Crying at work

In My Humble Opinion
81

I’ve cried at work more times in my 20+ year IT career than I care to think about. It’s not something I’m proud of, but people seem to understand–I HATE to cry, but sometimes it just starts before I can stop it.

The one time I had any negative repercussions, it was this: I had heard that my step-grandma (whom I loved very much) had died. We were very short-handed, so I went into work anyway. I asked my supervisor if I could leave at lunch to be with my family. He agreed, even though that would leave only him in the office. Then, I was trying a new task (to me) on my own, and got frustrated. I was trying to finish it by lunch so I could leave. I couldn’t help it–I ended up in tears and went to ask him to explain it to me again. Then months later, he denied me an opportunity because “you cry when you’re frustrated” and gave that day as an example. I don’t think he’d ever seen me cry before then, but he’d conveniently forgotten the circumstances of the day.

82

I think it is amazingly unprofessional. It reminds me of high school girls who didn’t make the cheerleading squad.

I’d hold it against you. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I would.

83

Intentionally crying as a manipulative tool. Yes, unprofessional.

My first “real” job ever at age 22, my first scolding from a superior, yeah, I choked up a bit and teared up. But it was involuntary. It was the result of youth and not being accustomed to professional criticism. How can an involuntary act be a sign of unprofessionalism?

84

One of the real problems I have with people over things like this is that they get upset, they get petty, they hold things against people.

Or let me put it another way: You (generic ‘you’) get so bothered by something that doesn’t involve you and very probably doesn’t affect you that you are creating your own negative emotions, projecting them outward into the situation where they’re unnecessary and/or unwarranted, and creating problems by doing so - while denying any culpability for your own negative actions. That’s Drama Queen action. It’s not about you, but you have to work up your own emotions and take center stage, while denying that it’s anything about you, but the other person.

Yup, that’s why it bothers you so much.

Again, generic “You”. It’s a human thing common to many situations that bugs the shit out of me. People get worked up over someone elses negative emotions, bring their own into the situation and aren’t capable of recognizing what they’re doing.

85

I’m a bill collector, have REALLY thick skin, and am not generally a weeper. Let’s not mention sad Dope threads or Kodak commercials, 'kay? That’s in Private-with-a-capital-P, and we’re talking about work.

There have been a few times when I sobbed all the way home in the semi-privacy of my car – like the day I had a $17,000 bounced check that trashed any hope of a commission, a retired nun running a flower shop call me a C-word, got served notice about a frivolous FDCPA lawsuit, and had a kiss-ass, incompetent coworker stab me in the back.

I have cried at work twice. Once was tears of rage accompanied by the words “You are not only stupid and incompetent, you are a sadistic bitch. I quit.” The judge agreed with my assesment of the situation, to the tune of $15,000 in punitive damages (no idea of distribution) $700 lost wages to me.

The last time, also tears of rage, but thankfully I had a boss who realized I am not a manipulative weeper or a nutjob, immediately transferred me to a unit that had functional software, a reasonable client, and semi-sane coworkers, and then worked her butt off to successfully get the Evil Unit shut down – “If Pansy can’t handle it, how do you expect anyone to?”

I can’t honestly remember any problem weepers in the 26 years of my adult working lifetime. Well, there was Flaky Jenn, but she’d tear up over Taco Bell getting her order correct. Helluva a collector, fabulous on the phone or in court, generally good employee, leaky eyes the rest of the time.

If there is a problem with crying in your workplace, somebody needs to reassess something, and it may not be hiring the weepers in the first place.

86

Heck, if Taco Bell ever got my order right the first time I’d cry tears of joy, too.

87

Over a work related disappointment? Gah. Today. Well not cry, but I did choke up. I pride myself on my work product and when I got into the office today I had a scathing voice message from the senior partner berating me for poor grammar, spelling, and factual errors he found in a series of pleadings and letters. I had barely had a chance to comprehend his rant before he walks in my office and gives me the dog and pony show in person. Everyone in the office heard him. Hell everyone on the floor probably heard him, including the new paralegal who did the work being as I was on vacation. I gather the evidence and attempt to show him. His only response: ‘oh, well she’s new. You need to check her work.’

