Grating coworkers, tone-deaf bosses, a ninth ask for revisions on a PowerPoint deck—as the workday annoyances pile up, it’s only a matter of time before every worker hits a boiling point. And when they do, they often hit up a trusted colleague to vent to in a direct message on a platform like Slack or Teams. 

“So often you’re sitting in a meeting, you’re hearing something, and you’re like, ‘Am I crazy, or are they contradicting themselves? Did they change the strategy again? Can you believe they just said this thing?’” says one former employee at a consulting firm, who agreed to speak to Fast Company anonymously. Sounding off to coworkers in DMs feels like both an outlet and validation: “It’s for your mental health, right?”

The problem: While this act feels like the equivalent of a private, hushed conversation in the hallway or sharing a drink at happy hour with a confidante, there’s a risk in kvetching on your company’s official corporate communications channels.

Your bosses have ways to get their hands on your messages. On Slack, DMs can be accessed if the company provides Slack with a reason for the download. With Teams, your history’s pretty much accessible whether or not a DM is private. Plus, AI is making it easier for companies to snoop on DMs as well, with at least one tool that can track employee sentiment and trends in public (and otherwise private) chats.

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You may think switching over to personal text messages is a safer method. But complaining about a coworker may not come with a ton of protection: States with at-will employment rules provide companies with a wide berth for when and why they fire employees, which can include no-texting policies. 

In these situations, companies can treat backchanneling as a violation of company rules—or simply fire you without tying your termination to outside communications.

Backchanneling beyond the gripe

Venting is a big part of backchanneling. There’s complaining about the guy who always cooks shrimp in the microwave, or ranting about a boss who tells you to hire a babysitter so you can come to the office during a blizzard.

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