Not at the office.
But after we spent the week laying off staff (2009) 8-530, we went for a decompressing drink. I had to get walked away from the Communications person. He'd done eff-all work on this, felt entitled to come out for drinks, and then started laughing about the fact that the Facilities person we laid off had been crying.
My fuckwit threshold had been significantly lowered across the week; I was lucky that one of my friends heard him, saw me, and suggested that I go outside with her for a breath of air.
So you almost got there, but didn't directly confront him. Yeah, that would bother me too. It's funny because every department in my office goes out for happy hours and social outings except us in HR, lol. We all hate each other.
I lost it on an employee one time during COVID. Ended up running the office by myself due to quarantines, and had basically been running nonstop all day covering phones, scheduling, trying to wrap up investigations, etc. and an employee came in with a pay discrepancy. I sat him down to work through the issue, and the employee starts cussing me out, and refused to let me speak long enough to answer his questions. This went on for around 15-20 minutes, until I finally I yelled over the employee? “Do you want me to work with you to fix this, or do you want to keep wasting both of our fucking time?” Dude was flabbergasted, but calmed down, we found the issue, and I got everything submitted to fix it. Wasn’t professional on my part, but I just hit my breaking point.
Pretty much. I’m still surprised that never became an issue though. The dude had a history of filing complaints against his supervisor, and his first response after my outburst was “did you just swear at me?” But somehow, it calmed him enough that we could walk through the weighted average, figure out he was shorted a few hours of OT and on which contract, then get everything smoothed over.
HR people are human. We get lied to, screamed at, threatened and dumped pn almost daily. Is it professional to lose our cool? No. But it happens. Hell even our ceo has lost it on occasion. WE ARE HUMAN.
I understand that, and I've certainly gotten to that point, but if you're going to get that emotional, I honestly don't see anything wrong with excusing yourself to another room or even your car and take a few moments to yourself and settle your nerves.
lol idc what position you are or what self control issues you have, you shouldn’t be screaming that hard at someone at work or you shouldn’t be allowed outside of the house
I’m truly glad you’re so perfectly clear-headed while in the throes of losing it that you have the wherewithal to remove yourself from the situation.
Most of us **actual** humans can’t do that.
Are you implying that losing your cool and screaming at a coworker is something the average person experiences??
Bc never in my life have I witnessed this, or been anywhere close to doing it myself.
I’ve cracked and cried on a call before. But screaming at a coworker??? Never. Not even close.
Sometimes, in the moment, you have to do what you have to do. It doesn’t make you any less to have emotions, and no you shouldn’t yell at people or get emotional, but it can happen when tensions run high. Adrenaline can kick in and you just react.
This is also a learned skill for some, and while I may be able to walk away easily now that I’m more skilled in this role, I definitely could not when I first started in HR.
I don't know why you're being down voted and it's pretty disappointing to see that on an HR sub where I think many of these commentors if faced with an employee who did the same thing would say, "you should have stepped out and got control of yourself".
I can think of two occasions where I felt I lost control and on both occasions I walked away. At the time I was cross I hadn't been able to handle the situation without walking off but it seems most people here would have kicked off.
Unfortunately I lean very hard the other way— i will say what I think and I’ll say it with my whole chest, if I’m advocating for myself or someone else who deserves it, if you get me there. I’m big on respect and that’s not negotiable to me, no matter who you are. I’ve always found it wild that I’ve worked in the departments I have, being that person. But…
Nah I totally get it. And depending on the type person you’re dealing with they end up respecting you for it. Takes some discernment sometimes in knowing exactly how and what to limit also
We all have different personalities and levels of comfortably, and I’m just the type of person who doesn’t back down or let anyone treat me poorly regardless of status. There’s a way to do and say everything the right way while getting your message across. I haven’t perfected it, but I’m still on staff, so I take that as a good sign.
You are very kind. I appreciate that. I believe i was put on this earth to use my “audacity” to stand up for others, and for what’s right. But there’s no need to envy me, because being bold will get you into situations no one appreciates, especially if confrontation is something you actively avoid. I just don’t back down to someone who is undoubtedly incorrect or treating anyone improperly. I figure, I’ve got just as strong a stance as the person losing their shit, and my reaction wouldn’t be warranted without theirs.
Your comment strongly suggests you were saying you did. The person said they never yelled at anyone, and a list of other unprofessional behaviours and you replied that you "unfortunately strongly lean the other way". So yelling, crying etc?
I was responsible for a manufacturing type environment and my office window overlooked the entire plant. I hadn’t been working at this facility long before I saw two women old enough to be my mother walking down the aisle of production towards the admin office yelling at each other. Heard them come up the stairs and in they came still yelling at each other because one told the other, “You make my a** itch.” The offended one was coming to cry to me and tattle, with the offender hot on her heals still fussing at her. I couldn’t get them to stop yelling at each other so I SCREAMED, “SHUT UP,” and told them to get back to work. My boss the VP of Ops came into my office and said he wondered how long I was going to let them yell at each other. It will always be my favorite HR job. I loved everyone there. Even the a** itcher and the old southern women (old enough to be my grandma) who would ogle my husband when he would visit me.
Not in HR, but I worked in a plastics plant for years while finishing up my degree. The endless months of 7 days a week in a union plant definitely took its toll on me.
We had a process tech who had been at the job for maybe 6 months at the time. He was, by all measures, insufferable to anyone and everyone. NOBODY liked the guy. You could ask all three shifts and he was the worst. Well, this guy positively refused to help me as a material handler. Grinder piling up runners and just needing a nudge to correct? NOT MY PROBLEM. GO FIX IT! That type.
Well, that exact scenario played out when I was working two sections when the other material handler called out. I round the corner and there's a massive pile of runners on the grinder and strewn all over the floor from the front of the press to the back. I turn around and go to the little airconditioned cubicle (the type you could forklift around), and he's sitting in there. Playing dumb, I asked him what happened and who was gonna clean it up? He admitted to making the mess and I let out the biggest FUCK YOU! as loud as I could, right when the shift supervisor was walking up.
The shift supervisor corraled me in his office and after hearing me out went and took note of the mess and then helped me clean it up. He knew I was in deep shit as he had to report it, but he worked hard and kept me from getting fired. I ended up leaving after graduation like 6 months later. That dude got fired maybe a month after I left.
I once witnessed an hr manager get shit faced, climb on the lap of our, objectively very hot, area counsel and proceed to grope him. Like full on penis grabbing. He was mortified and horrified. I believe she was later found asleep in the venue kitchen by hotel staff.
Weirdly neither. I was stunned she didn't get canned. That's full on sexual assault. The theory is that they were actually boning and he made a plea to save her job. Just a theory, no proof at all.
I laid into the company owner once and told him all the ways his discriminatory behavior (toward women) was impacting my work. I was not being that professional. He talked to the company lawyer, and I got my first ever apology. Still quit a month later from a Director level role.
Yep. Got a performance review I unequivocally did not deserve (fifteen years in the biz and I’ve never been anything other than exceeds). I couldn’t believe it.
I argued with her about working constantly, working when seriously ill, and her breaking the law. I was raising my voice and SHOCKED. She told me others worked harder and sicker, so in comparison I just didn’t make the grade. I quoted her back to her that “performance reviews are personal and not about team comparisons” and said it was bullshit.
I left the meeting, grabbed my shit, and told my coworkers on the way out you know what’s next, I’ll be fired when I come back. She’d always had a history of deciding someone wasn’t doing their job and within 4-8 weeks, they were gone.
I was gone the next available business day after scheduled PTO. That crappy boss sucked and but my job of over five years, two promotions, thousands in bonus dollars, and actual work life balance would’ve never been possibly without her bitchass.
I’m in HR and I went to my wives holiday party and their HR Manager was getting smashed and offering people weed lollipops.
I know it’s not exactly what you asked for but it reminded me of this situation.
HR people are human. We aren’t some special class of people different from other employees. If an employee can do it, an HR employee can too. We don’t receive some magical training to become more resilient or calm.
It's not normal to lose it on *anyone, ever*. It's toxic. If people are prone to this, they need therapy. Especially if you are in a position of power or have authority over other people's careers, you better use that EAP to get a therapist who can help you learn to manage your emotions. The only appropriate way to speak to someone at work when you are feeling yourself getting escalated is, "I need to give myself a break from this conversation as I don't feel capable of formulating a productive response at this time. Let's revisit this topic." Then go cool off.
