I think it also depends on the age of the person. When I first started working in a very professional job at the age of 20, I was still not sure of myself. About a year later, just getting my bearings, a member of the engineering group basically told me I didn’t know how to do my job and a bunch of other things that I could have accepted if they’d been said constructively. They weren’t, I was young, I was a year into living on my own in a city 10 hours away from my family, and it really hurt my feelings. I cried for a couple of minutes.
The only other time I cried was about a year and a half ago and it was in front of my boss. I went in his office to tell him I was having a miscarriage and had to go to the hospital because the bleeding was getting worse and burst into tears. He closed the door, hugged me, told me his wife and him had had a number of miscarriages, and told me to take as much time as I needed off.
This bit made me scrunch my eyebrows together. You never know what a person has going on outside of work that makes it harder to keep from crying when something doesn’t go right at work. If I were to happen upon a colleague crying in the break room or the ladies’ I wouldn’t think it unprofessional. Crying in front of your boss, or customers or students is different. Having a cry in a non-public area at work isn’t unprofessional - unless you do it daily, or because Tori Spelling isn’t going to be on the new 90210. Boss called you a buffoon? Customer threatened your job? Coworker took credit for your work? Feel free to shed a few tears in the supply closet.
As for the Cicada lady, I have to believe something’s up there. Are there not some prescription medicines that have “increased sensitivity” as a side effect?
Can I assume most of you are women? Because men don’t cry at work because (with a few extreme exceptions) men don’t cry EVER.
If I see someone crying at work, I pretty much think “that person can’t handle this job and they don’t belong here”.
Pretty much what ASAKMOTSD said. If your job gets you so worked up you throw crying fits or punch walls or otherwise get furiously worked up on a daily basis, it might be time to rethink your direction in life.
I think it depends on your job as well, if you’re a man. My hubby is a firefighter, and when they have an accident where kids are involved and seriously injured or killed, while they don’t cry at the scene, some of them can’t help it during the debriefing, especially if they have kids at home.
I had one unprofessional crying outbreak. My boyfriend at the time and I lived in Greenville TX and I worked for defense contractor and I hated it. I got a great new job with D.A Consulting group, to do SAP training in Dallas. We were so excited, I had gotten significantly more money so we left our 500.00$ apartment in Greenville and moved into a FABULOUS open plan loft in downtown Dallas with a rent of 1000.00$ a month. We bought some new furniture and charged it, but it would be no problem to pay it off since I was making so much more money!
I was supposed to start with a special 1 week training in Houston and I really should have figured something was up when they decided not to send all the new hires to Houston, but instead have a 2 day training in the Dallas office. Then, they put us right to work delivering SAP training at CompUSA.
At the end of 2 weeks, the manager called me into his office and let me go. It wasn’t a job performance issue, they “downsized” the entire group of new hires (about 10 people). I literally burst into tears, all I could think of was we had JUST moved into a loft we couldn’t afford and bought a bunch of furniture that was sitting on a credit card. I got my last paycheck and a 2 week severance.
It actually turned out to be a good thing - 2 months later, I got my dream job at a Very Large Software Company in Redmond, WA. I always regretted crying in front of that jackass - they were SO not worth it.
Some people are so fucking insane that you wonder what dillrod ever thought it was a good idea to give them any amount of power.
When I started at my last IT position, I worked with a woman who had worked her way up from being a tape operator to being a Programmer/Analyst in charge of a project, and abused every ounce of power she was ever given.
Her whole idea was that when things went wrong on the job, if you were not panicking, you obviously didn’t care. The complete opposite of my own philosophy, which is that panicking is a waste of energy, just solve the problem. Well, she also hated me because while she had three years of experience and I had 15, she viewed herself as the Cock of the Walk and showed an obvious resentment toward anyone with more knowledge and skill than she had.
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On OP: I’m a guy, and YES, I have cried on the job. That’s why I left IT, because I was so stressed out, burned out and physically injured (stress induced back injury, ulcers, etc) by it that I had no choice but to recognize that I would DIE if I continued doing it.
But then again, my own feeling is that emotions are natural and not really something to be ashamed of unless you are completely unable to control yourself. I’ve grown to seriously dislike this idea people have that any show of emotions is unprofessional, something to be discouraged, something to be punished(!) and that we should all endeavor to be Spock-like in the performance of our jobs.
People shouldn’t live in fear of their own emotions, or of the emotions of others. We all have them, get the fuck over it already.
