AITA for telling my manager about a colleagues 2nd job?

[Beth3.0]

AITA for telling my manager about a colleague's second job, even though I only found out by accident and never meant to get involved?

I've been going back and forth on this for weeks and I genuinely cannot figure out if I'm the villain here. Some people in my life say I did the right thing. Others won't look at me the same way. I need outside perspective because I'm losing my mind. For context, I (32F) work in a mid-sized marketing agency. About 60 people total across two offices. I've been there four years and I'd describe my position as "comfortable but not exactly thriving." I'm a senior account coordinator, which sounds more impressive than it is. Basically I wrangle timelines, chase approvals, and occasionally get credit for things I had very little to do with. The pay is decent. The people are mostly fine.

One of those mostly-fine people is a guy I'll call Dom. Dom (34M) has been at the company for about six years and is a project manager one level above me. We're not close friends but we're what I'd call friendly. We eat lunch together sometimes when the stars align. He's covered for me being five minutes late to a call before. I've proofread emails for him when he's been in a rush. Normal colleague stuff. I genuinely like him.
Here's where it starts.

About three months ago our agency landed a fairly significant new client, a regional retail chain that wanted a complete brand refresh. It was the kind of account that had everyone quietly excited because the budget was serious and it would look good on everyone's portfolios. Our director, who I'll call Patricia, made a point of saying this client would require "full bandwidth" from the core team, and that everyone attached to the account needed to be fully available, no distractions. She said this in a meeting. Multiple times. She also sent a follow-up email restating it. We all knew what she was saying: if you have side work or freelance clients, now is not the time.

Dom was on the core team for this account. I was added about six weeks in when the workload expanded.
About two months into the project, I started noticing Dom was difficult to reach in the afternoons. Not unreachable, but slower to respond than usual. We'd schedule review calls and he'd join five or ten minutes late looking slightly frazzled, like he'd just finished something else. I didn't think much of it. People have lives. Maybe he was dealing with something personal. I didn't ask.

Then I found out by accident.
I want to be really clear about this part because it matters to how I feel about everything that came after. I did not snoop. I was not looking for anything. What happened was this: Dom and I were both working late one Thursday finishing a deliverable for the client. Everyone else had gone home. He got up to use the bathroom and left his laptop open on the desk across from mine. I wasn't trying to read his screen. I genuinely was not. But his screen was facing me and he'd left a video call open, not in session but with a recent chat log visible, and the name of a competing agency was right there in large text at the top of the window.
I looked away immediately. But I'd seen it.

I sat with that information for two weeks. I told myself it could be anything. Maybe he was interviewing there. Maybe he had a friend who worked there. Maybe I misread it. I convinced myself I had misread it, actually, for a solid four days, because it was easier.
Then we hit a rough patch on the account. The client pushed back hard on a campaign concept we'd all poured serious time into, and Patricia called a post-mortem meeting to figure out what went wrong. During that meeting someone raised the point that the strategic direction had felt slightly inconsistent over the previous month, like decisions were being made and then quietly reversed, and the timeline had slipped more than it should have. Nothing was aimed at Dom directly but he was the project manager. The accountability was implied.
After the meeting I went home and I couldn't sleep. Because I knew something that might explain the inconsistency. Or might not. I genuinely didn't know. But the possibility was sitting in my chest like a stone.

I need to pause here and explain something about Patricia, because this matters. Patricia is not a warm person. She is fair, mostly, and she is excellent at her job, but she is not someone who forgets things or gives second chances easily. I knew that telling her would not result in a quiet conversation where Dom got a warning and everything carried on. I knew it would be serious. I thought about that a lot.
I also thought about the fact that Dom had a mortgage. He mentioned it when he bought his flat two years ago. He was proud of it. I thought about the fact that his girlfriend had just moved in with him and they'd been talking about getting a dog. I thought about how he'd covered for my lateness on that call. I thought about how none of those things were actually relevant to whether I was sitting on information I shouldn't be sitting on.
I didn't go to Patricia straight away. I went to a friend outside work first, someone completely unconnected to the industry. She told me to stay out of it. She said I'd seen a name on a screen, not a contract, and that it wasn't my problem. I almost took that advice.