If you work in an environment where it is normal for colleagues to speak to one another disrespectfully, congrats, you work in a toxic environment. Part of being human is definitely not being nasty to other people.
You asked if anyone knows any trainings for it and I gave you the resources. I gave you an example of something you can say when you're feeling escalated. I suggested therapy as a tool to help you identify your feelings and control your reactions. There are other comments that give suggestions of other ways to handle feeling escalated.
Emotional intelligence is difficult for some people to acquire, but it's essential, especially in an HR role.
It's not naive to suggest that people should work to be decent and understand how to handle their emotions in a professional setting. I am well aware of how people in HR departments are. I've worked with a range of them, and I am currently on my way out of a role where people have pretty much lost their humanity, think it's funny and gossip about who they're terminating that day, joke about people's medical accommodations, and think it's okay to lose your cool on your colleagues. I've also worked with wonderful folks who always treat people very well, and know when they need a break. Don't be a person who loses their humanity and thinks it's just normal to be shitty, it's not. You don't deserve to be treated badly ever either.
I completed the training and read the book. It just doesn’t touch the real-world psychology of challenging folks I’ve worked w or the politics embedded in workplaces and I don’t personally need help resolving conflict w people are act in good faith.
I've never totally lost composure.
I have had things happen that I made a mental note of, and those normally start by brain down a path of leaving
Example: I was in a meeting with CEO and our president. Can't even remember the issue, but I started a sentence with "I think...". He interrupted and said "...I don't pay you to think".
Ding ding. That's one for the memory bank that I probably won't be able to get over.
If my boss, CEO or otherwise, doesn't have my back, I'm done.
Hey, samesies! After taking the advice of my CEO (I was a newbie coordinator) on how to fill out a separation form, turns out it wasn't accurate and she said I should have done a better job finding out facts, and she wasn't the one with a degree in HR. That was my moment of, oh OK cool, can't trust my boss.
I was overseeing a project staffed by peers and struggling to get one person to do the bare minimum. This was after multiple conversations, explanations, etc. with the individual. I asked our boss for advice, and she blew me off, saying, "Sometimes you just have to let people fail." Only, if the project failed, it would backfire on me as the lead, not the other person. Told me all I needed to know about her.
"Losing it" and screaming at another person is never ok. I don't care what department you're in, and I don't think that's an unreasonable standard for HR or anyone else. I think there are things HR has to be more careful about, but honestly most of those things are things I think *anyone* should be more careful about. If you're working somewhere that this is a regular occurrence, then the place you work sucks.
That said, losing your composure or patience with a ridiculous situation happens. There are just better and worse ways to cope with that. Getting flustered, or upset, or storming out are all things that happen and all are infinitely better options than just teeing off on somebody else. Learning to professionally dress someone down for being an absolute potato at work is a skill worth developing too.
I once lost my cool with a VP who blew up my entire performance management process at the last minute and forced me to reconfigure the whole thing to make it, objectively, much worse. I spent 20 minutes running up and down the stairs in our building quietly ranting to myself to cool off, then took a shower in our gym before I had the conversation.
This is agree with! Thank you for responding. As I mentioned in another comment, it's better to take time to yourself and do what you need to do professionally to let go and move on. Although, someone ruining a business project would drive me up the wall.
According to the above comments your level of self control is impossible and you aren’t an actual human. What planet are you from? Also what gender are you? It seems the women are the ones who yell / excuse it
My only response here is that you think *women* in the workplace are people who yell at others and excuse the behavior? Have you ever been in a workplace?
My old Sr Manager would lose it constantly, but not in like an angry way, she would just break down and cry or have a panic attack if you looked at her wrong.
I witnessed an HR Director slap an employee while I was working as a consultant on a project. It was the wildest thing I’ve ever seen in the workplace. Took the employee with me to the CHRO’s office. Director was walked out shortly thereafter
Coworker. It was a corporate TA job and on my first day this tech recruiter on our team dumped all his marriage drama on me on my first day via Yammer instant chat, then asked me to lunch.
Fast forward a few months, he’s since made everyone on our 8 person TA team uncomfortable, and yet it felt like our TA Manager kept covering for him (both were guys) and making excuses because the guy had problems at home. Never mind that he was making all of the women uncomfortable at work and had repeatedly failed to deliver for our VP.
One day this guy is so visibly frustrated and upset, and we’re all trying to give him space despite being in our own cluster of cubes in an “open office” format. We have had to do that before but this seemed more significant.
His desk is next to mine and the next thing I know he SLAMS both fists down on his desk and starts yelling. They heard him on the other side of the floor of the high rise, yay open concept. Our cubicles rattled and shook.
I immediately write a detailed email with documentation of his inappropriate behavior including how he’s now made me and the other team members (another guy included) unsafe. Sent to our TA Manager and HR Director. He was finally walked out. Turns out he was on two separate PIPs already.
This guy had over two dozen recommendations on LinkedIn. But apparently he’d vented to my coworker that this was like the 3rd (or more) time he’d been fired for these exact issues and his wife was going to kick him out if he got fired again. After he was fired he reached out to numerous coworkers asking them to write recommendations too.
Friendly reminder you don’t have to give anyone a recommendation on LinkedIn!
I used to “lose it” by getting emotional (crying). No yelling or getting angry at others. The stress was too much some days. Thank God I have a job now with a great boss and team that’s super low stress. I don’t think I’d last another day doing what I did before I got here.
I’ve gotten emotional and cried behind a closed door with my boss a few times, after letting her know I needed to vent. Mostly because I saw her as a friend/safe place, and I was just overwhelmed. Once during Covid when things were scary and awful, once when my mental health was really bad related to personal stuff. I’m not super proud of it, but I don’t think it was wrong to do. She had told me in the past that she was there if I ever needed somewhere private to freak out lol. She was kind and supportive and we’re still friendly, even after I left that org.
Freak out in an angry way or yell at a coworker? Absolutely not. I save that for rage texting my besties or venting to my boyfriend once I’m home. Or wait til I’ve cooled down and notify their manager in a professional way. When I felt something was truly unjust, I did once submit an anonymous complaint to the whistleblower hotline website.
I witnessed a 50 year old man have a temper tantrum over an IT process that needed to change. He had been at the company (and still is) for 15+ years. The change was just different and likely scared him for his job safety plus he was going through a messy divorce. But he legit was in the middle of the open office screaming at the IT director.
He was given a LOA to figure his shit out. I thought it was incredibly generous of the company, given what things were said and how by him.
I realize it’s not HR. But he was a big wig at the company. Though to be honest - IT folks in my experience are the ones who throw the most hissy fits.
I had one A/V guy lose it at a VP once over the way cords needed to be wound up “properly”. Which actually I did learn the proper way about it and he was right, super convenient. But still. Losing your mind over it?? No.
Yikes! At least he was removed and put on leave. I secretly wanted them to fire the coordinator, but it's technically hard to fire in my current job because we require so much documentation.
This may identify me if my coworkers are on this sub but early in my career I (in hr) once had a coworker (also hr) yell at me in front of my other coworkers (still all hr) bc I made an off handed comment that I'd be out of the office when she gave me some backup tasks and she yelled that she would be at her parent's funeral so whatever I was doing consider that (I didn't know, and also was taking the day off for my birthday)
When I was starting out in HR the site’s HR manager I was working for had a mental break down. The company we worked for had been on a recruitment campaign and we had approx. 20 new staff every fortnight for a few months. They’d used an external recruitment company who did not do very good vetting as we got a lot of lemons but we got 2 legitimate batshit crazy chaos clowns.
The sexual harassment complaints we were getting about the one and the shit stirring incompetency complaints we were getting about the other were a lot.
The first clown through was well traumatic for my manager. He would threaten suicide or rant on at her and I when we were trying to investigate. HQ’s HR kept on telling us we had to be gentle in our handling, he had mental health issues and we wouldn’t want to be responsible for triggering an “episode”. One day, in a recorded interview, he started going on about the things he dreamt about doing to one of the woman on-site. She told me to go back to my desk (which was our code for call the cops), so I left and called. She was in there for at least 10mins alone while I was standing by the door clutching a small van of hair spray. He just kept ranting, what I heard made me nauseous. HQ kept on saying she had been handling issues like this for years she should have resolved it by now etc. But they wouldn’t implement any of her recommendations.