I’d be bawling out loud at something like that…and there is nothing wrong with that at all, IMHO. That’s a whole lot different than some asshole coworker hurting your fee-fees.
Wouldn’t bother me unless they made a habit of it or used it to manipulate people. What always drove me nuts was how the people I used to work with would make fun of (behind their back) anyone they heard of crying at work, yet people threw temper tantrums consistently, and that was okay. As though the angry over-the-top reaction was somehow more valid than the sad or frustrated one.
My boss actually said once, when she heard of a woman crying over a sexual harassment incident, “Why did she cry? That’s so unprofessional of her; she should have thrown something at him or something.” Because violence is SO much better. (She suffered from an old-school kind of feminism where women could do anything, as long as they didn’t engage in any “stereotypically feminine” behaviors, so rage was okay, but crying not.)
Personally, I’ve probably cried once or twice at work, but not where anyone would see me or know about it.
I don’t want to sound like a total hardass–as others have pointed out, there are professions which deal with the extremes of life, and when those extremes roll around, crying is a totally excusable thing. But if you’re not in one of those jobs, or if you are and it’s not at an extreme, then crying anywhere in the office is bad juju. Yes, I do expect the employee to handle their emotions and not bring home baggage into the office, or let work affect him/her so much that they can’t handle it. If it really gets that bad, take it outside to the car, the cafe next door, whatever–not where someone you work with or work for or work above can come and find you and have to deal with your inability to deal.
I don’t think it’s a big deal to see women crying at work particularly. Not that it happens often, but I’ve seen pretty much all my female colleagues in tears at one time or another when they’re extremely stressed out. I mean, women cry - it’s a fact of life and not something to jump up and down about with regard to professionalism.
I’d consider men crying at work to be really odd and symptomatic of a flake. I associate male tears with severe emotional turbulence. I cried recently at the birth of my son, for example. It was the first time my tear ducts had seen any action in 10 years. So if your work involves the trauma of life and death, then yeah - the tears will flow. But a guy working at a PC in corporate America and blubbing because people are being mean to him, or he’s overworked? Write him up.
Woman here … I’ve cried at work a handful of times in my life. The first incident I can recall was at my first waitressing job - I was 16, and at least knew enough to retreat into the walk-in freezer for a few minutes to calm down and wipe my face on my apron. One memorable time was when my asshole of a boss “questioned my integrity” over a less-than $10 error on a customer bill. This was the culmination of two years of ridiculously nit-picking micromanagement and tightwad behavior on his part. When we had our closed-door “meeting” to discuss this (with the office manager present as a witness), I had tears of frustration running down my face, but managed to keep from openly sobbing or anything. Afterwards, the OM congratulated me on my self-control - she said she would have been cursing at him! I was 22 at the time, and turned in my notice later on that day.
My husband, who is in his 30s, cried at work one time in front of coworkers. He does field support (mostly hardware stuff) for some executives and their staff. There was this one executive’s admin who was a notoriously hard-assed bitch - everyone hated her, but she hadn’t done anything that was specifically termination-worthy … until the day she screamed obscenities at my husband in an open cubicle area in front of 20+ people. He had made a minor error (because she didn’t give him the right information) and was slightly behind schedule (because our one-year-old son had kept us up half the night), but the combined stress just got to him, and he started to cry. He immediately went into a bathroom to calm himself down and regain his composure. Unfortunately for her, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The higher-ups decided that anyone who was so power-hungry and cruel to another employee needed to go. It took about a week for them to get their ducks in a row, but she was shocked when she was asked to leave.
Agreed. That’s a ridiculous stereotype. When I got married I wrote a thank-you letter to my grandfather for everything he’d done over the years and he bawled like a freaking baby for about 5 minutes straight.
Since we’ve been together I’ve seen my husband cry probably 10 times at least, usually out of concern for family members but a couple times while watching films. I had an ex who cried so much and so often that his emotional immaturity disgusted me. Men cry.
Regarding the OP, crying over petty drama at work is unprofessional. If you have a stressful life/death job and are crying frequently, there’s a possibility you may want to look into another line of work.
I work in nonprofit debt counseling and it’s not uncommon for someone to occasionally (once every two months or so) break down after a stressful call. It isn’t hidden from other coworkers because to an extent we rely on one another’s emotional support during the tough times. Usually talking about it for a minute or so afterward will prevent a breakdown like that.
