Coworker told my business to everyone

[FlowGirl22]

Yesterday, I had a small moment out of the blue at my desk. I was so stressed, a tear went down my face from the anxiety. I was very quiet, so it wasn’t very noticeable unless you were watching. It rarely happens but it did because I was under a heightened level of stress (work related).

A coworker saw me and as I was rushing to the bathroom, they followed me. I spoke told them it’s just about if stress, nothing to be worried about. Next thing I know, 10 minutes later this coworker went and told the people in my team and my manager about this after I had specifically told this person NOT to mention it to anyone. They blew up the whole thing out of proportions.

My manager rang me in panic and saw I was fine afterwards. I was just having a personal moment which is what I told the manager and asked for it not to be blown out of proportions.

This came right after the announcement that I was put on the track to move up to the next level of seniority.

I’m really frustrated now because I told this coworker not to tell anyone about this because it wasn’t worth escalating or running their mouth over. I know myself and this was nothing to be making a fuss over. They did the polar opposite of what I told them thus breaching a boundary of mine.

Now, I’m worried this may affect their decision to put me on the track for the next level because I’m afraid the manager will think I’m not ready.

What to do?

If you don’t want people knowing your personal business at work, don’t tell people your personal business. It really is as simple as that!

You describe your colleague as emotionally needy but you are one crying at your desk, drawing attention to yourself by “rushing” to the bathroom to weep, telling the colleague you don’t trust that you are struggling with stress but swearing her to secrecy, complaining to your boss that your boundaries have been violating and now considering going on extended sick leave because you’ve been gossiped about. All of this is way way more drama than is usual in a workplace and as some others have suggested indicative that you possibly don’t have the emotional maturity for a promotion to a management role.

If you are genuinely so stressed that you cry at work, can you speak to your HR team and access some appropriate emotional support - maybe via an EAP if your company has one. You could also look into some counselling or therapy via your doctor who could also advise whether medication would be helpful.

Or if this is your normal modus operandi, and not related to a period of acute mental ill health, then you need to work on appropriate workplace behaviours which include being aware of your stress levels, taking a break from your desk before you reach the point of tears, managing workloads appropriately and letting your line manager know if your workload is too heavy or you are struggling with a project which exceeds your competence or experience.

What you have described is you making the workplace uncomfortable and slightly toxic for your colleagues - the poor colleague you are now targeting who got accidentally sucked into your drama vortex is not the one to blame here!

I’m sorry but your message is downright rude.

We all have moments of weakness. I’m not crying on a routine basis. I didn’t even cry at my desk, I shed one tear and made my way to the bathroom before anyone could see. This coworker just so happened to have seen me. I didn’t proactively tell her I was having a moment.

Of course I rushed to the bathroom to have my moment. By rushing I didn’t mean I ran. I quietly moved away from my desk as normal. She chased me.

There is nothing there that created any drama. I shed one tear, made my way to the bathroom quietly and from there on, the amplification started when that person got involved.

You saying a person having a moment of weakness is creating a toxic culture and making others uncomfortable is complete nonsense. People have their moments. Everyone deals with stress differently. Not everyone is an emotionless robot which you seem to be encouraging.

Me having a moment is not at all an indicator of emotional maturity. We all have bad days.

Sorry you took it that way but you posted asking what to do!

As a senior manager, I’ve advised you how I would view this situation if it came to me, and I’ve also suggested to you how you might deal with things more constructively to avoid this situation arising again. It’s of course up to you whether you disregard this advice because it’s not what you like to hear.

I’m willing to hear as long as the advice is sensible.

Was it ideal to shed a tear at the office? Absolutely not, but it happened and sometimes you cannot control these things. Now, if it happens on a regular basis, it is a source of concern and ‘drama’. However, one isolated incident is a different story.

Your statement saying that me shedding a tear in silence is causing ‘drama’ in the workplace is unnecessary. These things happen. It’s great if your place works with emotionless robots and managers have no emotional intelligence (which seems to be the case since you mentioned that someone shedding a tear equals to not having emotional maturity). To me, not understanding that an employee can have a isolated moment of weakness and saying it is emotionally ‘immature’ proves the lack of emotional maturity on the part of the person making this statement.