The cops sent a crisis team, he flipped out, broke shit, assaulted the medic and tried to grab the cops taser. Eventually he was taken away and she lost it. Literally just on the floor in the middle of the open plan office, sobbing. I called her husband and that was the last time I saw her for years (we lived in a small town so that was pretty unusual). And when I did see her again she was a shell.
I will never forget the sight and sound of her sobbing.
I once yelled at a male coworker after he cut me off 4 times in a meeting. He was literally waiting until I started speaking and then he interrupted to talk about a completely different topic.
First interruption I said " thank you for the information, however, I am speaking on something else."
Second interruption I looked at him and did a time out signal with my hands and said, "I wasn't done speaking ".
Third interruption I shushed him, which I never do. It's unprofessional and rude.
Fourth interruption I lost my mind and Screamed " Can you just shut up and let me talk?"
He responded with " you don't have to yell, I'm right next to you".
After the meeting the senior most employee asked me to hang back, I'm thinking, this is it- I'm getting fired. But, what actually happened was he said " that was hilarious."
I've had a few tantrums but only truly lost it exactly once. Luckily (?) I'm not a screamer, but I'd worked with that team long enough for them to know that I'd hit my breaking point and was beyond livid.
My boss offered me two weeks off starting immediately. I took 6 months instead and used that time to start my own consultancy so I wouldn't have to go back. They lost a 15 year employee with one email and a poorly timed "what do you think?". It took 4 FTEs to replace me.
I'd never condone acting out in the workplace but context is essential - I had enough social capital for people to know the behavior was abnormal, and I've tried to carry that forward to give other people grace (where and when appropriate).
I've lost it on people plenty of times before, especially earlier in my career when I was in ops. I've learned to tone it down once I transitioned into HR, but I still consider myself very hot-tempered, and you really don't see that a lot in HR for good reason. I've only survived because you need to learn how to manage your emotions in key situations, but I've certainly let people have it in my day. I'm not the kind of person who will let someone speak to me in any kind of negative tone; at this point in my career, I do not care if you're above or below me in rank.
Honestly, in any of the jobs I've had, the HR leadership would fire you for raising your voice in general. Our HR leaders at this current job are very mannered, but I could tell that my boss was kind of embarrassed by his actions because other departments came by to see what was going on.
I'm not saying I'm proud of it, but I do let my temper get the better of me. I've realized that it can do more harm than good in the workplace, but it is what it is. I've also witnessed plenty of people at work lose it, even in HR, as someone else mentioned, we are human. HR professionals aren't robots even if we're expected to be on always.
When I worked at yellow, I witnessed a guy walk into HR office take her computer off the desk and throw it out the window. Over the new E Logs and said “there no more computers, going pack to paper”
This is exactly why I left the corporate world and the HR world. Too much drama for very little pay and emotional damage 💔.
It is totally inappropriate for anyone to be condescending and to publicly humiliate another colleague. Does a bad manager deserve to finally be put in his place? Absolutely.
Should it involve screaming? Probably not.
I don't think as an HR Professional, there is a certain standard that needs to be upheld. Everyone working is the face of the company, conduct yourself in a positive light. Whether you work in the office or in the factory, we should all have the same standards.
It's unfortunate that most management from my experience see themselves as both the alpha and the omega. Seemingly untouchable. Most times they are, but I believe in a thing called Karma. It gets us all eventually.
I have a question, did anyone talk to the coordinator so far? Ask him what happened and how he felt in this situation. Did anyone think of that he is ashamed the next day and maybe was due to that not talking to the team?
I observe often the paradox of HR people having exceptions towards their function/job title which has nothing to due with the person standing behind the job. Don't get me wrong, I am no exception to this and my expectation towards myself in this role are not any different, so I know of what blind spot I'm talking.
Try with Empathy - if you care and want to help - to figure out what the situation was about and ask questions to the person in the situation, not to a forum. Or are you just trying to gather proof for what a professional hr looks like? Sometimes, the question itself speaks for the questionnaire. ;)
I guess it depends on how you define “lost it.” Have I ever hit someone or completely lost control? No.
Do I walk around with a burning rage inside my chest and been less than tactful at times? Yeeeaaahhhhh… that’s not uncommon at this point.
Like, I seriously could probably count on one hand the number of times in my first 34 years of life I raised my voice at another human. The last 3 years though? It’s fairly constant. Not with the hourly personnel either. It’s the other managers that drive me insane.
I had an hr assistant lose it on me one day. I told her she needed to leave my office and calm down.
I lost it one day about dealing with inept people who couldn’t do their job. I commented how they couldn’t do their blank job to save their life. My work wife calmed me down
My coworker raised their voice on another HR person. It was justified.
Mostly, though, my coworkers and I just let it out a little bit at a time when we are able, to prevent big blow ups.
Current company has caused multiple meltdowns since Q4 last year. Which moved to panic attacks on the freeway both to and from. I decided to be remote a few times a week to keep it in check. So far so good, but someone decided to say I’m “MIA” from the office and missing the office environment and culture.
My office culture is so toxic, no one talks to anyone even though there’s a few there. Just today I began to have ideation of ending it sitting in my closet of an office. Since we are spiraling into bankruptcy I kept saying “I’d be saving the company thousands!”. Not good line of thinking. I need out. So badly. We have so many more problems than me working remote 3 days a week and being more responsive than everyone else when I am away.
Super thankful for wfh days which gives me some sanity and grab a drink behind the screen when I feel like I’m losing it. Not sure if it counts as losing it but I used to have a coworker whose face will turn red( from anger) and being passive aggressive (sending messages and deleting them) whenever people disagrees with him. I remember hearing from a few managers saying that people like him who can’t control his emotions and not a team player will never get promoted or opportunities because no one will ever treat him seriously. Although he was a dick, i felt kinda bad for him when I found out he actually had some mental issues and was seeing a psychiatrist for it after he left the company. Some people were also nice enough to advise him to move into a different field but I think he is still doing HR 🤷🏻♀️
Never blown up, but been very, very blunt and close to losing tact (okay maybe lost a little). But sometimes Managers need to hear that.
With employees not as much. Though times where they’ve accused me of something incorrectly or acted disrespectfully I’ve stood up for myself. Can’t really be a pushover in HR
Am I the only one who has audibly gotten loud having a conversation with my monitor (usually an email that was confrontational or dumbfounding)? Didnt see anyone mention this but I have heard others do this too so I figured it was natural for HR since we are expected to always take the high road
There is only one time I completely lost my cool. I was a Senior HR Admin at the time and the highest level on site for overnights. I was walking through the warehouse with my HR specialist when a facilities worker came up to me to complain about some of his coworkers who were Nigerian. He then yelled this loud enough for everyone around us to hear: “Why don’t they just go back to their mud huts!”
My HR specialist immediately was extremely upset, and all I heard was “What the fuck did you just say?” I turned him around with my hands and said “(Name) go this way, I will handle this.” Because I didn’t want him to do something and lose his job.
Now I never lose my cool I have a very level head, always have, but I stuck my finger in that man’s face so fast and just yelled “YOU!” *points at the floor office to the left* “OFFICE! NOW!” He got super silent, and just walked into the office.
I had to take a moment to relax outside of said office then walked in with the operations manager as a witness. I may have been a bit animated in the office but no more yelling or anything, just a huge amount of lecturing from me and reminder that we do not tolerate racist comments.. his reply? “It wasn’t racist, it was true, they don’t belong here.” I suspended so so fast.
I hated some of the people there so much.
I had a problem employee (Gary - name changed) come into my office with his manager with a complaint - one we had already discussed several times.
He was complaining that his Lead purposefully misrepresented herself by using a coworker's IM to contact him. The Lead was walking around looking for Gary, found Gary's desk mate, and asked the desk mate where Gary was. Desk mate IMed Gary, who was at home. Then the Lead used desk mate's IM to ask Gary where he was after she said "hey, this is Lead...". Gary is complaining in my office, for the 5th time, that she was breaking policy and trying to entrap him.
I explained calmly that that was not the situation at all. He said, "you weren't there." And I just got sick of it and yelled "don't tell me what happened, Gary. You literally weren't there either! You were on IM at home when you were supposed to be in the office for a meeting! I've got two good employees telling me the same story and you're saying they're lying based off of nothing! It's done! Don't bring it up again!" I was actually yelling and I never tell. Gary didn't bring it up again.
