What Crying Can Tell You About Your Job

I started crying in a stall in the women’s bathroom. I’d gone in with the intention to just pee and get back out there but I found myself suddenly crying in the stall, tears slowing making their way down my face.

I wasn’t wailing or stamping my feet like a toddler, but I was crying and I was at work. It was happening. I was crying at work.

Photo by Jessica Knowlden on Unsplash

Crying at work usually divides people into two categories — those that think it’s ok to do and those who believe that you should never do it, not ever. There are countless articles written about the pros and cons of crying at work and how to handle it if it happens to you or if a coworker starts crying at work.

One study from April 2018 shows that on the positive side, 45% of workers admit to crying at work and around 44% of CFOs think there’s nothing wrong with the occasional cry. On the other hand, about 32% of workers say that crying is never OK at work, and 26% of CFOs agree that crying is a bad thing and should be avoided.

Those data points show me that a majority of coworkers and managers don’t think that crying (at least every so often) is a bad thing but there’s still a large group of people that don’t agree.

Now back to me in the bathroom stall. I wasn’t crying in front of my boss or my coworkers, I was crying alone. And maybe it…