What pushed me over the edge was something small and maybe stupid. The following Monday, Dom sent the client an update email that contained a strategic recommendation that directly contradicted something we had agreed on as a team two weeks prior. Not a huge reversal, but noticeable. And when I flagged it to him privately he said he must have confused his notes. The explanation was plausible. But combined with everything else I had been observing, something in my gut said this wasn't confusion. This was someone operating in two directions at once.

I requested a private meeting with Patricia and I told her what I'd seen and what I'd noticed. I was careful to frame it as "I want to flag something that might be nothing" rather than "Dom is definitely doing something wrong." I told her about the screen, the name I'd seen, the pattern of behaviour I'd noticed. I told her I could be wrong about all of it.

I was not wrong about all of it.

I don't know exactly what Patricia found when she looked into it. I was not kept in the loop. What I do know is that Dom was called in for a meeting two days later and was gone by the end of the week. Not suspended, not on a warning. Gone. Cleared out his desk on the Friday afternoon. He walked past me on his way out and he knew. I could tell by the way he looked at me that he knew I was the one who said something. I don't know how he figured it out. Maybe Patricia told him. Maybe he just guessed.

He hasn't spoken to me since. He's blocked me on everything. Two mutual colleagues who were closer to him than to me have gone noticeably cold. One of them, a woman I'd considered a genuine friend, told me point blank that I "didn't have to do that," that whatever Dom was doing was between him and the company and I had inserted myself unnecessarily. She said I should have spoken to Dom directly first and given him the chance to sort it out himself.
That last part is what keeps me up at night. Should I have spoken to Dom first? At the time I told myself that giving him a heads up would just give him time to cover his tracks, and that I wasn't his manager and it wasn't my job to manage his ethical decisions. But when I say that out loud now it sounds harsh. It sounds like I was more interested in protecting the company than protecting a person I actually liked.

The colleague who went cold on me, I'll call her Priya, made a point that I keep returning to. She said that Dom losing his job was a much heavier consequence than anything I apparently considered. That I treated a hunch and a glimpse of a screen as enough evidence to ruin someone's livelihood. That I could have been wrong, and if I had been wrong, Dom would have lost his job anyway because Patricia doesn't do nuance.
I think about the fact that I don't actually know if what Dom was doing was harming anyone. I know it violated company policy. I know Patricia said full bandwidth. But was the campaign's underperformance actually his fault? Was it really going to cost the company the client? Or did I take a complicated situation and give it the most damning interpretation because I was stressed and sleep-deprived and wanted there to be a reason for the problems we were having?
I also think about the fact that people have second jobs for reasons I know nothing about. I know Dom has a mortgage. I don't know what else he might be dealing with financially. I don't know if he'd had a conversation with Patricia I wasn't privy to. I assumed a lot.

My partner says I did the right thing and that I shouldn't carry guilt for someone else's choices. My friend outside work still says I should have stayed out of it. Priya isn't really speaking to me. Dom is gone.
The account is going better now, for what that's worth.
So I know we don't really do this on here, but settle it for me. AITA?

[TheRizz]

Polygamous working: Your questions answered

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czej277z34ko

NOT

[Danny47]

Honestly this feels like a trust break more than anything else. Even if the second job was questionable, most people expect to handle that privately unless it is impacting the company directly.

I would not be surprised if this changes how your colleague interacts with you going forward.

[BlackMamba]

People underestimate how common second jobs are now. Remote work especially has made it more normal, and companies often only care if performance suffers.

So reporting it can feel out of step with modern work culture depending on context.

[QubitZero68]

I wonder if this is more about company culture than the action itself. In some places this would be normal to report, in others it would be seen as overstepping immediately.

Culture changes everything in these scenarios.

[Stu96]

That feels like a tricky call. On one hand, you might have thought you were protecting the company or flagging a policy issue. On the other, a lot of people see second jobs as personal unless it directly impacts performance or breaches contract. I can see why this is sparking debate.

What happened after you told your manager matters a lot too. Did it actually change anything at work?

[Vanessa26]

I have seen this go badly before even when the report was technically correct. It creates a sense that people are being watched for their off-hours choices.

That can really hurt morale if it is not handled carefully.

[PaleCipher]

This is one of those situations where technically allowed and socially acceptable do not always align. Even if you were within your rights, it might still land badly with coworkers.

Did you expect your manager to take action or just be informed?

[ReacherBadger]

If I had to sum it up, this is a gray area situation. Not clearly right or wrong, but definitely impactful on relationships either way.

The real fallout might matter more than the original decision.