unbelievably selfish and cruel advice

[crochetmonkey74]

Colleague at work (lovely and really well liked) has had a terrible time recently and lost both her parents within 4 weeks of each other. She is in an awful state As you can imagine, people have flocked round to help and offer real life support in practical ways.
Another colleague has suggested she takes more care when talking to colleagues and getting upset and has said she should say " I'm really upset right now and I was wondering if you had the capacity to talk about it" before she speaks to anyone in case they find it triggering or so it gives them the opportunity to say "hey i'm feeling a little overwhelmed with work right now but I can talk next Wednesday.."
For context, bereaved colleague is in her late 40's - knobhead colleague is 24.
The people bereaved colleague is talking to are friends as well as working together. ALso, bereaved colleague is behaving in an appropriate way- not putting on anyone or taking advantage
I am honestly staggered by this - are there a new generation of people who really, even in these most extreme of situations put themselves first? What will it be like if people have such strong boundaries that they never help anyone else? I have been in a terrible situation before and the idea of someone saying they could fit me in in a weeks time would have seemed impossible. With grief, you are often going hour to hour especially in the first few months.
What do you guys think of it?

The normal social response in this situation would be for the younger colleague to listen quietly for a minute, and then just making their excuses to leave. It would also be acceptable (but unusual) for the younger colleague to explain in words to the bereaved colleague that they personally are not able to offer emotional support at this moment.

Completely unnecessary and weird for them to speak on behalf of all colleagues like that. They are essentially trying to manage their colleague's behaviour at work, which is absolutely not their place if they are not the line manager.

Oh dear God, now someone can't be upset because they have lost their parents in case it upsets or triggers others 🙄. The 24 year old needs to grow up and maybe be reminded to 'be kind', the poor lady has lost both her parents.

Ok but there’s more scenarios that lead to loneliness than the obvious ones. It’s quite possible that the 24yr old was/is feeling quite distressed and/or lonely working in an environment where they could reasonably expect a degree of non-personal separation from their problems or analysing their feelings that are now part of the general office discourse.

I’m going to guess that any frostiness in the office now isn’t doing much to tackle loneliness. Deriding ‘triggers’ is pretty nasty, even the news gives warning of images or reports people might find distressing and has done for decades because it’s a recognised harm.

Hmmm I can see both sides to this to an extent. I’ve been there where as a colleague someone has emotionally dumped on me when I wasn’t in a mental space to deal with it - just because they were happy to talk about what was going on in their life, doesn’t mean I should and I was in quite a bad place mentally and couldn’t shoulder their burden. They also didn’t ask if they could talk to me they just expected my support which I couldn’t give.

HOWEVER saying that if your friend is asking people if she can talk to them, or they are checking on her and offering her that support, then that’s a totally different matter and your other colleague had no right to have an opinion.

OP, I'm sorry that you're feeling so strongly about this but I think you're off base here, honestly.

Your title is certainly melodramatic. I'm 42 years old and have lost my own parents and had a fair amount of life experience, but find myself in agreement with your 24 yo colleague on this point.

I've been in work places where people experiencing traumatic life events have brought that to work with them. I think it's often inappropriate. When I was bereaved I took time off and used friends and family (and therapists!) for support. I didn't off-load in the workplace.

It's no one's god-given right to bring their grief to work with them and if someone else in the work place wants there to be some boundaries around this then that's fair enough.

Fair play???? Fair bloody play?!?! Are you on the wind up????

I get that setting boundaries is important, but the 24 year old setting boundaries would be explaining to bereaved colleague that they don’t want to talk, if she makes direct contact, and otherwise trying to hold some distance. If there’s no space for distance, then perhaps approching the situation through management to see whether that distance can be provided, would be the way to go.

You set your own boundaries and change your own behaviour or approach the situation through appropriate channels, where that isn’t possible. You can’t set other people’s boundaries.

To tell a bereaved colleague how to approach other people is not setting boundaries. Even if the bereaved colleague is behaving inapproapriately, it is 100% not the 24 year old’s place to police her behaviour.

Could the colleague have a face on them because they aren’t being included? IME people who feel the need to proffer an opinion on matters that don’t concern them tend to also be of the opinion that those matters should concern them, and that their opinion on said matters should be paramount .

