What’s your reaction to someone who cries in a professional environment – that is, at work?
I don’t have any heartburn with a once-in-a-blue moon episode that’s occasioned by something non-job-related. If you’re at your desk and get word that your child has been killed, only the most heartless creep would have anything negative to say about your tears.
I also make room for tears if your job deals with something that’s truly life-or-death. A soldier sobbing over a fallen comrade, a doctor crying over a lost patient, or a lawyer crying over the prospect of a client facing the chair are all perfectly understandable.
But if someone cries at work over a work-related disappointment, a job critique, or the like, my reaction is that they’re unprofessional. As a general rule, then, I’d say that I feel tears at work are not justified.
I tend to give people a bit of leeway - yeah, it might just be a job critique but maybe they had a huge fight with their spouse before coming to work, the car broke down and they haven’t got the money to fix it, their child’s behaviour is causing them concern…and on top of that they got reamed out at work.
However, people who repeated cry (or threaten to cry) at work as a way to avoid dealing with the hard stuff get no respect from me.
You’ve never worked in retail, have you? I shall curb my tongue out of my general respect for you and your generously shared knowledge of all things legal, but suffice it to say I can think of situations in which tears at work for job-related reasons are not out of line; especially when they involve the imminent loss of your job because of bullying from superiors, abusive, offensive, or threatening comments from customers, and so on.
Violence is not an acceptable course of action in those situations, nor is screaming at people. There are some things that can’t be ignored or bottled up. What’s left? Crying, at least where the customers can’t see you.
Obviously not all the time, but I think everyone has their breaking point and I certainly wouldn’t think less of someone who eventually burst into tears after some of the shit I have to put up with in the course of an average week. It’s made me cry at least once, and that was just as well because otherwise I would have called our Area Manager and resigned on the spot, had I not been so distressed.
I’ve only cried on the job once, and it was extremely embarrassing. I wasn’t sad or depressed - turns out it was a stress reaction. I was dealing with an incredibly aggravating situation (can’t remember now what it was - almost 20 years ago) and as I was discussing it with my boss, I broke down. Fortunately for me, he recognized it for what it was, and he gave me a chance to try another type of assignment.
Similar reaction in non-work situations, too. I don’t scream, I don’t punch walls, I don’t kick puppies. When it all comes to a head, I cry. I hate when it happens, but I don’t know what, if anything, I can do about it. Recognizing it for what it is has helped me deal. Plus I try not to let things I can’t control drive me to that point.
I promise, I’ve never cried (as an adult, anyway) to manipulate another. Probably because it never worked when I was a kid…
I’ve done this too, once at two different jobs. I don’t break down into full-out sobs, just tears forming and a little sniffles. I tend to tear up when I get extremely frustrated and/or angry; I know it doesn’t look professional and most people would even consider yelling to be more appropriate, but I don’t have much control over it. Working myself up to look more “obviously” angry is one way I can try to counteract it.
I’ve worked in the medical field most of my adult working career, even working in pediatric cardiology at a previous job, and can’t recall a colleague actually crying over the death of a patient. (They might have done so where no one else could see them; I had a few patients who brought tears to my eyes but I didn’t allow myself to think about them around other people.) This might not be true in all physicians’ offices, though.
I worked retail for three years in college–including three christmas seasons, and never once came close to crying. Never saw anyone that did. I’d have thought it way unprofessional to have walked back to the breakroom or loading dock and seen someone crying.
I was at a promotion ceremony once for an Air Force major who was putting on Lt Col. He cried during his speech (not bawling or anything, but he got so choked up he had to pause several times). My Navy buddy and I just looked at each other incredulously. Totally unprofessional. Be happy, sure, but, as Tom Hanks said, “There’s no crying in baseball!” We still make jokes about the guy, and the AF in general, because of it.
There are some real mean bastards out there that I’ve seen make employees cry. They may be customers or they may be employees. The people crying in most cases were justified. Had the same thing been done to someone else, there is a good chance the offender would have been beating to pulp.
Now if your going to cry because you didn’t get a position that opened up, do it at home, because that is unprofessional.
Crying seems to be around the borderline of professionalism, but my inclination would be to not count it against somebody, except for “people who repeated cry (or threaten to cry) at work as a way to avoid dealing with the hard stuff”, if it’s clear that’s what they’re doing.
