Women crying at work

[Katy Lied]

As part of my job, I have to review the work output of 5 people, 4 of whom are women. If their work product does not pass muster, I reject it until it does. They (and I) have to stay as late as it takes until everything is fixed and approved, and then they send their work on to our clients. Sometimes I have to reject output 6 or 7 times, and when they apologize or try to explain why there are errors in their work, I cut them off and just ask for an ETA for when they can resubmit. I tell my team of reviewers that it is important to not get sucked into their explanations, because doing so creates a risk that the reviewers will sympathize with their plight, and let them slide, and errors will arise in the final product.

Anyway, every single one of the women producers has come to me and cried, some multiple times. The first time, I felt compassion and helped her out by taking over a substantial portion of her work for a month, until she got her bearings. That got me nowhere, as she still had a substandard level of quality and showed no initiative to get better. After that, I got more cynical and unmoving. Today, someone can come up to me and cry their eyes out and I remain unmoved. I just think, "Why are you crying? I'm the one that has to suffer for your incompetence."

Last week one of these women cried bawling. I could hear her in her office on the other side of the workplace, as well as on the phone. I just listened to her sobs, and when they slackened, I asked her quietly when she can get her deliverables to me. I find that if I sympathize with the women, it just makes them cry harder, and attempt to hold a pity party right then and there when I need to get the job completed.

The man in the group is treated the same as the women, yet I've never seen him cry. So I wondered why women cry at work but men dont. My boss advised me that women cry in an attempt to manipulate others, and I'm starting to think that. I feel like a bitch because I can now look at someone unemotionally and not respond to their tears. I'm just calculating how long it will take for them to stop crying so we can all go home.

Does anyone work with a crier? How do you handle it? Please tell me I am not a cold hearted meanie.

[Two Utes]

As part of my job, I have to review the work output of 5 people, 4 of whom are women. If their work product does not pass muster, I reject it until it does. They (and I) have to stay as late as it takes until everything is fixed and approved, and then they send their work on to our clients. Sometimes I have to reject output 6 or 7 times, and when they apologize or try to explain why there are errors in their work, I cut them off and just ask for an ETA for when they can resubmit. I tell my team of reviewers that it is important to not get sucked into their explanations, because doing so creates a risk that the reviewers will sympathize with their plight, and let them slide, and errors will arise in the final product.

Anyway, every single one of the women producers has come to me and cried, some multiple times. The first time, I felt compassion and helped her out by taking over a substantial portion of her work for a month, until she got her bearings. That got me nowhere, as she still had a substandard level of quality and showed no initiative to get better. After that, I got more cynical and unmoving. Today, someone can come up to me and cry their eyes out and I remain unmoved. I just think, "Why are you crying? I'm the one that has to suffer for your incompetence."

Last week one of these women cried bawling. I could hear her in her office on the other side of the workplace, as well as on the phone. I just listened to her sobs, and when they slackened, I asked her quietly when she can get her deliverables to me. I find that if I sympathize with the women, it just makes them cry harder, and attempt to hold a pity party right then and there when I need to get the job completed.

The man in the group is treated the same as the women, yet I've never seen him cry. So I wondered why women cry at work but men dont. My boss advised me that women cry in an attempt to manipulate others, and I'm starting to think that. I feel like a bitch because I can now look at someone unemotionally and not respond to their tears. I'm just calculating how long it will take for them to stop crying so we can all go home.

Does anyone work with a crier? How do you handle it? Please tell me I am not a cold hearted meanie.

Wow. That is some brutal honesty there. Very interesting analysis.

[Jarid in Cedar]

I think you are doing best to ignore the histrionics. We live in a society of people who feel entitled to a reward just for trying. By not buying into the bullshit, you set the expectations that cannot be compromised.

I would simply explain that if you allow substandard work to be passed to a client, then you all will be out of a job. I would simply refuse to lose my job over someone else's incompetence.

[Devildog]

Please tell me I am not a cold hearted meanie.

