apply for the same job as her so that if she gets the job instead of them, she will know that she is better than them. she also backhandedly compliments people so that they never really feel good around her (less of a big deal, but annoying).

my point is... did i report them because i don't like them, or because they legitimately did something bad? i honestly don't know if i would have done the same thing if my work friend was the one gossiping - i can't say for sure. i don't think anyone can truly answer this but me, but i would sure appreciate some insight. thanks.

It sounds like even if you didn't like them, you had a legitimate reason for it. I do not think someone who is of the type you have described them to be is cut out for leadership positions or positions that place them in the position of knowing personal details of others.

The only thing I would have done differently would have been to approach the team leader about it without confronting them first.

But I think you did the right thing by alerting the team leader to this.