This also seems to be a strongly gender-differentiated situation. I work in a technical, industrial setting, where there are maybe five times as many men as women, but the handful of times I remember seeing somebody sobbing, all but one were women.
During the September 11 attacks, dozens of people crowded into the “fitness room” (exercycles and Nautilus machines) to watch the television there, and there were a few glistening eyes, though nothing more. This seemed perfectly appropriate to me. But, then, I was one of the glisteners.
One of my co-workers cries all the time. A few weeks ago, she cried over her lunch (which consisted of entire plate of french fries covered in hot sauce) because she was scheduled to have an angiogram and was scared about the open heart surgery she was sure she was going to have to have. (Turns out it showed no blockage and she was instructed to lose weight and get more exercise.)
This past week it was over cicadas. Here in Cincinnati, every few years massive amounts of cicadas emerge from the ground and basically fly around drunkenly looking for other cicadas to screw. They don’t bite, they don’t sting. They simply sing, fly, and screw.
(I think they have a certain charm about them and imagine them coming up with creative pick-up lines. “What’s your sign?” (which is ridiculous, you see, because they all emerge at the same time) or “What pretty red, bulbous eyes you have.”)
In any event, this lady (a lady in her 60’s) just couldn’t cope. So she took 2 weeks off of work (or rather claimed she was working from home) because she couldn’t deal with the “bugs.” When she came back to work this week, a few cicadas were still left and she started crying at the throught of walking back through the parking lot and being “attacked.”
As a no-nonsense woman who feel that people should just suck it up, my reaction is simply :rolleyes: . Her manager, a man, feels the same way I’m sure, but how do you discipline someone who comes to tears over cicadas (You don’t. You just allow her to do whatever she wants and hope she retires soon.)
I’ve gotten teary once at work, though it didn’t turn to full-fledged sobs. I’d been butting heads with my boss over a series of things over the course of a month or more, and she finally sat down with me to clear the air. Very emotional conversation, and she just pushed over the box of tissues she had at the ready and we continued after I took several deep breaths.
Everyone has their breaking point. It seems pretty harsh to get on your high horse over those who happen to have one that’s lower than yours.
Especially since it seems we’re talking about ordinary common or garden office/retail/factory/whatever type jobs, not specifically responsible time-pressured jobs where it’s critical to keep your cool at all points. I can see, for example, that a tendence to cry under stress would be bad news in a police officer, and would probably preclude that particular career path. But for 90% of jobs out there - eh. As a reaction to stress it’s waaaay better than, say, getting angry and snapping at the folks around you (or even fuming impotently, blank faced, while screwing up your job all afternoon due to suppressed rage)
I have once (completely unintentionally) made somebody cry at work. It was a Child Health Nurse at the centre I take my kids to - they’d been running severe staff shortages for quite some time and I happened to wander in at a point where her schedule was insane trying to keep up with all the new babies that had been handed off to her, and innocently asked to change my appointment time, which triggered a flood. It didn’t make me think any less of her or her professionalism. As far as I’m concerned - why would it? She’s still got all the same skills and knowledge as she ever had. It just made me think less of the bureocracy surrounding her, who hadn’t gotten their asses in gear enough to employ enough people to actually do the job on a sane schedule.
ETA: On the other hand, “Cicada Woman” has a problem. Perhaps she’s clinically depressed or something like that? It’s bad news to be crying ALL the time - but that applies whether you’re at work or wherever
I was sexually harassed by a coworker repeatedly over a two month period. It escalated past the verbal stage and into the physical one. On my fifth (!!) visit to report it, I started crying in my manager’s office, partly due to the stress of being manhandled by one of my peers, and partly because I was frustrated that nothing was being done about it. My manager looked at me, told me I was being very unprofessional - I worked in a warehouse, for cryin’ out loud - and suggested I get the tears under control lest I get written up.
Note to future employees: Sexual harassment is okay. Crying about it is not.
Auto Claims guy here. About a year ago I received a new claim in which a car had run a light and hit a minivan broadside. The car had smashed the sliding door of the van right off its track and crushed the 10 year old girl on the other side killing her eventually. The 8 year old boy next to her was covered in her gore and the 6 year old little girl behind them lost her leg. The mother who was driving sustained no injuries. My family at the time? 10 y/o daughter, 8 year old son, 6 year old daughter (No comment on the wife being uninjured). I had to go home. I can’t handle it when little kids get kiled.