Katy what we think doesn't really matter.

The best bosses I ever worked for cared about their people. They bring out the best in others. Some people respond differently than others. One of the challenges of leadership is in finding what drives individuals to be their best.

What kind of boss do you think your employees - think they have?

.02

[LA Ute]

I follow a kind of formula in such situations:

1. Rephrase the content of the person's concern and reflect the feeling. "You're frustrated and upset because your work keeps falling short." This usually brings an emphatic yes and allows the person to feel understood, which is a big deal with almost all people. Because you've made an effort not only to understand how they feel but also to tell them so, this builds trust too. (It has to be sincere to work.)

2. Once the person feels understood and has some "emotional air," so to speak, you can deal with the actual problem on a rational level instead of en emotional one. "We still need to have the work product at an acceptable level, otherwise neither you nor I is doing her job." Most people will acknowledge you are right.

3. Make a brief plan for going forward. This can be one sentence.

Then, if the person just keeps crying or carrying on you have to address the likelihood that she is trying to manipulate you, is just avoiding responsibility, just isn't up to the job, etc. What you describe sounds pretty excessive and I would not have a lot of patience with it after several episodes.

I know this sounds formulaic but it has always been effective for me. Done sincerely, it is not manipulative at all, it just recognizes what most people need.

[mUUser]

I follow a kind of formula in such situations:

1. Rephrase the content of the person's concern and reflect the feeling. "You're frustrated and upset because your work keeps falling short." This usually brings an emphatic yes and allows the person to feel understood, which is a big deal with almost all people. Because you've made an effort to not only understand how they fell but tell them so, this builds trust too. (It has to be sincere to work.)

2. Once the person feels understood and has some "emotional air," so to speak, you can deal with the actual problem on a rational level instead of en emotional one. "We still need to have the work product at an acceptable level, otherwise neither you nor I is doing her job." Most people will acknowledge you are right.

3. Make a brief plan for going forward. This can be one sentence.

Then, if the person just keeps crying or carrying on you have to address the likelihood that she is trying to manipulate you, is just avoiding responsibility, etc. What you describe sounds pretty excessive and I would not have a lot of patience with it after several episodes.

I know this sounds formulaic but it has always been effective for me. Done sincerely, it is not manipulative at all, it just recognizes what most people need.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Habit #5 from the Stephen Covey playbook.

[LA Ute]

Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Habit #5 from the Stephen Covey playbook.

Yep. A bit modified. It works. He didn't invent that approach, he simply articulated it.

He's a U of U grad, BTW. :D

[utebehindenemylines]

I have something to contribute to this conversation. My coworker was just sobbing in her cube because she couldn't get internet and voice service properly set up with Verizon. This isn't a joke. She just left and in a huff saying she's going to lunch and not coming back. I don't even.

[GarthUte]

I have something to contribute to this conversation. My coworker was just sobbing in her cube because she couldn't get internet and voice service properly set up with Verizon. This isn't a joke. She just left and in a huff saying she's going to lunch and not coming back. I don't even.

Did you get a chance to tell her how fortunate she is to not be able to have the government spy on her? Not being able to get Verizon working would be a plus in my book.

[GarthUte]

As part of my job, I have to review the work output of 5 people, 4 of whom are women. If their work product does not pass muster, I reject it until it does. They (and I) have to stay as late as it takes until everything is fixed and approved, and then they send their work on to our clients. Sometimes I have to reject output 6 or 7 times, and when they apologize or try to explain why there are errors in their work, I cut them off and just ask for an ETA for when they can resubmit. I tell my team of reviewers that it is important to not get sucked into their explanations, because doing so creates a risk that the reviewers will sympathize with their plight, and let them slide, and errors will arise in the final product.

Anyway, every single one of the women producers has come to me and cried, some multiple times. The first time, I felt compassion and helped her out by taking over a substantial portion of her work for a month, until she got her bearings. That got me nowhere, as she still had a substandard level of quality and showed no initiative to get better. After that, I got more cynical and unmoving. Today, someone can come up to me and cry their eyes out and I remain unmoved. I just think, "Why are you crying? I'm the one that has to suffer for your incompetence."

