Why We Should Cry at Work
It Should be Okay to Care
I passed years of my life without crying. A dear friend and I used to say, with pride, that we were emotionally dead inside. Nothing could evoke tears from our eyes — not Grey’s Anatomy, not relationship breakups, and certainly not anything at work.
When I got married, things changed almost overnight. I have become the kind of person who cries at weddings, Christmas advertisements and every Olympic event. I sob on airplanes — I do not understand why they program the saddest movies for the time when we are trapped in a metal cylinder thousands of meters above the ground. I cry in front of my friends, my family and sometimes in public.
But I try really hard to never — or hardly ever — cry at work.
And if I do get choked up, or if a tear escapes, I apologize.
I apologize for showing emotion, for showing that I care. Yet somehow, it is accepted — although maybe not okay — for people to show other kinds of emotion at work. We express anger and frustration, pride and satisfaction, boredom and determination, but when it comes to more vulnerable emotions— sadness, embarrassment, insecurity — we tuck them down, deep inside ourselves in order to preserve both our own and our societal ideals of “being professional.”
I do not want to apologize, and I want people to know I care. I care about my team. I care about doing a good job. Sometimes, when I care a great deal about something, I might feel an emotion that makes me cry. If that happens at work, I might cry. If I cry, I am not going to apologize.
I will not apologize, even though I might be sorry. I am sorry that my tears might make others uncomfortable. I am sorry that, even though many of us spend more hours at work than anywhere else, spend more time with our colleagues than anyone else, and work hard to achieve (our own version of) success, it is not okay to show that we care about the job we are doing or the people we are doing it with.
I have been watching American, English and German coverage of the Olympics. Despite the differences in the popular sports or featured athletes, the broadcasts all share one thing in common: After every event, they find the athlete who is crying, and repeatedly cut to him or her.
Generally, these athletes are doing all they can to hold it together or hide their tears. They are burrowing into the chest of a teammate or coach; they are covering their eyes with a face mask; they are looking up and willing the tears not to fall.
Of course these athletes are feeling something powerful. They have probably spent more hours working on their sport than anything else, have spent more time with their teammates than anyone else, and have worked hard to achieve (their own version of) success. We should expect them to cry, or to laugh maniacally, or to scream and jump around and punch the air.
Most of us are not Olympic athletes. No one is cheering us on, even from afar, as we go about our daily tasks at work. Work is like gymnastics and diving: our improvement is not measured by meters and seconds, but by degree of difficulty and flawless execution. Although we do not perform our skills on screens in front of millions, we still care a great deal about our results and our teammates.
If that means we want to cry sometimes, so be it. Let’s let the tears fall, unapologetically.