I got back to my office, quietly closed my door, did the “flip you off” dance at the door and then choked up. Of course I know the new gal’s mettle now.

The only other times I’ve cried at work was when my brother called to tell me that his 5 year old daughter was terminal because the last antifungal med wasn’t working on the fungus in her heart; and when my mother called to tell me she wasn’t going to fight the lung cancer anymore.

88

I do sometimes cry at work when extremely pissed off, but no one knows it. My eyes and nose get all red and swollen and my lashes get wet, but I’ve gotten very good at voice control. If someone notices and asks me about it, I can say in a very matter of fact tone, “Oh, I had something get in my eye” or “I was just sneezing”.

There was one time I lost it at work because of sadness. I called the vet and made an appointment to have my cat put down, and the lady next to me overheard and tried to talk to me about it. That wrecked me and I had to haul ass to the bathroom and deal with it.

89

I thought of this thread this morning as my eyes welled up a little when my new boss told me how badly he wanted me to come work for him and how all his employees were urging him not to let me get away. One little tear even escaped and ran down my cheek.
He seemed fine with it.

90

I am a grad student and had studied for two months for my oral exams, and in the second month I didn’t take any days off, including weekends. I took my oral exam and didn’t do wonderfully, although I didn’t cry about it. (I’m not good at answering questions from professors when they keep interrupting my answers.)

I had planned to take the following day off because I was mentally exhausted, but my advisor was going out of town and called me in to talk to me about the rough draft of a paper I had written while studying for the orals. He spent about two hours ripping it apart from top to bottom. While his comments were certainly valid, most of them were things like awkward sentences and omitted information - conceptually the paper was sound - and he delivered every comment dripping in condescension, as if I was a bad scientist for having made those errors.

After the two-hour criticism session, I was probably visibly upset (flushed and not happy-looking), but I didn’t cry. I decided to head home (to take the rest of the day off) and on the way, I started tearing up and within a minute I was just bawling. Fortunately, it was a five-minute walk home, and I just sobbed for an hour after getting home. The tears were not so much in response to the criticism as they were in response to having worked so hard for two months and finding that all of my efforts were not good enough. While I’m glad that I managed to not cry in front of my advisor, the tears were uncontrollable once they started. For that reason alone I’d never hold it against someone if they cried about work at work.

91

I don’t think you’re downgraded for being moved to a tear by an accolade. It’s when you cry because something bad happened that you are apparently judged to be an incompetent, whiny wuss by some people.

92

I didn’t always cry when a student died. But there were a couple of times I just couldn’t keep things in. One was when a student from the year before – a neat kid who read just about any history book he could get access to – was in a car crash and was trapped and burned to death as he struggled to get out.

The other was a student who was never in my class. I always saw her alone in the hallways. She was fourteen, but she looked like a child of ten or eleven because illness had slowed her growth. Her most distinguishing features were her beautiful long blong hair and her blue lips that were the result of heart disease. Eventually it was announced that she had passed away and her English teacher went to the funeral home. When the teacher returned to school, she was really shaken. There was no one at the funeral home with the young girl. No parent or friend or relative.

I am childless. My only children are step-children. The idea of a dead child lying there without someone just got to a part of me that I didn’t want to make vulnerable.

And then there were good times to cry too. Every year at graduation. I could get really attached to those rascals. Parents would see me crying and say, “That must be the English teacher.”

If you Google “crying is good” you can find several articles about how crying is healthy for you. In one of them I found this:

“One of the main obstacles to good mental health is that by stifling crying, a person must also hide or shut down valid feelings and emotions. When legitimate emotions are not fully recognized and expressed, insensitive acts from rudeness to school shootings can result.”

Cite

This article is also interesting because it tells about how the reluctance of men to cry in public is a recent trend beginning with the Industrial Revolution.

93

I don’t believe this is a valid claim. The fact that the article also claims that crying releases “toxins” from the body – and it’s clear that they mean physical toxins, not metaphoric ones – undercuts its credibility as well.

I certainly don’t credit the idea that suppressing crying leads to school shootings.

94

Crying is no different than cocaine or masturbation: if you want to do it at work, you have to go to the bathroom.