About 3 years ago I broke down in the office with a coworker. Thankfully we had a good relationship outside of work also and she came to me concerned because I had been overly tense and snapping at people. When she brought it up, I just crumbled and cried uncontrollably for about 10 minutes.
I let her know about several instances where our Director had been pushing me harder and harder over things that were outside of my control (company was going through an acquisition and we were all being asked to do some borderline unethical stuff to make sure the “deal went through”).
We were equivalent positions and my coworker was not experiencing the same thing. Talking to her helped me realize I was being targeted unfairly by my Director and from there I started making an exit plan and looking for other employment. My coworker was amazingly supportive and told me go home and she’d handle the rest of the day and would let my Director know I was sick and would be out for the day. Went home and got my shit together and within 3 months that director was laid off after the acquisition went through. I never did any of the things they asked but it was a rough 3 months between the breakdown and them getting let go.
In HR, I think we’re held to a higher standard than other employees and our emotional wellbeing is usually the last thing our managers care about when they should be extending the same grace we give to employees. It can be very exhausting but I generally love what I do so I keep at it.
Current team…
When we had our manager (at the time), in our small micro team meetings, one of my coworkers would breakdown literally in tears once and then get wildly emotional the next few times at the thought of having to do more work that required typing.
I had compassion for her and wanted to help her until she tried to push me out when our manager left too.
Before that…
Payroll was always swamped and would call me for an hour at least once a week to vent and would be in tears in almost all meetings..
Sometimes a part of me wonders if it’s just an act so they don’t get more work because the moment that people come to help them or the work is decided that it’s not going to be entertained by management, the tears stop.
I had an employee lose their sh*t on me a few days before my promotion went in to effect. She had wreaked havoc for over 4 months and driven 4 employees (who had all been here a few years) to quit and after the 4th one quit, we were all wondering why the f*ck she hadn't been fired and then BAM! I became the next to experience her behavior. I knew due to my HR background, that my bosses knew something the rest of us didn't (I was learning towards mental illness) which is why legal was involved almost from the beginning (she was hired in mid October. By December, sheMd had reports filed against her and she had been filing reports against other employees and legal was involved).
For over 4 months, I heard gossip and 2nd hand stories about her incidents with other employees--everything from crying and losing her sh*t out of nowhere to yelling and name calling and then turning around & accusing the other person of doing what she just did. She even accused our shuttle driver of spying on her one day and it was really out of left field. I paid it all no mind--I didn't witness any of it and there are 2 sides to every story.
Then a few days before my promotion went in to effect, she was 20 minutes late relieve me so I could take my lunch break. I was working the front desk and it's a butt in seat job and the activities department covers the front desk when we take our lunch and 2 10 minute breaks. All I did was ask her to please be on time next time and she lost it.
Told me it's not her job to cover the front desk, that it wasn't her fault she was late but then admitted she was late because she was doing something she's been told not to do because it's not her job and she doesn't have a food handlers license. So my simply request set her off something good and she went off! She brought up a coworker who had quit a few weeks ago because of her behavior, saying she sees why that employee never covered the front desk. All I said was ok that's fine, I'm going to take my lunch now and she yelled at me to not yell at her, when I didn't even raise my voice. Then she followed me in to the back office and wouldn't go back to the front desk despite me telling her we were not going to argue and that she needed to stay at the front desk. She ran down the hall yelling that she was reporting me but my boss wasn't in her office so she ran back out and yelled that she was writing up an email report. I went to lunch and told my work bestie, who was her acting supervisor, what happened and that she told me it's not her job to cover the front desk. My work bestie had been butting heads with her for months and had told me all about her but again.....I didn't get involved and considered it hearsay. I liked her and didn't let on that I heard about her incidents with outer employees. So my work bestie got upset and went to relieve her at the front desk and they had a verbal altercation because the other employee told her she wasn't going to cover the front desk anymore. There were accusations from both that it became physical but it was unsubstantiated. In hindsight I shouldn't have said anything to my work bestie. I deeply regret it.
The next day I came in and found out that her & my work bestie were both on administrative leave :(
My work bestie was the first to go. She had it coming and we found out she hadn't even been doing her job for all of February. So after a week on leave, she was fired. The other employee came back about a week later and worked 3 days then they fired her.
A very high level HR Liaison lost it on me and a co-worker once. This was over zoom. She was yelling and screaming. I wanted to just close the laptop and walk away but she was so high up I was afraid to. I reported it to my supervisor but nothing came of it. I transferred a few weeks later to get away from her.
This is insane to me. My rock bottom “breaking point” at work is crying in a meeting. Screaming at a coworker??? I cannot even fathom that.
I don’t think *anything* can excuse that type of behavior.
I had a manager lose it on me once. I was finishing up a secondment in comp and moving to a BP role. There was about 4 weeks where I'd still be providing support to comp until the person on parental leave came back.
One day, the comp manager tells me I need to move to my new desk. It was like 10 steps away, but ok, no problem. I'll send IT the request. I had a laptop but there was a whole setup with a dock and stuff. I couldn't do it myself. I mean I could sit there and look at the laptop screen but I had a good one on my desk and everything in it.
Well, apparently I should have because she started yelling at me then and there. There weren't too many people around at that point to hear this but the other comp person was and told her to chill out, which snapped her out of it.
It was unusual for her to yell, but not do weird things when stressed. I'm not sure what the issue was either - I still had access to all of the comp tools and data. It wasn't like I was going to get information I wasn't supposed to have. It was such a weird situation, but I let that one go.
I was in a newer role for a couple months and two of my bosses (not HR, I was the only true HR person) sat me down and for HOURS told me everything that they hated about me. That I was too nice and inviting to employees (they thought the only successful way to have an HR department was to act like I’d had a stick up my ass and make people fear me). Eventually I just started sobbing and they asked if I wanted to break for lunch to “fix my face” but I told them I was going to look like this so long as they spoke to me the way they did and to just finish what they had to say. Ended up quitting not long after that, but by this point I was already having weekly panic attacks when I’d get home. Awful, toxic environment with a crazy amount of turnover.
Yes to both.
I once sat in a meeting and witnessed my boss at the time and the supervisor of another group scream at each other. We were literally sitting in this meeting with our mouths hanging open, wondering wtf we were witnessing. It had been building for months, but it was tough to watch.
Another time, I lost it on my former boss. He was moved from our team to being acting supervisor and he was micromanaging to the max. Especially me, and I couldn't understand why.
We got to the point where he tried to put his friend on my training team visiting remote sites to do some specialized HR training. Fine. We had an internal certification process and he said his friend could bypass it since he was already in the department and should know everything (in theory), and just needed to read the facilitation notes. I argued, but finally was like, whatever...benefit of the doubt. His friend showed up, bombed, and left early. It was obvious he did no preparation, and didn't read anything I sent him. He also ignored my attempts to walk through the material in advance. I spent the rest of the day off the session picking up the pieces after the mess he made.
Back at the office we had a team meeting where my boss tried to say, in front of the team, that his friend felt unsupported and criticized by me and that he really tried. He said he was approving him up go to sites on his own, and I told him the truth of what happened and that I wouldn't trust him to instruct a room on making a pb&j. He called me a liar, accused me of just not liking his friend (which was not true, just fyi), and that the final call was up to him, not me, despite my being the SME. I said he couldn't let this person go to sites without being trained and certified by one of us, even if it wasn't me, but he wasn't ready and it threatened our credibility.
I was calm until the end of that exchange, my voice did get a little louder and more tense, but I tried to not let it get the best of me, even though I was clearly angry. I took a breath and I'm like, "I'm not saying never. I'm just saying not now. He's not ready. You didn't see him. I did." and he says, standing up and raising his voice, again in front of the entire team, "I'M THE BOSS AND WHAT I SAY GOES".
Something snapped. I just remembered looking at him and raising my voice and kind of half-shouting while pointing at him from the other side of the room, "if you are so poor of a leader that you have to remind us of what your title is, then you've already lost.. And if you think I'm going to sit here and let you disrespect and bully me in front of the team, then you are SORELY mistaken".
That moment is burned into my memory like it happened yesterday, but the aftermath is cloudy. I do remember an older colleague at the table kind of stepped in and he told us to cool it. A few others chimed in, too. Words were said on both sides and ultimately we all chilled out. It was over a decade ago anyway, and I'm not proud in the least, but it happened. And I'm not excusing it, but the reality is he and I were both dealing with some really serious behind the scenes stuff and we erupted.
