What made you cry at work?

36 comments

  3. Not my current job but one of my old jobs. I had worked a back to back shift, it was day 12 of working in a row and I was exhausted. A coworker called in sick for tomorrow’s shift, no one could cover, and since I was the “acting manager”, I was expected to cover.

    I broke down. Locked myself in the bathroom and had a full blown melt down.

  5. When I was 21 and doing my dream internship, I was in a meeting that started to get tense. I was trying to make things better, contribute, be an active participant, but it felt like things were more and more off.

    After the meeting, my boss went in my office, closed the door, and explained to me every thing I did wrong. How bad I had fucked up. And how I was going to have to fix it.

    She left, I stared at my screen for a bit, then I closed my door again and bawled my eyes out.

    Everything she said was true, btw. She could have sugar coated it a bit I think, but she wasn’t unnecessarily harsh either, it was very constructive feedback, but I felt so terrible, that I had just been overly confident in being wrong and pissed off people I respected. I felt like I had let down everyone, and it felt personal.

  6. Panic attacks and exhaustion… so I quit!!! Found out that two others quit as well. We got stuck w a horrible boss.

  7. I went into work about an hour after finding out my aunt died. Ik I could’ve called out and I was even told to go home once getting there and asking to leave early but I personally didn’t feel good about calling out so last minute.

  8. On-going bullying after years of giving my all. After I bounced my replacement ended up in hospital due to stress.

  9. Previous job. While on break i found out my dog had passed away through a text from a family member.

  10. Used to work in tech, watched women cry every two months. Supers get fired regularly, HR lies to the teams that the person was “transferred” to protect the perps, and they just move to another big tech company.

    I cried when I realized that these companies are basically traps for people like me to get abused, to be their plaything. I wanted to change it from the inside, but ended up with a stalker situation, and left the field out of concerns for my safety.

  14. My husband (then boyfriend) was going through chemotherapy and I was planning on working from the hospital to be with him the next day.

    I mentioned this to my manager, who lashed out at me saying that I had to drive 4+ hours that day to do something that she didn’t tell me she needed done.

    The combination of her yelling at me + knowing that my husband would have to be alone at a chemo appointment really broke me. I sat in the bathroom and cried for awhile.

    She was far from a leader. I refuse to work for anyone like her again.

  15. Most of my jobs I’ve cried at work either occasionally or daily. Would not have joined this field if I knew it would be like this but stuck now

  17. Being a teacher and having a REALLY hard student.

    Meaning a 5 year old throwing chairs, wooden blocks, and basically anything in sight at me and their classmates. Tearing apart the classroom and needing to clear the other students in the classroom for their safety. Screaming at the top of their lungs because they refuse to get on the bus to go to daycare.

  18. Nothing. Never let them see you cry. At least, I won’t. My job is not worth my tears.

  19. Being discriminated against for my mental Illness. Not even an emotional person and not the type to cry but just was a bad day for it to happen

  20. My patient died very unexpectedly. She’d just gotten a transplant. Was so sweet, grateful, and excited for her new life, as was her sister. They reminded me of my sister and myself. I asked her sister to step out so we could get her washed up and out of the bed to sit in one of the recliner chairs. But she ended up flat lining. We coded her for 90 minutes trying to get her back but couldn’t. I had to call her sister back to the room and I could barely look at her. It was so awful. It happened almost a decade ago but I still remember her face when she looked at me said “I don’t feel so good”

  21. When I first started working at pediatric oncology unit and 3yo that I’ve exercised with in the morning died before I ended the shift.
    That was the first child-patient of mine to die. And I cried like she was my own child.

  22. Stress, anxiety, all around shitty day. Nobody cares and often I’ve gotten yelled at or written up for “upsetting my coworkers”.

  24. When, contrary to my expectations, I was accepted to a different, infinitely better company and could finally leave the soul-crushing toxic place I was working at at the time.

    Like after the phone call I had from the other company (I was at work when they called) I just went to the toilet and bawled a little.

    I was quite young back then and really got out of a bad place so.. it meant a lot to me

  25. This was a long time ago during a summer job but my manager screamed at me for not cutting the strawberries correctly. They were supposed to be smaller chunks

  26. Overwhelming insecurity and doubt if I’m doing a good enough job to stay on here.
    It’s the first job I’ve sort of enjoyed in about four years and with every mistake I make I feel it slipping away from me.
    I’m trying the best I can so there isn’t more I can do I suppose

  27. Very under-valued, superior assume things on me most of the times without being clear about the situation, anything I did is just wrong.

    Expected to “standby” without getting paid or it wasn’t written in my contract, I was on my phone or in online meeting during my trips/holiday. Had breakdown almost every trip due to work.

  28. A few years ago when I was going through my divorce and really struggling with my clinical depression at the same time. I was staying late to work on a project that I was really wrapped up in.

    I can’t remember the details exactly anymore, but I remember my manager saying something very heartless like, “just focus on your work, it’ll distract you from everything else.” and after she left I just lost it. I just felt so completely unsupported in that moment.

    It got worse and I was fired like 2 months later and probably should have sued for discrimination.

  31. We had a patient on our floor who had been with us for months. I was fortunate enough to be able to hold her hand as she took her last breath. Everyone on the unit shed tears, it was heart breaking.

  32. I had a full blown mental breakdown after 3 months of 60 hour weeks plus on call every other weekend. It happened in front of a customer. I was called in for a meeting, I outright told them how messed up things were. They hired more people.

  35. When I was doing really really poorly mentally. I ended my engagement which was really heartbreaking to go through and made me feel like a horrible person, immediately after, I lost all of “our friends”. My mom was going through cancer treatments, and I went back home to see an old friend who was living with my family and they told me “people move on, we aren’t in each other’s lives anymore” “I don’t want to feel guilty for not inviting you out to things anymore”.

    So I lost every single one of my new friends, was watching my mom go through cancer from a distance and there was nothing I could do, ended a long term relationship, and then had the oldest friend I had tell me she wanted nothing to do with me.. after moving in with my family.

    I just completely broke down, I would take 20 minute bathroom breaks to go cry, put back on my makeup and go back to work. I thought about suicide a lot, to the point where one day I woke up and thought that if I killed myself at least everyone on my team would get the day off and I’d be good for something.

    There was one day, I was supposed to go train a new person and couldn’t do it, kept telling him incorrect things, I had to step out and one of my co-workers asked if I was okay and I basically broke down in front of her. She was very kind about it, but I stepped down from that role.

    I ended up getting therapy, a dog, and leaving that job a few months later. It was one of the worst few months of my life.

  36. I’ve cried at work a couple of times. A few times it was because I felt like I was being bullied by some of the staff. One time it was because I had a falling out with a really close friend there who later isolated me from everyone. The most recent time was on NYE when the supervisor yelled at me for not owning a car. Needless to say, I hate my job and want to leave but am scared to do so.

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