Crying at Work
I highly recommend it
And I am fucking sorry it ever happens.
It had been a day. Well, “good”, as work days go at jobs where you are overworked, underpaid, the targets are forever changing, expectations come as emotional onslaughts sold as professional direction, but where you like your colleagues well enough - each of you happily united against Bullshit leadership, and deeply committed to our clients and efforts to serve them. Long hours that many days run later than late, no weekend nor boundaries on communications, but just enough earnest, fulfilling rewards to keep you coming back each day.
Think - go nowhere but also, more so than many, a ‘better’ gig is a lot of fun when it’s fun and very satisfying when things come together. Add to that the fact that you are one of the best of the bunch, and therefore things ‘come together’ for you a hearty amount.
Yes, that is bluster and boosting, but also - true. I was good. I entered the company at the management level with very (a/k/a ‘no’) experience in the industry in question, and in a very short time I’d gotten my sea legs and all was, considering, going well. Yes, well, well enough to the peak to come a’tumbling down.
It was late - the hours ran late at that company. Days started at 11 or so, and ended, as per the timing for those with whom we served and supported, sometimes not till 9 or 9:30. I’d let most of my staff and colleagues go home and assigned myself with some closing up quiet time. Needed, much needed. I was bushed. It was a particularly busy time of year for us atop which we’d had the honor (thanks to some networking by myself, I’ll have you know) of securing a massive account, the chief deliverable for which we’d concluded that every day.
I was turning off the light.
I made my final bathroom visit.
I turned off my computer and was walking out the door as the phone rang. Our sister office was in LA so the late check or ask was annoying, but not unusual. My boss, and the owner of the company, was West Coast-based, rarely slept, never remembered the answer to any question she’d ask (your fault by the way), and buoyed between unquestioning adoration and carnal distrust - often with less than a minute’s breath in between.
First with a sigh and next, as I trained new hires, I smiled before answering the phone. (They can hear it in your voice, you know ….) It wasn’t my boss. It was an assistant for our big client. The assistant was running, RUNNING to our office, she was happy to catch me, she was panting, she could barely speak (or I could barely understand the wind and the traffic and her panic), but I made out something about a mistake and a replacement and a HUGE disaster. Details missing my ears, I too joined her in freaking out.
What was I to do?
How could I prepare?
Exactly what was happening.
How could I fix this?
Nothing came up. I had no ideas. I had a lot of feelings, dread being at the top.
Frozen, aside from turning the exterior security camera feed towards me, I waited and did all I could to wrangle my nervous system away from psychosis.
The buzzer rang like a howler monkey, extra abrasive in the silent showroom. Sounds bouncing off office cubicles and Mac screens like shrapnel from the explosion that was, apparently, to be my night.
As the sweaty assistant burst from the elevator, she assaulted me with what the hell the emergency was, and it was bad, really, really bad.
You see, the key project from the massive client all hinged on their special ordering key merchandise we were to design that would be a key element of a star-studded internationally broadcast event and I, my very self alone, fucked up.
Earlier that very day, this young woman and I had a nice chat, an exchange of ‘thank yous’ and appreciation of work done, invoices paid and all that. The encounter ended with my handing off that very last, most important item in that egregiously expensive order. But I messed it up and I made an error. The wrong item had gone out. It was ruined. Live television had to be rearranged in real time and though I whizzed through the stockroom to correct the fail, it was too late.
The screaming started. This basically-an-intern started it. Next her boss, then her boss's boss and then, I had a choice. There was a small window of time during which I could either cry as the client called my boss or I could try to beat them.
I’ll stop here. There is a lesson in the story of what I did. We could debate the wisdom or stupidity of that, but that isn’t today’s point. Rather what I’d like us to think over is what happened the next day, and a day or so after that, ok - months. For, at that job (which I did not lose but that, as I was directly told, was to be a punishment for I could resign and ‘good luck’ with finding a new gig with, literally, the entire community knowing what a loser I was, or figure out how to manage the mistake and continue to function on all the required responsibilities of my role - leading a staff that were not very likely to respect nor trust me henceforth), and the few that followed, the instance won me a banner of shame, fear of authority, executive performance anxiety, and self-doubt that was long to shake off. One of the symptoms of this new embarrassment-identity were tears.
Not only did I cry in meetings and one-on-ones with supervisors, but would race to the bathroom or into the stairwell several times a week or, depending, in a single day. It wasn’t (isn’t) a good luck by any measure. However, having done it, I will say that it is livable, surmountable, and all-in-all not a regrettable learning. (Regrettable mistake, but valuable lesson that is.)
Sure, ‘Be more detail oriented, Tracy’ … but, larger than that there is something really super one can gain when the professional/social personae thing happens, keeps happening, like a lot, and you live. You stay with the history, but people really do move on. You can, as I did - from exhaustion more than fortitude - accept that it, the embarrassment, is happening, you’re living it, and it is in the room, a character in this part of your story, and you’re going to keep moving. Maybe move through shit. Perhaps feel like you either are the anvil or are lugging it, but lumber on, for even if doing so is a distraction perhaps, perhaps this is one screw up. Only one. One is not everything. Crying is happening. All of these can break you, or they can be a hit, but not to keep you down for 10 or more seconds, and so, though you may not yet swing, you don’t have to lay down either.