The other day I spent several minutes on the phone trying to comfort a woman who was completely isolated from family and friends, disabled and in dire financial straits. She could not stop sobbing and talking about how badly she wanted to end her life and how alone she felt. I had to refer her to a Suicide Hotline. It was that much harder because I know personally how difficult it is to live with depression and how hard it is to see beyond the present moment when you’re feeling that way. I did my very best to hold my shit together while on the phone, but afterward I did break down, quietly, for a good 30 seconds. I don’t think it’s unprofessional at all, but if I dealt with those situations all day and every day (and someday I might) I would have to learn how to maintain emotional distance enough to effectively do my job.
I’ve cried occasionally at work over other things, but I usually lock myself in a bathroom stall and do it quietly.
As a general rule I think crying goes with any other extreme display of emotion in the workplace – not very professional, but happens occasionally because we’re human beings, not robots. Once in a while it’s fine. If someone cannot continually handle the stress of their job and is crying on a regular basis, they either have emotion regulation issues and need psychological help or they are working in an unhealthy environment and need a better job.
I cry when I get upset. It takes me a while to get there, and I’ve never done it at work, but twice I’ve come home and burst into uncontrollable sobbing. I also now have the luxury of working from home and when my evil bitch boss pushed me over the edge, I cried but no one knew it. I decided then that I needed to look for a new job, but fortunately, she moved on so I was spared the task.
I don’t hold it against anyone unless, as others have said, it is used to manipulate.
There have been three occasions when I have cried at work:
I received a call from my mother, informing me that my sister was hemorrhaging and had been rushed to the hospital. This was mostly a few sniffles and stray tears before I got myself under control.
Someone had been spreading rumors about one of my supervisors and she accused me, angrily, of being the one behind it. The combination of fear over losing my job and being confronted in such an abusive manner made me cry (voice cracked, a few tears) while I tried to defend myself.
When I worked at the college bookstore as an undergrad, I had a senior citizen verbally attack me because his textbook for the class he was taking wasn’t yet available. While I’d had my peers get snotty with me before, there was something deeply unsettling about having someone so firmly entrenched in adulthood treating me like that. I got the manager, excused myself to the bathroom, and didn’t return until I was sure I could keep myself under control.
Once every few years for exceptional circumstances seems about right to me, though I really wish I hadn’t been reduced to tears by my supervisor. It made me feel weak and, I think, made my defense of myself far less compelling.
There are rare times when it can’t be helped, and if I saw a coworker cry on a few highly emotional occasions I wouldn’t think much of it, but too often and it starts coming across as either an indication of some emotional disturbance or manipulation. One coworker I had would cry quite often, and make sure it was very public and caught the attention of others. These crying jags were almost always for something that wasn’t work related. She was getting kicked out of her house, her boyfriend was getting arrested for back child-support, her ex-husband was suing for custody of her children, or a million other reasons. The first few times, I felt bad for her. After a while, I became disgusted with it, however, as I saw how quickly she could drum the tears up and how quickly she could turn them off again when it suited her. There were other problems with her that began to manifest, too, and when she was called on them she would, of course, cry.
So, occasionally crying at work? It happens. We’re human. Frequently, though? Big red flag.
I cried at work a couple weeks ago. Not sobbing-cry, but a tear escaped down my cheek. I was throwing stock in the pet aisle around midnight and a young man (wearing a wife-beater, naturally) was pushing a cart in which sat his very small, adorable daughter who looked to be around 2 years old. He was stopped in front of a display of “That Darn Cat” cat food, which has a picture of a cat wearing sunglasses on it. The little girl turned around in her cart-seat and pointed at the silly cat and said, “Look Daddy! Look at that kitty!”
When I saw this I broke out in a smile because it was cute. I mean, I don’t even much like kids and I thought it was cute, and I was expecting her daddy to say something like, “Yeah, look at that kitty, isn’t he silly” or something very daddy-like. Instead, I saw WHAM across the little girl’s back with his open hand and he yelled, “I told you not to turn around again, goddammit!” She didn’t cry, she didn’t say a word, she simply turned back around and looked forward, silently.
I had to walk away before I did or said something that would have gotten me fired. I went into the breakroom where my buddies had just sat down for our first break and shaking, I recounted what I’d just seen. In doing so my voice broke up and I had to stifle the tears. One or two escaped. My boss got up and walked out to the floor and asked me to point the despicable bastard out to him. I pointed and he said, “I know that sorry son of a bitch. Somebody needs to kick his ass out in the parking lot. Might just happen sooner than expected.”
That’s awful.