Does Anybody In The Office Mind If I Cry?

It comes in waves, but there are ways of keeping the feeling at bay. Lift your chin and focus on the painting on your manager’s wall. Place a finger under your nose and think of something funny. But sometimes nothing helps. Your breathing becomes shallow, your speech hiccupy, your snot liquefies, and suddenly you’re doing the worst thing anyone can do in the office: you’re crying.

At least, it used to be the worst thing you could do in the office. According to a recent piece in The Wall Street Journal, crying on the job is gaining acceptance. Research and anecdotal evidence suggests that a growing number of American workers in their twenties and thirties are blubbing freely and openly.

Various factors have been cited for the change. Young adults are more in touch with their feelings than older generations. They are unable to handle criticism because they received continuous praise as children. The 2001 terrorist attacks, reality TV shows, Bill Clinton’s perpetual whimpering have made it acceptable to weep in public. But the general response has been one of dismay. “We need to turn things back,” raged one US commentator in response to the report. “Get our civilisation back on track . . .”

Indeed, even the most sympathetic advice on the subject of workplace boohoo-hooing – usually published in women’s magazines – focuses on what should be done to suppress tears. But I find it difficult to have such a clear view. As a Brit I understand the urge to repress emotion, but, equally, as a child of Punjabi immigrants, who don’t consider it embarrassing to cry in certain circumstances, I also think it’s healthy to blubber on occasion.

Because most American corporate trends spread to the UK, I thought I should try to come off the fence. To work it out, I spent a portion of this week sifting through the eyewatering amount of research that has been conducted into why and when it is that people cry.

It transpires that: (a) women cry most often over relationships, while men cry over movies and books as much as over relationships; (b) only 6 per cent of women claim they never cry, compared with 45 per cent of men; (c) an average sob lasts for six minutes; (d) boys cry as much as girls until puberty, but then cry less and less until by the time they are adults, they cry four times less than women; (e) 70 per cent of the time men cry, their eyes merely well up with tears, whereas women’s tears tend to stream down their cheeks; and (f) according to a US poll from 1993, one in three men have cried on the job.

This last fact was particularly intriguing, even taking into account the fact that it is not always apparent when men are sobbing – one in three seemed high.

I have only seen one male colleague cry in the office during my career – in response to a marital crisis – and though I have lost it twice in the office – once over family news and once over a work catastrophe – I kept it quiet and put it down to being a Punjabi and a bit of a ponce. But a straw poll of male friends in various professions suggests I’m not alone: four out of ten confessed they had wept at work at least once, for reasons ranging the death of a pet, to exhaustion and giving bad news to a colleague.

Given this, the question of whether weeping at work is good or bad may be redundant. It seems that crying is simply inevitable. After all, apart from occasional claims that elephants and statues have been seen sobbing, crying is a unique human trait, and is now accepted as such in many spheres of life. Tears are as common as turf on sports fields. Politicians blub in public. And this week alone, there have been several examples of men crying on TV, including a farmer whose herd was culled during the foot and mouth outbreak.

Despite this, crying remains taboo in business. Is it because, unlike sports, politics and jobs involving animals, there is not extreme emotion in business? Surely not. Is it because people in business don’t work as hard or that there is not as much at stake? No. I think it is simply because, for all the talk of diversity, equality and the importance of “emotional intelligence”, corporate culture is essentially Anglo-Saxon and masculine and therefore uptight. And it is an irony that some of the managers who protest most vehemently at having to deal with occasionally weepy staff are the same people who bang on about the necessity for passion in their workforce.

Of course, crying at work is not always appropriate. Bawling in front of clients is unprofessional. Habitual howling is disruptive. Wailing that is intended to deflect criticism is childish. Also, the acceptability of blubbering depends on what you are blubbering about: crying about a lost stapler is not the same as being reduced to tears by persistent bullying. Meanwhile, as with all emotions in the workplace, for their own dignity, employees should exercise restraint and discretion. If they find themselves welling up, they should apologise, excuse themselves, and run to the ladies – if they are a lady – and come back to discuss the issue at hand when recovered and composed.

But I don’t think there is shame in the occasional yowl. Admittedly, tears can be a management challenge for bosses. In the real world you can shake or hug a weeper into silence, but such responses are not suitable at work. But if managers want staff to treat their employment as more than just a job that pays the bills, it’s only fair they should on occasion be prepared to tilt their heads, open a drawer and offer a Kleenex.

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