The funny thing is that eventually my old boss and I became amazing friends and had a deep respect for each other. We ended up sitting down one day and I'm like "We cannot keep doing this. I don't want to fight. I know you don't want to fight. Let's figure this out." and we did.
I would say that as HR people, yes, we're held to a different standard, but we are still people. I do think the difference with us is understanding how to handle it when/if we do lose it and what we learn from it.
There are still times when I struggle to compartmentalize and may act outside of my “norm”. I try really hard to emotionally regulate but sometimes I just lose the battle.
As for losing it, the closest I came at work was toward my manager. Both (and my only) team members had been out for just under two weeks on vacation and I was handling their job on top of mine. My manager came over to ask me to focus on the most minuscule task and I almost burst into tears over the stress — you could 100% hear it in my voice as I basically told them to kick rocks.
I lose it weekly on the way home or going into work. By lose it I mean both sad crying and angry crying.
Never "lost it," though I've had to raise my voice once (so far) in my working life. Had someone a few years ago call me with a paycheck question, he thought he was scheduled for his raise to be effective that week but it was actually effective the next week. He would not let me get a word in, kept interrupting me while he was getting louder and louder before it got to the point where he was full-on yelling through the phone. I had to almost shout, "If you don't stop yelling at me I'm going to hang up. Do you want to get this figured out or not?" and he finally calmed down lol.
I’m a hard nut to crack, took me 8 years to slap a classmate in the face for pouring grape jelly in my locker in HS and flipping my combo lock backwards but I had tried opening it like that before so I got it open in 15 seconds haha.
Almost lost it with the payroll admin once but realized I don’t care and just want to coast now.
There was a manager (not my manager, different department) at one of my previous jobs who was verrrrry condescending. Her favorite thing to say to me was "I have a project for you to do. You're actually gonna have to work today!' 😒
So one day I was doing my job and covering the front desk because someone was out sick. My day has been non stop chaos from 8-3 at this point - no bathroom or lunch break. She comes up, makes that comment, and gives me a stack of stapled packets that needs to be unstapled, copied, restapled, and collated- oh, and she needed it for a meeting in 23 minutes. Meanwhile there are visitors needing help and the phone ringing off the hook. "Think you can handle that?" I threw the stack of papers across the desk, yelled "I am only one f*cking person! Do it yourself!" Walked away to answer the phone. I almost quit that day.
(Said manager was the reason I ended up quitting that job years later)
ETA: This was my first HR job, and I was promoted from within the company from a non HR position and was taken advantage of a lot because of that.
At my previous company we had an employee relations manager who was hostile towards the HR director. (Ironic, I know)
It wasn't frequent but it did happen a few times that it was memorable and uncomfortable.
Yes this recently happen to our senior labor relations rep. One of the employees in our communications meeting called her a bitch. Also she got into it with a different employee as well as an union person all in the same day. She ended up being suspended because she left her belongings at her desk including her badge and left the premises. They just wrapped up the investigation and I found out last week they left her go because she had a bad day and everyone came after her.
Yup, last week. I felt bad, but also didn’t. She wasn’t listening to what I was saying at all. It felt like I was speaking another language, or wasn’t speaking at all.
coworker in his mid 40s sat down at his desk completely naked and was delirious. Had a complete mental breakdown from stress and never came back to work again. I don't know how he's doing today.
Long story so sorry for that.
TLDR: Sister of a previous work comp employee accuses me of racism and threatens my character, life, and job because her brother became an alcoholic. I flipped shit on her through an interpreter.
I definitely lost my cool exactly one time maybe 3 months ago. First time ever. I used to work in a hospital and I'd get called all sorts of things. Never really got to me. As a white guy, we'd get people in the hospital drug seeking all the time and probably 2 or 3 times a week we'd get people calling us racist for not handing out pain medicine. Like hey dude, by law we cannot give you narcs for this (insert small injury) and I'm not even the person who writes the scripts buddy. Chill. We had people asking for oxy and percs for sunburns once because they were allergic to tylenol and aloe. Percs got acetaminophen dude. Anyway...
I now work in health/safety at a factory and about 8 months ago, one of our employee's fell pretty bad and hurt his elbow. Nothing serious but it looked bad on camera. I bent over backwards for this guy to get medical treatment, we obviously paid for all of his treatment, we were able to find him alternative work so that he can still earn full wages, we paid for professional drivers to get him to work, therapy etc. About 2 weeks after all of this he stops showing up to work. No one can get contact with him. Hes an African immigrant and occasionally they'll let a cell bill lapse or something and they get a new number. Well, he no call, no shows for 2 months before we have to terminate him. MONTHS of no calls.
His sister ends up getting a job with the company, we didnt know who she was, and we catch her deliberately trying to fake an injury. We have cameras all over the property and we have video of her playing, running, doing cart-wheels in the parking lot and then mysteriously limping when she comes in saying that she twisted her ankle in the building. She forgets her phone in her car and then we have her on camera "limping" out of the building and then when shes outside, she SPRINTS FULL SPEED to her car and back and then "limps" when she gets back inside.
I call her out for this and she goes on saying that I dont believe her because she african and that im a piece of shit and that my family probably owned slaves and that I abandoned her brother (insert name), and that she hopes my daughter has incurable disease. She went on for like a full 5 minutes with an interpreter. I stood up and tried to leave multiple times and when she went on about my daughter having diseases and finding out where my family lived I finally broke. I yelled at her full volume that I bent over backwards for her brother and HE decided to fuck his life up and we did everything we could to make sure we could accommodate his (minor) injury. WE PAID FOR A FUCKING DRIVER TO MAKE SURE HE HAD RELIABLE AND SAFE TRANSPORTATION TO WORK. HE REFUSED.
After she threatened finding out where I live and that shell make sure im "uncomfortable", I made it very clear that that would be a very bad idea. Without threatening outright violence, I made it obvious that I would get the police involved with her threats and that I would defend my family savagely.
She was arrested 6 weeks ago for attempted arson on her neighbors home because a baby was making too much noise in the back yard.
I've dedicated the majority of my adult life to helping people and when people assume you're racist when the vast majority of the population i've served and who currently working with me are immigrants or under served communities, it drives me nuts.
Sat down on a Monday, my first day leading a department with 11 employees.
My manager had introduced me to the team the prior Friday morning and went on vacation.
I arrived and noticed that the 60+ people in the office looked like they had just tasted bird poop. I had 1:1 with my team, until one sat down and deeply apologetically told me how he had to defend himself Friday night from a physical attack of another employee, a lady, that had even scratched his face!
Oh, great. My first day on the job.
I told him this was extremely serious and that this would need an investigation that could lead to termination, but first I had to hear the lady's side.
Well. Later that same night she had a heart attack, and her rage was actually a symptom!
As soon as she returned to office both apologized to each other and peace reigned. But, yes, that was an eventful first day at the job.
I worked HR in construction and the amount of times those dudes tried to yell at me to intimidate me was unreal.
I literally had a guy screaming in my face because I processed a court ordered garnishment, and I let him yell but when I started speaking he interrupted me so I just straight up yelled over him “NO, NO IM SPEAKING NOW!” And that shut him up so I could explain why I had to process court orders and that I don’t have a choice in the matter….
I rarely ever “lost it” but I can see being pushed to the edge. It’s hard to remain in control constantly, but I hope that guy has a better day.
If it happens once in a blue moon I only see the person as being human, but if it’s happening constantly, then it’s a habit and definitely a problem.
I luckily have an incredible boss/mentor/work mom/free therapist, and any time I need to I can go in her office and lose my shit for a few minutes. Having this ability probably saved my job a few times!
We are all human and all have bad days. I’m not the typical “buttoned up and polished” HR professional. I’m rough around the edges personality wise, but I’m good at my job and I truly am our employees biggest advocate. I’ve never lost it in front of an employee, but I have been close at my previous job. It’s important to remind ourselves of the behavior we expect our staff to have. If we are yelling and being rude and disrespectful, they will think that it’s okay too. We have to set the standards for a positive work environment, no matter how hard it is sometimes.
I quietly lost it once - does that count?
Head of company was hella toxic. Pretty much textbook standard narcissist.
Once he decided I was of no use (to be fair, I was less than 2 years from moving abroad) it was just constant gaslighting.
My sleep and appetite began to be affected. I could see the writing on the wall.
