You can learn to control it, but it takes a looooong time. I am one of the girls to whom tears come easily. Especially with the kindness thing.
In several years I may have cried at the office but no one ever knows. I work very hard at biting it back and controlling it. And I cry at stupid things, too. But you tilt your head back, you try to think about anything else, and you swallow a lot. if you can drink some water it helps. After a while it comes almost naturally.
It’s humiliating to cry at work and not enjoyable one bit…but it’s hard to just shut off the waterworks.
And I have seen the manipulative waterworks, too, and I despise those as much as anybody. There is a vast difference between a woman sitting in her office and sobbing LOUDLY and a few tears and a lump in your throat.
Wait a minute…you truly believe that people cry as a wholly voluntary, deliberate action? Where did you ever get that idea from? You truly believed that every instance you ever saw of someone crying was a conscious, intentional (and possibly manipulative) act? That we can turn it on and off at will? That is just the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Sure, there are people who can “cry at will”, but for the vast majority of us, we can’t help it. If we are upset enough, the tears will flow.
And I for one have decided I am NOT going to be embarrassed about it anymore.
I’ve had too many female supervisors who treated everyone like crap and then got furious if someone cried. Yes, they were the ones who never seemed to need to eat or pee, either. They would storm into the workplace, get everyone scurrying around working on their Big Project, but woe betide anyone above the level of part-timer who dared to suggest a lunch break, or a bathroom break. You were immediately looked upon as a slacker. But if THEY decided to take lunch, and take the manager with them…they certainly didn’t stick to the 30-minutes rule like we had to! But the last straw was when a new manager, who had run roughshod over everyone for weeks, yelled at me for not covering my mouth when I coughed…when I was obviously sick, and had both my hands full of product I could not set down or drop when I suddenly had to cough, desperately (it WAS pnuemonia, I found out later, but she had made it clear that me going home sick was NOT AN OPTION) and I started crying when she yelled at me. Then she told me I was being unprofessional and to NEVER cry in the workplace…but she wouldn’t let me excuse myself to pull myself together. So I waited on customers with tears streaming down my face, feverish and coughing, for the rest of my shift. There was no way in the world I could have instantly shut off the tears. And I decided that day I was no longer going to let someone embarrass me about being a human, and having feelings.
Don’t get me wrong…it’s uncomfortable to work around someone who seems to burst into tears whenever a pencil breaks. But if the emotions are running high enough that someone cries…I will NOT hold it against them or try to make them feel unprofessional. I’d rather work in a workplace where people haven’t tamped down their emotions so far they can’t feel them anymore.
I will, however, hand them a tissue and ask if they need a minute.
This is my problem. I found out I had cervical cancer and needed to tell the HR Manager to arrange time off for treatment. I was strong and okay and coping, until she put her hand on her shoulder and said, “It will be okay. I will pray for you.” I tried to say thank you and just erupted into floods of tears instead! So much for the big, powerful lawyer! Bleah!
No, but I wasn’t the only one to talk about that kind of frequency, plus it sounds as if, in case time number 4 happened to take place in front of you, you’d directly label me a wet kleenex.
“You are the only one who can control your emotions” sounds a lot like “snap out of it.”
It wasn’t, for the most part. And she fired me a month later. And then she quit two months after that. And now I work for a wonderful boss who tears up herself at times, and isn’t a bully.
I’m gonna get right to that, as soon as you go give Barry hell for being unprofessional and workplace bully and making the environment so toxic to one of his coworkers that she burst into tears. That’s the thing that kills me. People act like total and utter asses in the workplace, are horrible to their coworkers and get away with it left and right but someone has an emotional reaction to being mistreated day after day and they’re the ones who are wrong? No. Just no.
That presumes that every time someone is highly upset, they’re bursting into tears. Since that’s highly unlikely, I’m giving that comment a massive :rolleyes:
As a stereotype, sure. And people in those particular places do tend towards reserved, polite, unemotional, distant behavior. There is a cartoon you sometimes see on peoples notice boards and such: It’s a drawing of two Norwegians, standing in front of wreckage.
