28-year-old worker learns coworker, with whom she privately vented frustrations, secretly recorded their conversations for over a year—HR blindsides her, firing her and promoting him—When is private venting ok and when is it a workplace issue?

Everyone needs to have a good vent every now and then.

It is generally accepted that everything that we say or think about our bosses, parents, professors, or other authority figures isn't how we always feel about them. We know that what we say isn't even necessarily true; it's just how we happened to feel in the moment.

Still, there are lessons learned from this workplace issue and coworker betrayal. 

As other readers have already pointed out, workplace trust issues are important considerations to make. You never know what people's motivations are. While you might be "workplace besties" now, you have no idea who this person is outside of work and how loyal they are to even their longest-time friends. You don't know if your relationship is just convenient to them for the moment. And maybe sometime in the future it will be more convenient for them to throw you under the bus instead. Maybe they think it will get them on the boss's good side, or maybe they have just come to see you as a threat.

This may constitute wrongful dismissal, but who can say for certain where that claim will even get you? It certainly won't put that chaos back into Pandora's Box once the lid is cracked and your boss and HR have taken a look inside.

The more important lesson is that our own thoughts and feelings carry weight. Each of us is accountable for what we say, as well as what we think. Workplace trust issues aside, you don't have to worry about trust if you aren't getting worked up about other people and saying bad things about them anyway.

It's easy when they're passing thoughts to let them fly in and fly out of our mind, but managing those thoughts and not letting them take up too much real estate becomes the entire battle.

And the problem with venting is the outrage and the sense of justice feels incredible. It gets the blood pumping and the dopamine racing. And that all adrenaline coursing is addicting (ok, maybe that's just that late-afternoon coffee you knew you should have avoided.)

But when that is happening often enough, it becomes a pattern and a pattern becomes the norm. Before you know it, the only thing going on in your directing mind is that outrage and indignation. And when these things occupy enough space in our minds often enough, suddenly this becomes all we're thinking about: it is your mind.

They say you are what you eat, and who knows what that's supposed to mean. But you are quite literally what you think.

So while a vent is healthy, this pattern is not. It prevents us from solving our problems in a healthy way.

That same good feeling that we get from venting, that rush of energy, keeps us from actually putting that time into bettering our situation. That is: finding solutions to the problems we are facing. Plotting a way around that same manager we are venting about, who is a living roadblock to our goals at work and our careers as a whole. Working on resolving the issues that are already living rent-free in our heads.

Then, we had a manuscript or a recording of everything that we said played back to us; we'd probably be ashamed. If we knew that the person who we were talking about might see or read it, we would probably hold back. And that is enough to tell us we shouldn't be saying it in the first place.

I do think that, also, in some way, people can tell how you feel about them and what you say about them. When you say enough negative things often enough, the stink of it sticks to you like you ate a meal with too much garlic. Then, when interacting with those same people, they can basically smell your thoughts on you. So, whatever you’re saying behind their back about them might be coloring their feelings about you more than you’re willing to admit.

A better way to deal with these types of problems at work is to remain grounded and centered. Stop letting things and people get to you. Worry about the things that you can fix, and let everything else go.

Plus, venting to a third party like a friend or family member is different from venting to a coworker. The first is a personal situation, unless someone from work happens to overhear you. But as soon as you involve another person from the workplace, well, now it becomes a workplace issue.

Even if that coworker you confided in didn’t throw you under the bus. Even if recorded workplace conversations aren't legal. If management or HR find out, you’re going to have the same problems. And you'll have a hard time winning your boss over. Especially when they know exactly how you talk about them behind their back.

No matter how it "leaked," you are accountable for what you have said or written all the same. And when someone has been able to keep a lengthy record of all the times you have bad-mouthed the company, then you are looking at a systemic issue: You. Regardless of how right you were in the first place. And at that point, there's no one else you can blame other than the person you see in the mirror.

You can double down and blame others to protect your ego. But eventually you'll find yourself wishing you had put all that energy elsewhere.