To think it's unacceptable so many women cry in the workplace?

[ttcpatronisers]

I work in an office of approx 40 people. Half of them roughly are women.

Of the Half, the majority have cried in the workplace - many on multiple occasions and often when they are in the wrong about a situation.

I find this unprofessional and odd. Of the men, one has cried.

Why do women cry so often at work? Is it because there's some truth in us being unable to control our emotions? Is it because we fell it's accepted in society for women to cry? Or is it because we attention? Know we can get what we want when we cry as it softens a situation?

Honestly, I find it very odd and annoying. I feel it undermines us in the workplace.

I also find it incredibly unprofessional. Now obviously if something really bad has happened it's a different story but often these tears are because of minor events.

AIBU - crying at work isn't unprofessional
YANBU - people should hold their emotions together and perhaps go to the toilet and cry

I'd also suggest that minor difficulties with emotional regulation are probably not the sort of thing you want to be loudly railing against, unless you're 100% sure that this does not arise from a protected disability. There's laws against that sort of thing.

Happy Christmas, I hope I never have to work with you.

@ttcpatronisers - your style of posting/phrasing gives a bit of insight as to why your workplace might not be the utopia you think it is.

I completely get the “don’t bring personal stuff to work” thing in some ways. But sometimes situations break you in the moment - and your view seems very fixed.

This will probably sound very old fashioned and uneducated - because I am not meaning to lump women together and put them down. But if you take a good, honest look at your male workforce - there will be a woman supporting him somehow. Whether it’s a wife, fiancée, partner etc (even their mum). Their home lives, in a lot of cases, will somehow have someone else looking after them in some small way.

I’m reading back the small points I’ve made and, in a small way, it makes me cringe. But it’s the subtle truth. Men will never take on the mental or emotional load that women do - not in the greater scheme of things.

So, yes, women will often “break”. And it might be because of something that’s gone wrong at work. Personally, I’d kind of take it as a positive - because someone who doesn’t give a shit isn’t going to get upset. But I know that others would say that being unemotional is the best thing for business results.

I’d like to stress again, though, please be mindful that a lot of women in the workplace carry much more “load” than men do - it’s not obvious, it’s not right, but a lot of working women enable the working men to appear “better”.

If it helps - I’m single and no children. No “skin” in the game, but it’s what I’ve garnered from numerous years in fairly high pressured jobs.

I don't think crying at work is ideal, but it's not a career limiting problem either. But then I would think that, as I have cried at work.

I work in an extremely high stress environment now, and am an extremely high performer - if you want something difficult to impossible doing, I'm the person you ask to get it done. I'm really highly regarded. But I also have limits, and I have cried when I am pushed to those limits over and over again.

Once (but not in the meeting) when someone external to the organisation was extremely rude, completely misunderstood what was going on and talked to me like I was 6.

Another time (not in front of anyone) after a hundred and something hour round of working. The most embarrassing that I remember was after 5-6 weeks of 70+ hour weeks, I'd had a call at 7pm from the chief exec needing stuff the next morning but 10, then at 9pm moving the deadline to 8am (because the parent Co were being twats and using that as a power move) I worked til 11 pm then got up at 4:30 and carried on (maybe not that insane but I only do brain work and my brain does not function without a full 8 hours) - met the deadline. But someone (new and a weird position of being sort of but not entirely my boss rang me: I'd never spoken to them before, they made the grave error of asking me how I was and I burst into floods of tears and sobbed down the phone at them.

It was awkward but both she and I got over it, and it absolutely hasn't impacted our work relationship - she is still trying to poach me to work for her full time. I always deliver and I deliver when no one else can, but I'm not an emotion free robot and people have to take the rough with the smooth - and in my workplace, given the promotions I've been given and the trust that is placed with me, that's a compromise they think is a good deal.

I've dealt with various other people crying at work: my previous job was a terrible workplace and people cried there all the time. It didn't make them bad people, it made it a dreadful place to work. Everyone I know who has left has been extremely successful in everything that they have done since, so it was definitely the workplace, not the people. Other times I've dealt with people crying due to e.g. a miscarriage and frankly that hasn't coloured my opinion of them at all. Most of them are people who can step out up when you need them and do deliver, whereas the non criers plod along and can't function at a high octane.

I've seen director level staff get to the point of cracked voices, teary eyes and had to do my fair share of calming down and telling them we'll get through this. I think it's an outcome of highly stressful environments tbh.

Try working in a school!

After reading your posts I think you might be the problem here I think I’d cry if I worked with you.

People aren’t robots OP, it’s okay to show human emotion. I’d say if people at your workplace feel free to show some emotion in front of their colleagues and to talk about personal issues, that could also indicate a high trust environment rather than a toxic environment as people are suggesting.

@HairyFanjoBanjo

You come across contemptuous and sexist.

Women do this thing, men don’t, why can’t women be more like men.

I agree with this. And I say this as someone who rarely cries, my husband cries more than I do and I've always found it frustrating that tears don't come easy to me as I feel that tears help you heal, everyone feels better after a cry being able to realise that emotion. It's not that I don't feel the emotion I just don't cry, my mum is the same, I've seen my dad cry more than her so you're being sexist and you're wrong in your thinking.

We had a "crying chair" at my old job.

I have cried loads at work and I'm as hard as nails. However, I am a veterinary nurse and it can be heart wrenching. I have never cried in front of a client its the men crying over their pets that breaks me.