First Norwegian: “How are you holding up, now that the storm took your house the day after your wife left with your best friend, you lost your job, and found out you have cancer?”
Second Norwegian: “Can’t complain”.
I didn’t think people made a conscious decision to cry, I thought that they made a conscious decision to not stop themselves from crying. So while the desire to have an emotional outburst is involuntary and brought on by outside events or internal emotions beyond one’s control, whether or not they cry or yell or stomp their feet is voluntary. In my imagination that’s why children cry and throw temper tantrums so much more often than adults. On the one hand, sure, life is actually less upsetting to an adult, but adults are also in good positions to identify that a particular emotional outburst is inappropriate at the moment and restrain themselves from expressing it.
Have you ever been angry and chosen not to yell at people? Well I’ve been sad and chosen not to cry about it.
The only times I’ve seen someone cry at work were appropriate, I believe. One was when a coworker found out her uncle died. We let her go home. The other time was when I was on the 8th floor of the building and we had an earthquake. It was the smallish one in LA last year, I think they called it the Chino Hills quake. It wasn’t big, about a 4-something, but a female coworker was really nervous and had tears and needed people to help her to her car. I thought it was kind of fun, but then I lost my fear of earthquakes years ago.
I don’t think that they’re really leaking, are they? Secreting, due to…??? I think it’s the ‘due to’ that really is at issue. Maybe.
Could be wrong, tho.
Well, you know how it is. When you don’t actually have an argument against the assertion that’s being offered, what you do is make a random accusation about something else the other person supposedly does wrong. You must have argued with a woman before, surely? :dubious:
A few years ago, I was an Executive Officer for a General and a Colonel, and I worked “with” (more appropriate to say, around) a woman who was the General’s secretary. She was a very emotional ‘Southuhhn Belle’ who wouldn’t do a lick of work if it could be done for her, and was very emotional, especially if something reflected negatively on her. Her unfortunate personality coupled with her critical position had people–including me–walking on eggshells every day they stepped into the office. I endured this for fourteen months. Things needed to be done: TPS reports had to be files, 8 memos had to be sent out, cover sheets had to be made. Where was she? At her desk doing slides for her Homeowners’ Association crap. But oh no, don’t dare tell her she’s not doing her job. . .
This woman could turn the tears on and off like a lightswitch, along with whatever attitude she wanted. There were numerous times she would go crying into the General’s office, ostensibly because she didn’t get along with the other secretaries in the division. She thought she was superior to them, and browbeat them with snide little comments and attitudes the like of which would make a KGB agent break. She was never overtly mean, but always carried the undertones that she “wore the Boss’ rank,” and she expected things to be done for her.
Where the hell was I? Oh yeah. Enough with the diatribe. I’ve known women that use it as a weapon, and to the unprepared or ill-informed person, it can be a damned effective weapon.
Tripler
That woman taught Scarlett O’Hara her mean tricks.
I couldn’t be less Nordic if I tried, and I can assure you I have never cried at work, and do not give in to emotional outbursts of any kind at the office.
“Intense” is a word I’m sure several people around the office would use to describe me. When I’m on about something, I’m on about something. We’ve actually had some of our guidelines revised as a direct result of my, err, intensity. But when I’m on, and when I get angry, and sometimes I get mad as hell, I do not cry, I do not raise my voice; I think the most out of control I’ve ever been was referring to something as “total bullshit” to one of the managers who drives me batty, then I escalated it over her head. I regretted using the term at the time, but now that I think about it, it’s pretty funny. I was sitting down, slouching a bit, and said in a completely relaxed tone something like, “Yeah, that’s total bullshit. We’re not going to come to a resolution here. I thank you for your time,” then got up and left. So I was at least kind of polite while swearing, right?
How angry does someone have to be before the tears are uncontrollable? What the hell is going on at these people’s jobs? The closest I’ve ever been to crying at work was when I was delivered some bad non-work-related news over the phone. I quickly told my boss that I was having an unexpected emergency and had to leave, then shuffled out of there. No tears, no dramatics in front of my colleagues.