I'll keep this as loose as possible, in case anyone from work should ever find their way here. Infinitesmal possibility, but hey, why play around with Murphy's law?

I'm in the process of climbing the totem pole at work to about 3rd in command. I do my job well, I try my hardest, ask for more work when I'm finished with something, ask for ways I can improve...the manager (we'll call him M) likes and respects me, unfortunately, on days like today, a little too much. He trusts me to keep our conversations confidential, and has so far told me (beforehand) about the firing of two employees, both of whom I would've classified as friends. Never gave them any warning, just fired them. Whether they deserved it is up for debate, I won't even bother with that argument, but he never gave them a chance to get it right.

We hired a whole bunch of temporary employees for the Christmas season, most of whom I'm not really friends with. There are a handful of people I'll miss after the season, but not many. One of these kids (we'll call him J) has been a real turn around. When he started off, neither I nor M liked him - he was so laid-back we could've sworn he was on drugs (who knows?), he just seemed like a real under-achiever. A "blah" employee, not one who stands out. In about the past month he's turned around into one of the most productive people we have on staff.

T is another employee, been there about 6 months, got hired right around the same time I did. Dependable, always does their job right, but not a "wow is T the best employee or what" kind of person. One of my friends too. Now that the Christmas season is a few weeks away from wrapping up M is doing staff evaluations, and recently confided to me (why do I get stuck hearing all this stuff?) that he's thinking of "trading in" T for J. Not really for any definable reason (he could, if he wanted to be exact, find better reasons to fire ME than T). So again I'm stuck in the unenviable position of possibly seeing another one of my friends get the axe without any warning.

Part of me wants to avoid conflict, and just keep my head down, like I did the last 2 times M did this. Another part wants to give him a speech something along the lines of "your paycheck rents my time, it doesn't buy my soul, don't expect me to ignore and not stand by my friends." Another part wants to say that since I'm trustworthy enough to receive this information, I'd like to make a suggestion or two, like giving T a warning and some suggestions on turning it around. I'm wondering what to do here.

I'm already keeping the secret that a guy who's been there longer than me and who jumped up (temporarily) to 2nd in command is getting demoted to a position lower than mine (meanwhile he thinks temporary is going to become permanent). That's really gonna suck when he finds out - and yeah, M told me at least a month prior to when it will happen.

I love my job, really I do. I spend 5-10 hours a day talking about movies and music, hanging out with people that (for the most part) I really like, and then every two weeks they send me money for it. But with even mediocre power comes great responsibility (sorry Uncle Ben), and I really, really don't like it when M complains about other employees to me, or expects me to keep secrets on their employment status.

So, do I keep my head down and do nothing? Make suggestions to my boss (only seems fair, since he started this dialogue) and possibly lose a little favor? Drop some private hints to T that it might be time to step it up a little?

Thanks in advance,

Adrian