95

Instead of declaring that credibility is lost due to the statement you quoted, perhaps you might first have done some research yourself. It is only fair.

It is, in point of fact, a completely valid claim and your assertion that it undercuts credibility is based on… what cite?

This article details the scientifically conducted research into emotional tears including the breakdown of chemicals released. Cite.

If you have clear proof that the work done by Dr. William Frey is in fact invalid and innacurate and the research done by his team at St. Paul Ramsey Medical Center in Minneapolis is not good science, please be so kind as to provide cite.

Ironic that someone with the word " Science " under his member name doesn’t know how to prove good science. The fact that you don’t believe something to be true, and say that in a post, undercuts the validity of all Dopers who have that title under their member name. I, and many others, like to view the posts written by SDSAB as having a bit more heft to them when it comes to declarative statements like the one made above.

It was not difficult to find this cite. I’ll keep looking for peer-review publications that have published this study, to nail it down completely.

Cartooniverse

96

And this has to do with the breakdown of “toxins in the blood” or the reduction of shootings in schools how? It’s an interesting article, but it’s not in the least relevant to the initial claims.

97

I’m not sure where to draw the line between crying at work and the circumstances that cause crying at work. Clearly, unprofessional behavior comes in all flavors, and I’m not sure I like the kind that prompts crying in others any better than the crying itself. Maybe that type of situation should be discussed in a separate category from the kind of crying that’s a response to non-work-related stress, and there should be another for crying as a result of some physical or mental pathology, and a fourth for crying as a tool of emotional violence (that is, in order to create a level of discomfort in others that they will seek to relieve by behaving as you wish them to), and a fifth through hundredth that I’ll let others enumerate.

Someone who says that crying at work is unprofessional behavior without examining the reasons why isn’t really making any judgments (ones that can be taken seriously, anyhow) about the validity, necessity, or healthfulness of strong emotion or the physical response to it. S/he is trying to classify the physical act as we do certain others, as perhaps necessary but certainly to be suppressed in public. I’m not sure this is a sustainable analogy: for one thing, the variety and unpredictability of the phenomena that promote the behavior seem to separate crying from other physical functions. So why pick on crying rather than shouting, swearing, throwing things, or any other typically human response to stress? The others would seem to do more damage.

98

This year isn’t even a bad year for cicadas. What did she do two years ago during “Brood X” (Yes that’s what they called it. That was the big 17 year batch of bugs that comes out all over the Cincinnati area. It’s so loud its hard to sleep at night.) That woman must have been apoplectic.

99

Starryspice, your grad school story is very close to the story I was coming here to tell. Preparing for oral qualifying exams, extremely stressed out, and an overbearing adviser who was very critical at the wrong time. I managed not to cry in front of him either, but then I went to work (working part time while in school) and went in to talk to my manager, who was also a friend, and just burst into tears.

I was really glad that I didn’t let my adviser see that he’d gotten to me, but I was embarrassed to have cried at my other job. I worked there for another 3 years after that, though, and it never really seemed to affect how anyone viewed my work, and I’ve never cried at work since then. But grad school can definitely push you to the limit!

100

I think the last time I even came close to crying at work was out of pure fury. A few years ago, I was once late to work - classes started at 4pm and we were supposed to be there at 3:30pm, but I got there at around 3:45pm. This was the first time I’d been late, ever. The assistant manager (who was a bitch in many ways) yelled at me - in front of a group of students. I tried to tell her that we really should take this into her office, but she snapped that I deserved to be humilated in front of everyone for my irresponsibility. She not only yelled at me for being late but addressed me in the most inferior way possible (this was in Korean, so the differences in address were blatant).

I was absolutely appalled, since this really was the first time I’d ever given cause for complaint (in a year). What made me even more furious was that the day before, a different instructor had been late (and it wasn’t his first time either!) but he got nothing more than a mild reprimand.

Wow, I still feel angry just remembering that incident.

Anyway, I was complaning to my head instructor (who was also a friend) and I was so furious my hands were shaking, and his sympathy made my throat tighten. But I managed to keep it in before I started sobbing.

I know the feeling of being unable to control one’s crying, though. As long as people do it discreetly (like in the restroom), I don’t think there’s anything unprofessional about it.