Last week one of these women cried bawling. I could hear her in her office on the other side of the workplace, as well as on the phone. I just listened to her sobs, and when they slackened, I asked her quietly when she can get her deliverables to me. I find that if I sympathize with the women, it just makes them cry harder, and attempt to hold a pity party right then and there when I need to get the job completed.

The man in the group is treated the same as the women, yet I've never seen him cry. So I wondered why women cry at work but men dont. My boss advised me that women cry in an attempt to manipulate others, and I'm starting to think that. I feel like a bitch because I can now look at someone unemotionally and not respond to their tears. I'm just calculating how long it will take for them to stop crying so we can all go home.

Does anyone work with a crier? How do you handle it? Please tell me I am not a cold hearted meanie.

You're doing it the right way; with equal rights comes equal treatment.

You rock, Katy.

[wuapinmon]

I have similar issues with students who cry when they miss a test or don't turn in an assignment on time. I'm fairly adept after years of doing this at listening to their stories, offering feedback about how to avoid such issues in the future, and sticking to my guns. While I do sometimes hear a story that has proof that makes me relent, mostly, I am immune to tears. That I never close my office door with someone in there also helps me avoid any other kinds of manipulation that could arise from a young person facing real consequences for poor behavior.

When I was a manager at Pizza Hut, and someone cried, I wasn't yet skilled in managing emotional situations, and I usually fell into Southern Gentleman mode. I also did that the first couple of years I taught. Then, I realized that letting people cry their way into exceptions to the rules produces unfair situations for those who obeyed the rules, and I was enabling poor behavior.

Having watched my mother enable my father for decades, I refuse to be an enabler.

[Katy Lied]

For Devildog: These women are not my employees; my employees are my team of reviewers, and I think they would run through a wall for me. In fact, the manager of these women used to be in charge of reviewing her own team's work, but she wasn't good at it and she was a softie for their excuses and she would let their work go out with errors and mistakes, and as a result, we were losing clients and losing contracts since our contracts specify that our work is 99.9% error free. To retain contracts, we had to give away a great deal of work for free, and some of our margins were razer thin and other contract margins went negative.

So the QC inspection of their work was taken away from their team and given to my team. (Really, a much better incentive setup because you dont want production doing their own QC since they have an incentive to pass everything.) I guess that I'm frustrated when I see the same errors over and over, or I will spot an error, then research where the error came from, then tell these women how to fix their data so this error doesn't happen again, only to find the same error the next week. Now all of a sudden my team (and I) are the mean people who make their lives miserable and "make" them stay late at work. But our error rate is down to almost zero and some weeks we are flawless and our clients are happy and we've even been given back some work that was taken away because of prior sloppiness.

The man (who doesnt cry) can see that my team provides a useful service. If we didn't exist, he'd have to check his own work, maybe even check it 4 or 5 times and still not see any errors because he's too close to the data, and then we would lose the contract and he'd be out of a job. The women are not dumb; they can probably see the same thing if they take the time to evaluate the situation, but I swear they'd rather make me out to be the monster and blame me for making them stay late and rejecting their work output. They are so busy working up hostile emotion to me and crying about me because it is easier to make me their target than to accept responsibility.

For LAU: Good advice, thanks.

[Devildog]

Katy didn't you tell me in a different thread that you thought women should serve in the military's infantry ranks?

;)

[Katy Lied]

Katy didn't you tell me in a different thread that you thought women should serve in the military's infantry ranks?

;)

Yup. But I think it is inaccurate to say, "Not women." Rather, it should be, "Not THESE women." Find people who are internally motivated, not ones who sit around and blame others. Find soldier type women. :blink:

[FMCoug]

I made a male employee cry once. I was young and it was my first managment gig ... I've learned since then. :)