My boyfriend is a general manager of a small company, and had to have a very uncomfortable talk with one particular older guy who tends to cry when someone says anything negative. Not harsh, not officially reprimanding him, but he’s been a bit slower on the pick-up about everything, so after a year he’s still looking for quite a bit of hand-holding and it slows other folks down when they have to constantly reassure him and validate him and help him.
After two different employees complained to my boyfriend in a week that “John’s always asking for help and I was stressed for time and sorta snapped at him, then he cried! What am I supposed to do?”
So my boyfriend was in the awkward position of trying to go over some basics again, so John would be better equipped to deal with things independently, and of course the guy started crying to him. He felt awful, the man is 50 something, in no danger of losing his job, and is sobbing ‘please don’t fire me! I’ll try harder, I swear!’ He wound up just giving a variation of the no crying in baseball speech, since he didn’t think the guy was trying to be manipulative but just had no clue that it was inappropriate and unprofessional.
If there’s an understandable reason for it, once in a blue moon, then sure.
If it’s because you’ve got no coping skills whatsoever, no so good.
I once wound up in HR with a manager who wanted rid of me. One of her points “against” me? She couldn’t make me cry. She said she didn’t think I took my job seriously enough since I didn’t get worked up enough to cry over it.
On the other hand, if I had cried I’m sure she would have used it as proof that I was unprofessional.
As it happened, after she took a swing at me, she suddenly “retired” from the company.
For the record, I did cry once when I failed to impress in my boss that a certain project he wanted completed within a time frame was just not possible. I had been working 10-13 hours a day, even in the weekends and was nowhere near completion. He told me I just had to work harder.
My relationship with my then-partner was already on the rocks due to me not having time for anything else but the job, I was stressed, exhausted and saw no compensation for all the extra time I was putting into it. I stormed out of the office with a teary face.
When I calmed down I told him he could have my job the same day. That really put things into perspective for him, suddenly the project was no so urgent. After all it would never get done if I had quit.
To this day I regret that episode. I wish I would have stormed out before the tears, but what I really wanted was smashing his skull with a paperweight, and *that *would have been bad. As it turns out he made up for it and I worked there several years more.
I’m a pretty sensitive person, but not publically emotionally. At least as an adult. There’s been a lot of shit that’s happened to me at work that I’ve been able to bottle up until I get home.
But I have been guilty of crying on at least two occassions. Once was when I was doing food service at Six Flags. I was hot and overworked when a customer decided I needed to be cussed at for something beyond my control. That’s when the waterworks came, followed by a lovely gush of blood from my nose, which always seems to happen when I’m really stressed out.
Then, more recently (but not at my current job), I found out a coworker was talking shit about me behind my back, generating all kinds of false rumors that were potentially damaging to me professionally. This had been a long-running pattern of hers, and I was simply fed up with it. So out of anger, I started crying in a room full of coworkers.
These are the only times I’ve ever cried in the workplace as an adult (and I was technically a teenager when the first episode happened). Considering my record of hysteria as a child, I think I’m doing pretty good.
I agree, though, that if you’re going to cry, you’ve got to try to hold it in until you can get to the restroom or back to your office, like all bodily functions. No one wants to see you poop or fart, and no one wants to see you cry.
Let’s look at the situation itself. If it is a rare occasion, that is an indicator that something was stressing the individual beyond normal limits. Been there / done that myself (and yes, I am a guy). If, however, this happens a lot it is not healthy for that person and that is way beyond “unprofessional” - that person needs to seek a new job because something is really wrong with the combination of individual / job (or manager or company environment or whatever). Been there / done that, too. Happy now.
Hell, every teacher has heard the stern warning “don’t ever let them see you cry” but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a quick cry in a back room when you’ve got a room full of kids doing their best to push your buttons.
Last time I cried at work, it was because the teacher in charge of the computer lab decided not to let my best students use the lab because they were of a lower class background than the students he supervised (this wasn’t in the US.) So I had to tell a bunch of bright motivated kids who worked their ass off on a project for months that they were going to be excluded because one guy thought they were too inferior to use the school facilities. All this after I spent months trying to get the kids to believe in themselves a bit.
Damn right I cried (not in front of the kids of course, but that teacher got a glimpse of what things are like when you actually care about the people you are teaching).