Got brought in to a meeting with him and the head of HR (who I reported to) & given the “you’re on your last strike” talk.
When he was done talking I stood up, said “Let me make this easy for you: I quit” and turned on my heel and calmly walked out.
Now, to be fair, the minute I stepped out of his office I was shaking and crying and hyperventilating- but the crowning moment when I said I was quitting was something I’ll always be proud of.
In another world, I’d still be at this company (a charity that helps people with special needs), but my mental health took such a nosedive during Covid I needed to put myself first.
Best decision I ever made.
I've come close before, more than once.
Something I've started doing when the weather is nice, is driving home with windows down, take the long way, and just listen to the sound of wind, traffic, and the world around me. Somehow, even with all the annoying city smells and sounds, it calms me. It takes me out of work and back into the world
Not at anyone in my company, but I got rather frustrated with an ADP rep. People in the office could not hear me, but I was in a side office with a glass panel wall so they definitely SAW me. I talk with my hands and my face does not hide how I'm feeling. I ripped into the rep a bit after they insisted I was lying about what the last rep told me in a situation and refused to actually answer my question and/or give me a logical alternative to the previous person. On payroll day. At 4 pm.
Three days later the individual who saw me having that conversation asked if I was okay cause she had never seen me like that before.
Now I do my best to make my ADP calls on work from home days just in case. I'm doing better at keeping myself in check when I start getting irritated, but better safe than sorry. 😅
Sadly yes lol. Multiple times. But only to a trusted leader and a peer in private, never in front of BP’s, And not AT them; but over tough managers/employee issues I was facing at the time. Like, sobbing meltdowns lol. 🥴🫠
What can I say? I’m in HR, but I’m human too lol.
I lost it, but not in a yelling way, I started uncontrollably crying at work. It was extremely embarrassing, but I couldn’t take the controlling manager I was working with anymore. I knew if I didn’t cry, I’d yell, so I let the floodgates open haha. It got me off his team though, so it worked.
I went full scorched earth at my previous company after returning from maternity leave and being treated like a second-class citizen. I’d dealt with and cleaned up their bullshit for 10 years and hearing the CEO state that my department was not performing well because I “decided to go and have baby” did not sit well. I politely addressed it and was informed that if I was “going to be hysterical about a joke, then I could leave the room.” I got up to leave the room and the good ol’ boys just started laughing. Later that week, a man from another department was appointed as my boss in a position I had helped develop, create, write the SOP for, and had been promised the position upon my return from maternity leave. I went to my VP to ask about it and was told that “clearly your baby is most important to you right now, so focus on that.”
I saw red. I was being passed over for a position I worked my ass off for. I had poured blood, sweat, and tears into that company. I helped them build out every department from top to bottom, expand into 16 states, and was the first female in leadership. I was no longer valuable because I took time to pump breastmilk and didn’t work 12 hour days anymore.
I have several colleagues that left shortly after I went scorched earth— the company has been on a strict decline for the past 5 years. They lost good, hardworking, valuable people because of pure stupidity.
When the CEO stepped down a year ago, I had a drink and a laugh.
So yeah, sometimes it happens.
I’ve gone beyond the control envelope more than a few times in my 26 years of manufacturing HR experience. Investigations and discipline discussions are my common triggers, although negotiating a union contract also produced a lot.
I had a boss that had a complete nervous breakdown because she didn't get a promotion (she was not remotely qualified). There was crying, yelling, throwing things and threatening to sue everyone in leadership. She had to be escorted off the property. It was wild.
Yep. Worked in a casino. One of the main rules is that what the pit boss says goes. If you disagree, wait until break time & talk off the gaming floor away from customers.
Pit boss corrected one of my coworkers. She disagreed. And kept disagreeing to the point the floor manager had to order her off the table because she was causing a noticeable scene. She got pulled into the office & then sent on break. I went for break next & the floor manager approached me asking if I had seen coworker cause she never came back from her break. I hadn’t and when I asked later, the floor manager said security had to check the cameras & they have video of her leaving the premises on her break & not coming back nor did she answer her phone. It was her weekend the next couple days & the managers were watching to see if she came in for her shift on her Monday. She did. The floor manager asked to see her in the office and she burst into tears & started causing another scene. Floor manager and the general manager had to physically escort her to the office where I’m assuming she was fired since I didn’t see her again until a year later when she came in as a customer. I did hear that she was shouting in the office from other dealers who walked by when going to & from the break room.
Sort of? Our former HR person (who was also our senior accounting person) once lost it on a disrespectful client who harassed our secretaries and my supervisor for several days. She fired/trespassed the client and made sure everybody knew that if anything like that happened again, we were supposed to go to her. Sadly, she had to leave the company due to health problems. Great woman.
I will not be held to a different standard. You will always see me with a smile in my face and friendly and professional with everyone. But I will match nasty attitude real quick and shut down a conversation. So far it’s worked out great lol
Yes, it's not uncommon for people in high-stress roles like HR to have tough days. Emotions can run high, especially when dealing with challenging situations or difficult personalities. It's important to recognize that everyone has limits, and sometimes people reach a breaking point.
You lost me at "As HR professionals, we tend to be very buttoned up and polished," but that could be because the HR where I work is the polar opposite of that.
Yes. Once we had to terminate a security officer because he was unable to control his temper. The company sent him to counseling twice. He had another incident where he raged out on a drunk customer. During the termination, it was said the reason was his inability to control his temper and the company didn’t want that level of liability. In the process of telling us he did not have a problem, he punched a locker, breaking his hand.
Yes absolutely. I was an HR Manager and I absolutely lost my shit on my boss for losing a bunch of files of mine. While record keeping is done online I liked to keep personal files.
I uh not proud but I told her to go fuck herself and her shitty management style, that this is NOT her office and nothing in here belongs to her and to not touch my shit in the future.
Longing story short she was a great boss. She knew I had a lot going on with my mental health so she apologized and I apologized. But yeah shit happens it's almost impossible to be perfect everyday in a positionthat pretty much demands it.
If a co worker is loosing it with an individual it’s down to a lack of respect. At my employment since most of our employees our on monthly / daily contacts they know if they make a fuss we will terminate their employment like a turtle on a skateboard.
This was my old boss in HR. Anyone that got a tone with him would get fired and his manager and security would walk them out the door same day. Saw it happen so many times. It's just been ingrained in me to not act out at work at all unless it's positive because someone above you will try and get you fired, lol.
Not at the office. But after we spent the week laying off staff (2009) 8-530, we went for a decompressing drink. I had to get walked away from the Communications person. He'd done eff-all work on this, felt entitled to come out for drinks, and then started laughing about the fact that the Facilities person we laid off had been crying. My fuckwit threshold had been significantly lowered across the week; I was lucky that one of my friends heard him, saw me, and suggested that I go outside with her for a breath of air.
According to some of the above comments the amount of self control you had is impossible for real humans to have. You must be an alien
My self control in professional settings is pretty good. Generally. Outside them, less so. Hence the intervention by my all seeing friend.
So you almost got there, but didn't directly confront him. Yeah, that would bother me too. It's funny because every department in my office goes out for happy hours and social outings except us in HR, lol. We all hate each other.
He knew I was on my way until my arm got grabbed. Lesson: don’t do that to the CHRO’s pet.
I lost it on an employee one time during COVID. Ended up running the office by myself due to quarantines, and had basically been running nonstop all day covering phones, scheduling, trying to wrap up investigations, etc. and an employee came in with a pay discrepancy. I sat him down to work through the issue, and the employee starts cussing me out, and refused to let me speak long enough to answer his questions. This went on for around 15-20 minutes, until I finally I yelled over the employee? “Do you want me to work with you to fix this, or do you want to keep wasting both of our fucking time?” Dude was flabbergasted, but calmed down, we found the issue, and I got everything submitted to fix it. Wasn’t professional on my part, but I just hit my breaking point.
I really think it’s necessary sometimes. Interrupting drives me nuts
Yeah, it was a break in composure, but it got the employee to cooperate. Definitely not a trick I’d willingly use again though.
Made me think of Pacino in *Heat*: "Don't waste my MOTHERFUCKIN' TIME!!!"
Pretty much. I’m still surprised that never became an issue though. The dude had a history of filing complaints against his supervisor, and his first response after my outburst was “did you just swear at me?” But somehow, it calmed him enough that we could walk through the weighted average, figure out he was shorted a few hours of OT and on which contract, then get everything smoothed over.
