Cry baby cry

I caught up with a good friend the other day.  It had been a while and she was telling me the events that had been going on in her life, the good, the bad and the ugly.  We were talking about work when she said,  “And the other day, I cried in front of HR, I can’t believe I cried in front of HR”.

“Don’t worry” I told her, “You know what, this very morning I stopped off to by a new box of tissues.  People in HR, we’re used to it.  Folks cry all the time.”  And its true.  I have seen men and women cry from the most senior to the most junior. I have seen blubbers and sniffers and blinkers and more people than I can remember get “something in their eye”.

Most people need to work.  Most people spend a lot of time at work.  And we see them going through some of the hardest situations that they will come across, whether it is a disciplinary, redundancy, maternity, rejection, restructure or mediation to name but a few.  These are stressful moments in their lives and they are allowed to react like human beings.  That is only normal.

What is abnormal is to think less of someone because they are stressed or upset.  It is abnormal for HR to want to be so hard and macho in its drive to appear “commercial” that it loses touch with how people feel, how they are impacted and what they fear.  Sure bring on the jokes about tissues and sympathy, bring on the snide comments about HR being soft.

I deal with people.  People have emotions.  I’m ok with that.  It’s those that aren’t that have a problem.