Make of that what you will.

But it is causing drama isn’t it?

You are contemplating going off on extended sick leave over this whilst you find a new role. Before or after you make a formal complaint against a colleague for gossiping.

That sounds like a high level of drama to me!

If it’s genuinely an isolated incident, the mature thing to do (in my opinion) is to carry on with professionalism and let this be forgotten.

I am being deadly serious that if you came and put this on my plate as your manager I would have to respond by both engaging HR about your self declared stress reaction and also by considering the impact which your reaction to said stress was having on the rest of my team. I would care not two figs about your colleague mentioning this to others as she had no duty of confidentiality to you and has done nothing worthy of any management censure.

As a manager I'd prefer them members who don’t cry at work due to work related matters. Bawl at home and then come speak to me about the tear-worthy problem. I'll help if I can.

The colleague most likely suspects that this opinion would be shared by most managers, so has chosen to use the ammunition you gave.
I'd go off sick if you've decided the promotion is of no interest to you. Play it down otherwise.

You do realize that people don’t cry on command?! Sometimes, it just happens. It’s not one of those things one can control .

Again, it wasn’t a full blown session at my desk, it was one tear then I quietly made my way to the bathroom.

All of this behaviour from the coworker is clearly not OK. She isn't respecting other people's personal boundaries and is being unprofessional.

People are saying she's being caring. Caring for someone includes respecting their privacy. It doesn't include telling another coworker who isn't even in the office!

I've had a coworker break down in tears in front of me. My response was to comfort her and let her talk. I didn't tell one single other person that she'd been crying.

Bloody hell there are some unempathetic, unkind, spiteful posts here. And some people are pretending the OP had a full blown sobbing session at her desk, which she has said several times is not the case.

@FlowGirl22 Ignore all that nonsense about drama. Going quietly to the bathroom when you start to feel a bit tearful is the exact opposite of drama and attention seeking.

The coworker telling someone else who wasn't even in the office, and making it sound so bad that the other person called you to ask what's happened, now THAT'S unnecessary drama.

Very happy to say most managers I’ve encountered are understanding and supportive of their staff. These are people, not robots.

There’s 2 things here

1- yes she was unprofessional and she should have alerted your manager

2- effectively you have lied to your manager by telling her everything is fine when you admit that it was the amount of
work and deadlines you needed to work to- this would have been a chance to voice that the work load was overwhelming.

3- if you can’t voice when you need support with a task this is something that you need to work on as with each promotion comes more stress, and more deadlines

Thank you!

I was trying to be as silent as I possibly could and made my way to the bathroom to avoid a scene. The coworker chasing me down the corridor and telling other team members afterwards is what turned this into a full blown drama especially when she afterwards claimed that seeing me made her ‘cry’ too. This is the polar opposite of what I wanted.

This coworker has a serious track record of crossing boundaries on all angles. The day before this scenario, she eavesdropped on a call our manager was having with another manager, popped up at the manager’s desk during the call to tell them ‘You don’t have to mumble, you can speak about us freely. I’m not listening’. The manager was speechless.

I also found out on the same day that she had disclosed to my manager my intention to relocate at some point, which is something I had never mentioned to my manager because there’s no plan as of now.

She overshares, crosses boundaries and literally feeds everything you say to her to other people. I will have to highlight this behavior to my manager. While some may view it as her caring or me creating friction by doing so, not respecting another coworker’s boundary and privacy is unacceptable.

My direct manager doesn’t assign my tasks. I worked with another manager and I had told them about the workload needing to be reassigned. The issue here isn’t whether or not I vocalized the workload problem.

I said to my manager I was ‘fine’ as in I wasn’t in distress and this was an isolated personal moment which I got over within minutes.

I never said in this thread or to my manager that my ‘fine’ was related to the workload issue. You’re extrapolating without knowing all the facts.

"she afterwards claimed that seeing me made her ‘cry’ too"

She's a serious manipulator.

TBH you should have put some of this background in your OP. It might have headed off some of the "she was being caring" and "you were being dramatic" posts, though some posters are clearly being disingenuous.

Yes, I agree. I thought it was collateral information that wasn’t relevant but now I realize it was.