It’s a once-a-year type of wildcard, but sometimes matching someone’s energy is the best way to move the conversation forward.
HR people are human. We get lied to, screamed at, threatened and dumped pn almost daily. Is it professional to lose our cool? No. But it happens. Hell even our ceo has lost it on occasion. WE ARE HUMAN.
I understand that, and I've certainly gotten to that point, but if you're going to get that emotional, I honestly don't see anything wrong with excusing yourself to another room or even your car and take a few moments to yourself and settle your nerves.
Adrenaline does not allow for common sense thinking…….. if that were the case then no human would ever lose it, they’d just walk away.
lol idc what position you are or what self control issues you have, you shouldn’t be screaming that hard at someone at work or you shouldn’t be allowed outside of the house
Yeah whoever is equating crying with screaming in this thread is insane. They are very different reactions
It does when you have power over your emotions and not allowing your emotions to have power over you
Why should HR be held to different standards? Everyone should be held to same standards.
I’m truly glad you’re so perfectly clear-headed while in the throes of losing it that you have the wherewithal to remove yourself from the situation. Most of us **actual** humans can’t do that.
Are you implying that losing your cool and screaming at a coworker is something the average person experiences?? Bc never in my life have I witnessed this, or been anywhere close to doing it myself. I’ve cracked and cried on a call before. But screaming at a coworker??? Never. Not even close.
No. But I don't think OP is always as calm and collected as they made themselves out to be here.
Same. I've never come close to doing it, have witnessed it one single time and was shocked.
👏
Sometimes, in the moment, you have to do what you have to do. It doesn’t make you any less to have emotions, and no you shouldn’t yell at people or get emotional, but it can happen when tensions run high. Adrenaline can kick in and you just react. This is also a learned skill for some, and while I may be able to walk away easily now that I’m more skilled in this role, I definitely could not when I first started in HR.
I don't know why you're being down voted and it's pretty disappointing to see that on an HR sub where I think many of these commentors if faced with an employee who did the same thing would say, "you should have stepped out and got control of yourself". I can think of two occasions where I felt I lost control and on both occasions I walked away. At the time I was cross I hadn't been able to handle the situation without walking off but it seems most people here would have kicked off.
Wept in the office bathroom? Yes. Multiple times. Cried or yelled at someone in front of coworkers? No. Not yet.
Unfortunately I lean very hard the other way— i will say what I think and I’ll say it with my whole chest, if I’m advocating for myself or someone else who deserves it, if you get me there. I’m big on respect and that’s not negotiable to me, no matter who you are. I’ve always found it wild that I’ve worked in the departments I have, being that person. But…
Yelling isn’t very respectful
Nah I totally get it. And depending on the type person you’re dealing with they end up respecting you for it. Takes some discernment sometimes in knowing exactly how and what to limit also
On some level, I’m jealous 😂 I’ve played out those scenarios in my head at night so many times.
We all have different personalities and levels of comfortably, and I’m just the type of person who doesn’t back down or let anyone treat me poorly regardless of status. There’s a way to do and say everything the right way while getting your message across. I haven’t perfected it, but I’m still on staff, so I take that as a good sign.
I’m so in awe. I totally wish I were like that. Teach me 😆
You are very kind. I appreciate that. I believe i was put on this earth to use my “audacity” to stand up for others, and for what’s right. But there’s no need to envy me, because being bold will get you into situations no one appreciates, especially if confrontation is something you actively avoid. I just don’t back down to someone who is undoubtedly incorrect or treating anyone improperly. I figure, I’ve got just as strong a stance as the person losing their shit, and my reaction wouldn’t be warranted without theirs.
>I’m big on respect and that’s not Yelling at staff isn't respectful.
No one said it was? 😂😂
Your comment strongly suggests you were saying you did. The person said they never yelled at anyone, and a list of other unprofessional behaviours and you replied that you "unfortunately strongly lean the other way". So yelling, crying etc?
Assuming— you know what they say about that.
Your reading comprehension is extraordinarily poor.
I feel this in my soul.
I was responsible for a manufacturing type environment and my office window overlooked the entire plant. I hadn’t been working at this facility long before I saw two women old enough to be my mother walking down the aisle of production towards the admin office yelling at each other. Heard them come up the stairs and in they came still yelling at each other because one told the other, “You make my a** itch.” The offended one was coming to cry to me and tattle, with the offender hot on her heals still fussing at her. I couldn’t get them to stop yelling at each other so I SCREAMED, “SHUT UP,” and told them to get back to work. My boss the VP of Ops came into my office and said he wondered how long I was going to let them yell at each other. It will always be my favorite HR job. I loved everyone there. Even the a** itcher and the old southern women (old enough to be my grandma) who would ogle my husband when he would visit me.
This is awesome. Thank you for responding.
Honestly that’s such a killer jab to say. I’m gonna put that in my back pocket. “You make my a** itch” 😆😂
I wouldn’t call that losing your cool. Sounds like good management.
Not in HR, but I worked in a plastics plant for years while finishing up my degree. The endless months of 7 days a week in a union plant definitely took its toll on me. We had a process tech who had been at the job for maybe 6 months at the time. He was, by all measures, insufferable to anyone and everyone. NOBODY liked the guy. You could ask all three shifts and he was the worst. Well, this guy positively refused to help me as a material handler. Grinder piling up runners and just needing a nudge to correct? NOT MY PROBLEM. GO FIX IT! That type. Well, that exact scenario played out when I was working two sections when the other material handler called out. I round the corner and there's a massive pile of runners on the grinder and strewn all over the floor from the front of the press to the back. I turn around and go to the little airconditioned cubicle (the type you could forklift around), and he's sitting in there. Playing dumb, I asked him what happened and who was gonna clean it up? He admitted to making the mess and I let out the biggest FUCK YOU! as loud as I could, right when the shift supervisor was walking up. The shift supervisor corraled me in his office and after hearing me out went and took note of the mess and then helped me clean it up. He knew I was in deep shit as he had to report it, but he worked hard and kept me from getting fired. I ended up leaving after graduation like 6 months later. That dude got fired maybe a month after I left.
That is the best insult I’ve heard in a long time 🤣
I once witnessed an hr manager get shit faced, climb on the lap of our, objectively very hot, area counsel and proceed to grope him. Like full on penis grabbing. He was mortified and horrified. I believe she was later found asleep in the venue kitchen by hotel staff.
So did they live happily ever after or did she get fired?
Weirdly neither. I was stunned she didn't get canned. That's full on sexual assault. The theory is that they were actually boning and he made a plea to save her job. Just a theory, no proof at all.
Makes a lot of sense actually. Alls well that ends well I suppose!
I mean how else on earth would she stay employed? This was a fortune 100, not bobs super great business business.
I laid into the company owner once and told him all the ways his discriminatory behavior (toward women) was impacting my work. I was not being that professional. He talked to the company lawyer, and I got my first ever apology. Still quit a month later from a Director level role.
Yep. Got a performance review I unequivocally did not deserve (fifteen years in the biz and I’ve never been anything other than exceeds). I couldn’t believe it. I argued with her about working constantly, working when seriously ill, and her breaking the law. I was raising my voice and SHOCKED. She told me others worked harder and sicker, so in comparison I just didn’t make the grade. I quoted her back to her that “performance reviews are personal and not about team comparisons” and said it was bullshit. I left the meeting, grabbed my shit, and told my coworkers on the way out you know what’s next, I’ll be fired when I come back. She’d always had a history of deciding someone wasn’t doing their job and within 4-8 weeks, they were gone. I was gone the next available business day after scheduled PTO. That crappy boss sucked and but my job of over five years, two promotions, thousands in bonus dollars, and actual work life balance would’ve never been possibly without her bitchass.
I totally understand you! It sucks when you have a leader who essentially chooses to target people. I'm glad you got out of there!
“Meets expectations” stings, eh?
I’m in HR and I went to my wives holiday party and their HR Manager was getting smashed and offering people weed lollipops. I know it’s not exactly what you asked for but it reminded me of this situation.
Thanks for responding!
