Crying (in the toilets) at work
Thank goodness I've never been live streamed or photographed in a tearful moment...
When did you last cry at (or because of) work? Maybe you haven’t for a while or, perhaps you’ve never cried at work. But I’m not sure I believe you (Sorry).
I think we’ve all had a sob at work at some point in our life and often it’s in the loos. Never in front of the national press. (Well, unless you’re me and you’ve cried in front of Features Editors, I guess).
Through frustration, bullying, rejection… the tears we can’t show in a redundancy meeting, or a meeting where we are told we have to do something we don’t want to do. The tears of worry that we’ll be ‘found out’ for not being good enough at our jobs (hello, imposter syndrome). Tears of grief, sometimes, that it’d be inappropriate to cry in front of the rest of the team.
Recently, I cried in the toilets at work. I’m 47, and I thought I was ‘over’ such behaviour. This time, decades after any first frustrated tears as a trainee journalist, these were hormone-led. A dip in my hormones as I navigate peri-menopause. I’d had to stop myself crying in a meeting a while earlier. A whole new era of crying in the toilets, of hiding away, then fixing my make-up, brushing myself off and going back to my desk.
It’s not just the toilets I’ve cried in. Post-pandemic, working from home I’ve cried the angry hot tears of a panic attack while sitting at my desk, with a Teams meeting on mute. I’ve cried in one on ones, I’ve cried on the sofa.
I’ve cried for the loss of a job and a client, and because of the experience of being edited as a freelancer.
Crying is actually a wonderful release – I’m quite a believer in crying. And it all came to mind this week as I watched the news unfold that Rachel Reeves had cried in parliament.
Yes, we’re all writing about it! But I had been pondering on this subject for a long time - it’s even been the theme of a book proposal. (Agents, give me a shout if you want to talk about that!)
Photographs and video of Reeves shedding a tear filled websites, and newspaper front pages. It reminded me of all the times I’ve cried at - and over - work.
But for most if not all of us there’s a huge difference - we aren’t filmed. We aren’t photographed. Often, there’s not a soul that knows we’ve cried. Nobody sees a tear run down our cheeks.
We often cry in the toilets at work. Even when WFH, I have taken myself off to the loo for a weep.
Why do we hide our tears away when it comes to work? Is this generational for me that I do this, because I’ve been taught to approach work with a stiff upper lip, to ‘keep calm and carry on’?
I think there’s something in particular about crying in the toilet. The release of being in a room with the door or cubicle locked, the sitting on the loo not a chair. The head in hands, the moment of release that you’ve left your desk, workstation, or wherever you work.
Of course, it’s not always the toilets we cry in. I have cried in meeting rooms, in stairwells, on trains, cried myself to sleep. I sound like someone who is always unhappy at work don’t I? But that’s not the case. However, I am a person who has always believed there is a dream job for me, a perfect career, and perhaps struggled with the day to day of getting there. Struggled with the more mundane steps that make up the jigsaw of the dream career or job.
I can’t remember crying at work on my local newspaper job. I think I was so sure of myself that failure didn’t seem part of the plan. And there was a plan. I’d worked for a month at New Woman magazine, which I had loved. Unpaid, of course. I think they paid for my travel card from my mum’s in Surrey up to London. I can remember the massive daily post bag that I got to sort through (no social media back then).
I then got work experience at a newspaper in Guildford, and that led to a job. I had done NCTJ journalism training, and this was my next step on the way to getting the NCE, national certificate exam, which meant I could call myself a senior reporter.
The work was varied and we didn’t sit still. We had such a laugh. I was surrounded by fun people and we socialised together, too. It was a riot. Work hard, play hard really did happen, but it never really felt like work.
I had a clear game plan: I would build up a portfolio of features and human interest stories, which I’d then use to pave the way to my dream of working on a glossy magazine in That London. Everything I did was happily with that longer term goal in mind. The only crying I did was over a bloke I fancied at work who didn’t fancy me back.
Eventually I found a job on a magazine, working in Camden, in the mid 2000s. Yes, it was just like you’d imagine. The buzz, the bars, we went for drinks at the Hawley Arms, and the Good Mixer, and once I saw Kate Moss and Pete Doherty walking down the street. Well, staggering a little. She had on a fabulous leopard print coat.
Real life magazines are all about people’s stories. And that’s where I remember truly crying in the toilets at work. I had never known anything like the work ethic there. It was about producing as many stories as possible. People these days talk about churnalism – churning out news stories for digital sites as clickbait – but this was a different kind of churning. Interviewing, writing, re-wiring, reading stories back, over and over. We were allocated stories to interview and write like our lives depended on it.
The overriding feeling of working on a real life magazine for me was that nothing was EVER good enough. You could write War and Peace and it’d be too…. Wordy. You could create a story from an interview and think you have the perfect take, and an editor would decide the part you’d chosen as the introduction was the part THEY thought should be the ending and vice versa.
Writing about it now I feel the same soul-crushing feelings I felt then.
I moved in and out of freelancing for years - often taking on a contract role, or a staff job. And often the tears would come. I can remember crying openly in offices, as well as in the toilets!
I have wondered - as you might have done - countless times whether this was the right industry for me if I cried so much. Was it a ‘me problem’?
And so back to Rachel Reeves. To the news that a woman crying at work is a headline, and something to talk about.
I think it is great we’re all talking about it - the more we admit that work can lead us to tears and that we accept we’re humans who show emotion, the better.
I was at Glastonbury last week, and one performance that comes to mind was Lewis Capaldi, returning after a three-year break. I was at the gig when he wasn’t able to finish his song, too. There he was, this year, holding back tears on stage. Is that crying at work, too? I’d say so.
There’s a big difference between the one-offs and the daily crying. If a job or manager makes you cry regularly, then that’s a huge red flag and something you might need to address. Thankfully, with 2000s Camden firmly behind me, I like to think that there are better resources in place for people who are upset at work. Better manager training for those who need support because they are struggling. And ways for people who are upset by behaviour at work, to complain and make change.
If you are finding yourself upset at work, see if there is a mental health first aider to speak to, or a trusted colleague if it’s about your manager. Find out who your HR representative is for your department and see if they have time to talk. It might be that you can access counselling through work, too.
It might be that you are frustrated, and want to make change - in which case perhaps a coach (hello!) might be what you need. It might be me, or it might be someone I can recommend to you, depending on where you’re at and where you want to be.
But if today is a crying in the toilets kind of day, please know you’re not alone.
Happy Friday and thanks for reading
xJenny
P.S Here’s some Glasto nonsense from Instagram