No. Neither of us have the slightest idea what led the 24yr old to feel the need to say something, and in fact have no idea what the bereaved colleague themselves actually thinks about it. For all we know she has been given more information than the OP on why they brought it up with her and is making the effort because she agrees with them.

Depending on your work environment, the 24yo colleague may feel the bereaved person is getting so much emotional help from others, she isn't getting the work related training and assistance she needs. It doesn't sound as if the bereaved woman is ready to be back at work if she is in need of so much support.

So if 24 year old opened up tomorrow that she was going through something in her personal life that meant she was really struggling to deal with someone else dumping their problems how would you feel / treat her? I sometimes think people are so quick to call oversharers "brave"(not saying that this particular colleague is btw - just what I've seen myself with others) that they forget that some people are completely private and might also have problems and just not want / feel able to share them with everyone else. And honestly the super private people may well have had to learn to cope alone because they haven't had the opportunity to "dump" on others throughout their lives. Also just because someone is 24 doesn't mean they can't have problems. What a ridiculous way to think.

Yes but if this young colleague for whatever reason is upset, its fair enough if he explains this - he doesn't need to be specific, he could just nicely say that he has enough going on in his own life and cant deal with it. I don't think this is unreasonable. Its the telling her not to upset other people that i would find really wrong and cruel. Many people want to support and help each other, if its not interfering with work i don't think its in his place to dictate this woman's relationship with colleagues.

This is what I think is normal as well.

At times when I just don't have additional mental capacity for other people's stuff - you listen politely find a conversation pause make your excuses or express your sadness for them and leave.

this is being too harsh to my bereaved colleague
they are not offloading. People are seeking her out and checking on her

I had two bereavements in my 20's (suicide and cancer if you are interested). None of us know everything that is going on in others' lives. I would not automatically assume that someone is a "knobhead" nor would I gloat at the prospect of them suffering the inevitable hurts that life brings us all

There are two sides to this:

• your colleagues is perfectly right to be upset and it is understandable that most of her colleagues want to support her

• but this is a workplace and if she keeps breaking down or cannot stop talking about her losses and everyone around her is constantly making a big deal of it, then it is understandable that some people might find themselves really affected by this heavy atmosphere. For all you know that young staff member could have also suffered a loss fairly recently, might have someone really unwell in their family and so on and this is causing him distress.

The point is it might have been better for your colleague to take some compassionate leave in this situation and to be able to grieve in peace and at home.

Honestly? I personally would not want to listen to this every day, all day once condolences have been offered, then people need to remember that this is a work environment.

You have to leave your personal life at the door when you are at work and there is a limit to how much personal sharing and offloading is appropriate in a work environment.

Her manager should have spoken to her about what support the employer can offer: time off, working from home, some workplaces even have schemes where you can access counselling support over the phone.

Because they should be thinking about the overall team and how to manage the impact for everyone.

I would bet that other staff members feels the same as the younger employee does but don't want to talk or that a lot of the fawning over the bereaved person is actually done for show rather than genuine concern. But then I am old cynic and I prefer to keep my issues private.

I think the younger colleague should speak for herself but not others.

no, this isn't accurate- it is not affecting her work training

That relies on an appropriate work environment to do that though. I’ve had jobs where it’s fairly easy to find a private space to talk to people and others where everything went on in the middle of an open plan and it was literally impossible to extract yourself for any length of time without it affecting your output.

The OP is refusing to answer.

The bereaved colleague sounds as if she is not up to working. However, the young colleague was still totally out of order. It all needs to be on a more professional footing.

There's just a new generation of people who've heard a little too much about how valid their own feelings and preferences are and are a bit confused as to how this translates to the real world. I find a brief 'Thank you, but i dont want to do that.' generally suffices before walking away. I'm sorry this was said to your colleague and hope she doesn't see it as reflective of everyone's views.

I think it is perfectly fine to not have capacity and remove yourself but I also think that some things do trump that.
I don't mean to be defensive- but my bereaved colleague is really not weeping and wailing or hijacking everyones time. She is getting on and appreciating people bringing her a cuppa at breaktime and letting her have a little cry. It's all very private and non showy

I wonder if the people on this thread saying 24 yr old is BU and no one is compassionate these days are also the ones who go onto threads about people not answering messages for days saying 'I don't owe anyone my time'.