YABVU- you sound like a very hard faced unsympathetic person .

Agree it’s not necessarily a toxic workplace that is making people cry.

More likely to be working with you.

The men will find other, equally unprofessional, ways to channel their negative emotions around that.

In my last job, a certain woman would burst into tears if someone disagreed with them when they were being unreasonable. Boss always came down on their side. I got so exasperated watching this happen again and again, when it was my turn to be overruled by their using this tactic, I went to boss's office immediately and 'broke down.' He overruled her and decided in my favour. Sometimes it's sheer manipulation, not always genuine distress. Only time I have ever done that. I'm usually a suffer in silence type of person.

I've never seen anyone cry in the workplace, where the hell do you work? Maybe you need to ask why so many adults are forced to cry at your job rather than blaming them. It sounds a very weird place.

I have ADHD so have difficulty regulating my emotions sometimes and yes I have cried at work before. I'd be mortified if I knew someone like you was judging me, as I said, I can't help it!

Never heard anyone defend the criticism of men and call it mysoginist to point out a flaw in their gender

I have on a few threads on the relationships boards (which indecently, are full of women who've been emotionally abused, financially abused, physically threatened, physically beaten up, sexually assaulted and raped by men in past or current relationships).

One or two will show up to educate those women with NOT ALL MEN. Sometimes it's good to flip things around to see things from a different perspective, to question if we're being unfair. However, I do think it's unsurprising that all of the places of the internet those men could go, they choose to go on a website mainly for and dominated by women to tell women off for discussing inconvenient facts or experiences.

@temperancefugit

In my last job, a certain woman would burst into tears if someone disagreed with them when they were being unreasonable. Boss always came down on their side. I got so exasperated watching this happen again and again, when it was my turn to be overruled by their using this tactic, I went to boss's office immediately and 'broke down.' He overruled her and decided in my favour. Sometimes it's sheer manipulation, not always genuine distress. Only time I have ever done that. I'm usually a suffer in silence type of person.

@temperancefugit That's terrible.

I'm a veterinary nurse who has dealt with animals suffering awful trauma and witnessed many euthanasias. I've also spent hours in surgery with animals only to have them die in recovery.

I've absolutely cried at work before, I'm not ashamed of it and i don't think it's unprofessional. As a pp said, we're not robots.

Also, not everyone works in a corporate office environment. Some of us have jobs dealing with severe emotional situations on a daily basis.

OP I bet even you would cry if you had to witness someone putting their best friend of 15 years to sleep and hold their hand afterwards as they cried on your shoulder.

I have cried twice at work. It was awful as I hate crying in front of anyone.

The first was after my first cardiac arrest where the patient died (I saw one as a student in A&E but the patient came in in cardiac arrest and it didn't really affect me as we were pre-warned and the paramedics had been on scene for a long time so expected it would be a poor outcome) and my second was after I'd qualified but we resuscitated that patient (the family came in and the patient died peacefully after I'd gone home). It was the middle of the night. I went to the staff room and cried on my own in the dark for about 5 minutes.

The second was after a disagreement with the clinical site manager. I was so angry with the decision she had made and I went and spoke to my lovely manager who agreed with my viewpoint. I cried after she said that. It was embarrassing as her office was right in the middle of the ward and I had to walk out of her office on to the ward to get to the staff room or the loo.

Sometimes it’s the type of workplace.

When I worked on acute in-patient units it was common for staff (male and female) to cry due to the high stress nature of the job, the grief and shock at losing a patient, the amount of pressure we were under. We had to keep a professional face in patient areas but in the staff areas it wasn’t unusual to see people having a cry.

I used to water the greenhouse in the locked sensory garden every day in summer and sometimes staff would sneak out there to cry in private (there were lots of big bushes and trees to hide behind, and tree stumps to sit on). More than once I accidentally soaked someone with the hosepipe because I didn’t see them!

I only cried once. I sat outside in my car for 40 minutes before I could even go back inside.

I’d just been to visit a client who’d just moved into a care home. Seeing her sitting on a single bed, with mis matched bedding and pushed into the corner of a shared room completely broke my heart.

My god I hope the OP is not a line manager. I would cry daily if I worked for you.

I think OP you are assuming that what you experience at your workplace is the same everywhere else. And a lot of people are saying it isn't.

Lots of people (women) make mistakes at my work but don't cry about it. So what sort of reaction is occurring that makes your colleagues want to cry when they make a mistake?

And I don't think it's unprofessional to show emotion at work, but there does seem to be more going on than you are willing to admit, and instead are blanketing everyone else as unprofessional, emotional or manipulative.

It's could be exactly that type of culture that is contributing to all the tears?

Men don’t cry at work because they’ve been socialised not to. Why can’t more men cry at work and be honest about how thier feeling?🤔😂

I cried at work once because a manager was screaming at me.

So is he more professional than me because he decided to express his emotions through raging and ranting and I decided to express my emotions with tears because he pushed me so far?

I've cried a few times in work. Once due to unbearable pressure I was under from management, once due to a verbal assault by a colleague (enough for HR to step in) and once as I was struggling with a long term health condition.

I think women in general are carrying an absolute tonne of weight on their shoulders. Childcare, elderly parents, work pressure, health issues, mental health problems. Often with very little support. It's got to come out somewhere and often making a mistake in work, how ever minor is the straw that breaks the camals back.

I don't think crying is something people choose to do. It's more of a response to a shit / overwhelming situation or workplace. Are you their manager or something?