Her amplifying the situation in front of my manager by ‘crying’ of them after she saw me is straight up (her) drama. She claims she’s ‘hypersensitive’. Please. God only knows what she said to the manager and the other coworker who both pinged me in panic.

Something is really wrong with her. I’m really hoping the manager will see through her once I address the inappropriateness of her behavior surrounding this situation.

You are being really harsh here. People have moments like this from time to time, where is your humanity?

OP needs to raise this with her manager and get it made clear to this 'colleague' that this is totally unacceptable behaviour.

You're repeating yourself a fair bit. Honestly, I think you should just move on and stop obsessing over it, which is what you are now doing. You work with pricks occasionally through life, you learn a lesson from dealing with them each time and then you ignore them and it's easier to spot in your next workplace so you can keep your distance. I'm sure the managers know what she's like. You are making it worse by going over it again and again now. Best thing you can do is to just shrug and ignore and take a "these things happen at work occasionally" stance with her over the incident as if it meant nothing to you so that people can see that SHE'S the one who created the drama over nothing.

I’m genuinely not seeing the harshness. 🤷‍♀️

I’ve said if OP came to me, I would ensure that she was supported with dealing with her stress. Not punish her or sanction her but provide access to EAP and look at workload and required training.

What I would not do however is discipline or punish OP’s colleague - which is what OP wants - because the colleague hasn’t actually done anything wrong. OP’s later posts make clear OP knows the colleague is indiscreet but OP still chose in the moment to confide in her. The colleague owed no duty of confidentiality - she wasn’t in HR or OP’s line manager and this was not confided as part of the mentoring arrangement.

Crying at work really isn’t ideal - it makes others uncomfortable- but if it happens, it happens. I wouldn’t pay it much heed as a manager other than to check in to make sure the colleague is OK and doesn’t need additional support. Flouncing off on extended sick leave or demanding a colleague gets disciplined, that’s what I find overly dramatic and as I’ve said bordering on toxic behaviour. I wouldn’t particularly want to promote anyone doing either.

I’m just discussing this on a forum and answering certain posts is all.

I agree on the other points though. Thanks.

All I can say is that I’m glad I don’t work for you. I bet half of your staff is crying in secret at home with this type of harsh and unempathetic leadership. I think I’m done conversing with you on this matter. You have a very specific mindset which thankfully isn’t the majority on this thread.

@Katrinawaves I also have to say that in your post you mention ‘if you came to me with this’ - which exactly takes my OP out of context. I never went to my manager with any of this. It was meant to remain private. A peer vs a manager are completely different things. If my peer hadn’t relayed this to my manager without my consent, my manager wouldn’t have heard anything.

What I would not do however is discipline or punish OP’s colleague - which is what OP wants - because the colleague hasn’t actually done anything wrong.

You seriously think her telling a colleague in a different team who doesn't even work with OP "isn't doing anything wrong"? 😲

What disciplinary code would have been breached? None at my place of work or any other place of work I’ve ever worked at.

@FlowGirl22 my team don’t find me harsh or unempathetic thank you. My 360 appraisals consistently describe me as fair and approachable and I rate particularly highly with support on mental health issues.

I would support you with your stress if you came to me about that. What is it about the support I’ve said that I would offer you is not empathetic or supportive?

The area we disagree on is where you have said repeatedly on this thread that you intend to go to your manager with a request that the colleague be sanctioned, and that’s where I would not be supportive of you I’m afraid. I think your colleagues though would find that my reaction to that request by you was both fair and supportive of them!

I’m seriously contemplating going on extended sick leave because the lack of boundaries from this individual has been a repeated occurrence (e.g, hugging me while I’m on a Zoom call, responding to questions asked to me etc).

come on OP, give your head a wobble. Going on extended sick leave, really?

You'll definitely mark yourself out as not being ready for the next level up if you respond to this situation in quite an inappropriate way. You're creating a drama out of nothing.

don't tell this co-worker anything in future, she may or may not be trying to set you up to fail, just don't give her the chance to.

in a week's time this situation will blow over, people are not interested in your situation, they're getting on with their jobs and living their lives. Defuse it rather than magnify it by focusing on your work.