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?

It would have been interesting to see how voting would have been on this thread.

But you don’t get to decide what trumps that for other people!

"You don't get to" is such a irritating, strident, self righteous phrase.

Did you get the bit where OP wrote that both parents died in 4 weeks?

Seriously grow up.

Yes. And it's their responsibility to learn how to be supportive and how to have "capacity" for being there for others in what are, after all, normal life events and feelings.

I do think we are in the age of being ‘offended’ and so the person who is being offended holds the power. It doesn't matter what it is.

Hang on, so the 24yr old is a twat, despite no one seemingly knowing why they felt the need to say anything at all, but the bereaved colleague’s feelings are sacrosanct?

I find it quite ‘chilling’ (I don’t because I’m not that dramatic) that people are so excited to leap onto the bandwagon to spit venom on someone they know nothing about.

It's very common for people to behave this way to bereaved people. Remember legally 2 days off when your child dies is somehow thought acceptable.

I've lost count of the number of people who (unsolicited) told me they didn't want to hear my shit when I lost loved ones to sudden, violent deaths in my 20s.

24 is Gen Z. Too young to be a Millennial. Born after 1997. Youngest Millennials will be 26.

Unbelievable. And very depressing, makes me grateful for my lovely colleagues and supportive workplace.

Perhaps if the younger person was commenting about herself rather than generalisation about how everyone else needed a trigger warning it would be less offensive ?

"I'm finding it too hard to cope for personal reasons so can you please avoid the subject when I'm around "

Expressing grief and talking about emotions with others isn't "dumping." It's called being human.

Yes or - and it does happen, happened to me today - how to handle it if a colleague you don't know well at all offloads to you emotionally about a recent bereavement. Things you can do: listen, nod, offer tea, tell them that you're sorry for their loss, more listening. Things you can also do if you're not able to be supportive for any reason practical or emotional: say something like "that's awful, I'm so sorry. Look I hate to go but I'm afraid I have to rush off to a call/meeting/thing now."

Things you can't do: tell the colleague to stop having sad feelings and ask her to budge along her bereavement process by never mentioning it or asking to schedule time to mention it.

Better, but you can't expect someone to turn something as all-consuming as the shock of bereavement on and off at will, so that suggestion comes across as dismissive, invalidating and callous.

Simply apologising and removing themselves from the conversation would be more appropriate.

Trigger Colleague is quite entitled to set his own boundaries. I've no argument at all with that.

In setting them for everyone else in the workplace as well, he's taking far too much upon himself. For one thing, his behaviour assumes the mantle of Line Manager to all those he claims to be speaking for. Presumably, he isn't. But even even if he were, he's being punctilious and overbearing and stepping well outside his remit in determining others' social/workplace boundaries for them. Were I his colleague I'd be telling him where he could stick that attitude. No one appreciates their views being spoken for them by a supercilious colleague when they are ore than capable of asserting them for themselves.

There's an easy solution. When I don't want to get into gossip, or to spill my emotional guts at work of listen to others doing so, I put on noise cancelling earphones. And I work.

It can be both

you can both dump on someone when talking about your emotions and expressing your grief and still be a human.

You can also manage to express your grief and speak of your emotions and be a human without it feels like dumping.

I've seen Tiktoks (shared on Twitter) featuring young people making this point. Perhaps it's a fair strategy if you have a friend with a tendency to monopolise you as she whines on about minor irritations- there might be times when you'd prefer she gave you the option to opt out. It's completely inappropriate in this case.

I would put it down to lack of life experience perhaps on your young colleague's part, rather than selfishness necessarily. I do also think that (some) young people have somehow decided that they're more sensitive and emotionally switched-on than us oldies and, based on that, concluded that whatever their reaction is to something must be the sensitive and emotionally switched-on reaction, and that this leads to massive blindspots. (See also bias in student feedback- thinking you're unbiased leads to enormous bias blindspots.)

I agree. There are times I can be sympathetic and a shoulder to colleagues and there are times when I’m not able to do this, because I have my own stuff going on. Just because a colleague appears to be fine, doesn’t mean they can cope with a kind of “grief download” out of the blue.

And some people absorb other’s trauma and find it difficult to debrief (I’m a bit like that).

It sounds like your colleague needs to take some time out from work, or seek some talking therapy that is not her colleagues. I believe CRUSE is excellent for this? Or do you have an employee assistance programme? They can be excellent for time-limited counselling for specific issues.

It is callous op, and utterly thoughtless.

@PriOn1 However inappropriate the bereaved woman’s behaviour is, someone much younger telling her how to behave is not okay.

Ridiculous. You seriously think in a professional setting someone is never allowed to call out inappropriate behaviour just because someone is older/younger??

Being older than someone in the workplace isn’t automatic authority.

Gen Z lunacy. Tripping over themselves to be the most woke person in the room.

This smacks of immaturity.

At 24, many people are clueless about grief and loss ( thankfully). I think someone should say to HR, who can have a quiet word in Knobhead colleagues ear.

I would struggle to work in such an emotionally charged environment, especially if I wasn't especially close to the grieving colleague.

However, I wouldn't really share my feelings in work at all. If I couldn't work the day without crying, I'd take leave until I felt stronger.

I don’t think the knobhead colleagues age matters, it’s terrible ‘advice’ and I really hope that your poor, bereaved colleague and all their friends tell this selfish, self centred, thoughtless person to mind her own business.

The OP has just said the grieving colleague is acting appropriately and is actually only confiding in friends.

I can see the point if someone lacking self awareness constantly ‘trauma dumped’ on colleagues but that is not the case here.

Oof.

I can see both sides but have a lot of sympathy for your bereaved colleague. What the 24 year old said would be very condescending and probably humiliating too- it might have made your friend feel like an out of control burden, dumping her grief on everyone when she is probably trying very hard to keep herself together.

This would be a non-issue if there was better mental-health care available for bereaved people. Imagine if your workplace was providing your friend with support and counselling.
Leaving it to an office full of untrained people to figure out support on the hoof DOES lead to hurt feelings, messy boundaries and ultimately people like your friend not getting the support they need.

Also, I find people grieving the loss of parents difficult because my own never loved me. I have one dead and one to go which can't come soon enough.

Maybe this woman genuinely finds it hard to understand or relate?