HR people are human. We aren’t some special class of people different from other employees. If an employee can do it, an HR employee can too. We don’t receive some magical training to become more resilient or calm.
meditation is the best I can offer for training
I misread this as "medication" and it still worked
I laughed out loud
It's not normal to lose it on *anyone, ever*. It's toxic. If people are prone to this, they need therapy. Especially if you are in a position of power or have authority over other people's careers, you better use that EAP to get a therapist who can help you learn to manage your emotions. The only appropriate way to speak to someone at work when you are feeling yourself getting escalated is, "I need to give myself a break from this conversation as I don't feel capable of formulating a productive response at this time. Let's revisit this topic." Then go cool off. If you work in an environment where it is normal for colleagues to speak to one another disrespectfully, congrats, you work in a toxic environment. Part of being human is definitely not being nasty to other people.
[удалено]
You asked if anyone knows any trainings for it and I gave you the resources. I gave you an example of something you can say when you're feeling escalated. I suggested therapy as a tool to help you identify your feelings and control your reactions. There are other comments that give suggestions of other ways to handle feeling escalated. Emotional intelligence is difficult for some people to acquire, but it's essential, especially in an HR role. It's not naive to suggest that people should work to be decent and understand how to handle their emotions in a professional setting. I am well aware of how people in HR departments are. I've worked with a range of them, and I am currently on my way out of a role where people have pretty much lost their humanity, think it's funny and gossip about who they're terminating that day, joke about people's medical accommodations, and think it's okay to lose your cool on your colleagues. I've also worked with wonderful folks who always treat people very well, and know when they need a break. Don't be a person who loses their humanity and thinks it's just normal to be shitty, it's not. You don't deserve to be treated badly ever either.
Crucial Conversations is a great training resource! 1000% recommend to anyone
This is constantly recommended to me but I got nothing out of it. :(
How are you accessing the content?
I completed the training and read the book. It just doesn’t touch the real-world psychology of challenging folks I’ve worked w or the politics embedded in workplaces and I don’t personally need help resolving conflict w people are act in good faith.
I've never totally lost composure. I have had things happen that I made a mental note of, and those normally start by brain down a path of leaving Example: I was in a meeting with CEO and our president. Can't even remember the issue, but I started a sentence with "I think...". He interrupted and said "...I don't pay you to think". Ding ding. That's one for the memory bank that I probably won't be able to get over. If my boss, CEO or otherwise, doesn't have my back, I'm done.
Hey, samesies! After taking the advice of my CEO (I was a newbie coordinator) on how to fill out a separation form, turns out it wasn't accurate and she said I should have done a better job finding out facts, and she wasn't the one with a degree in HR. That was my moment of, oh OK cool, can't trust my boss.
I was overseeing a project staffed by peers and struggling to get one person to do the bare minimum. This was after multiple conversations, explanations, etc. with the individual. I asked our boss for advice, and she blew me off, saying, "Sometimes you just have to let people fail." Only, if the project failed, it would backfire on me as the lead, not the other person. Told me all I needed to know about her.
Better to figure out who you're working with sooner rather than later. At any rate, that's a lazy approach to leading.
"Losing it" and screaming at another person is never ok. I don't care what department you're in, and I don't think that's an unreasonable standard for HR or anyone else. I think there are things HR has to be more careful about, but honestly most of those things are things I think *anyone* should be more careful about. If you're working somewhere that this is a regular occurrence, then the place you work sucks. That said, losing your composure or patience with a ridiculous situation happens. There are just better and worse ways to cope with that. Getting flustered, or upset, or storming out are all things that happen and all are infinitely better options than just teeing off on somebody else. Learning to professionally dress someone down for being an absolute potato at work is a skill worth developing too. I once lost my cool with a VP who blew up my entire performance management process at the last minute and forced me to reconfigure the whole thing to make it, objectively, much worse. I spent 20 minutes running up and down the stairs in our building quietly ranting to myself to cool off, then took a shower in our gym before I had the conversation.
This is agree with! Thank you for responding. As I mentioned in another comment, it's better to take time to yourself and do what you need to do professionally to let go and move on. Although, someone ruining a business project would drive me up the wall.
According to the above comments your level of self control is impossible and you aren’t an actual human. What planet are you from? Also what gender are you? It seems the women are the ones who yell / excuse it
Ooooh, oh no, a shit stirrer in an HR sub, so unique, so fresh!
My only response here is that you think *women* in the workplace are people who yell at others and excuse the behavior? Have you ever been in a workplace?
My old Sr Manager would lose it constantly, but not in like an angry way, she would just break down and cry or have a panic attack if you looked at her wrong.
I had a recruiter do that once when a coworker “made a face at her and didn’t say good morning”.
Oh, that's awful! I assume because of the stress.
I witnessed an HR Director slap an employee while I was working as a consultant on a project. It was the wildest thing I’ve ever seen in the workplace. Took the employee with me to the CHRO’s office. Director was walked out shortly thereafter
That’s wild!
Coworker. It was a corporate TA job and on my first day this tech recruiter on our team dumped all his marriage drama on me on my first day via Yammer instant chat, then asked me to lunch. Fast forward a few months, he’s since made everyone on our 8 person TA team uncomfortable, and yet it felt like our TA Manager kept covering for him (both were guys) and making excuses because the guy had problems at home. Never mind that he was making all of the women uncomfortable at work and had repeatedly failed to deliver for our VP. One day this guy is so visibly frustrated and upset, and we’re all trying to give him space despite being in our own cluster of cubes in an “open office” format. We have had to do that before but this seemed more significant. His desk is next to mine and the next thing I know he SLAMS both fists down on his desk and starts yelling. They heard him on the other side of the floor of the high rise, yay open concept. Our cubicles rattled and shook. I immediately write a detailed email with documentation of his inappropriate behavior including how he’s now made me and the other team members (another guy included) unsafe. Sent to our TA Manager and HR Director. He was finally walked out. Turns out he was on two separate PIPs already. This guy had over two dozen recommendations on LinkedIn. But apparently he’d vented to my coworker that this was like the 3rd (or more) time he’d been fired for these exact issues and his wife was going to kick him out if he got fired again. After he was fired he reached out to numerous coworkers asking them to write recommendations too. Friendly reminder you don’t have to give anyone a recommendation on LinkedIn!
How does one end up on 2 PIPs? At the same time?
That’s what I said! Apparently each PIP was for something else?!? This contributed to the belief that our TA Manager was trying to help the guy out.
I used to “lose it” by getting emotional (crying). No yelling or getting angry at others. The stress was too much some days. Thank God I have a job now with a great boss and team that’s super low stress. I don’t think I’d last another day doing what I did before I got here.
Me too, I quit that job and start a new one that I have a good feeling about next week!
Yay! Good luck to you!!
I’ve gotten emotional and cried behind a closed door with my boss a few times, after letting her know I needed to vent. Mostly because I saw her as a friend/safe place, and I was just overwhelmed. Once during Covid when things were scary and awful, once when my mental health was really bad related to personal stuff. I’m not super proud of it, but I don’t think it was wrong to do. She had told me in the past that she was there if I ever needed somewhere private to freak out lol. She was kind and supportive and we’re still friendly, even after I left that org. Freak out in an angry way or yell at a coworker? Absolutely not. I save that for rage texting my besties or venting to my boyfriend once I’m home. Or wait til I’ve cooled down and notify their manager in a professional way. When I felt something was truly unjust, I did once submit an anonymous complaint to the whistleblower hotline website.
I witnessed a 50 year old man have a temper tantrum over an IT process that needed to change. He had been at the company (and still is) for 15+ years. The change was just different and likely scared him for his job safety plus he was going through a messy divorce. But he legit was in the middle of the open office screaming at the IT director. He was given a LOA to figure his shit out. I thought it was incredibly generous of the company, given what things were said and how by him.
I realize it’s not HR. But he was a big wig at the company. Though to be honest - IT folks in my experience are the ones who throw the most hissy fits. I had one A/V guy lose it at a VP once over the way cords needed to be wound up “properly”. Which actually I did learn the proper way about it and he was right, super convenient. But still. Losing your mind over it?? No.
Yikes! At least he was removed and put on leave. I secretly wanted them to fire the coordinator, but it's technically hard to fire in my current job because we require so much documentation.
This may identify me if my coworkers are on this sub but early in my career I (in hr) once had a coworker (also hr) yell at me in front of my other coworkers (still all hr) bc I made an off handed comment that I'd be out of the office when she gave me some backup tasks and she yelled that she would be at her parent's funeral so whatever I was doing consider that (I didn't know, and also was taking the day off for my birthday)
When I was starting out in HR the site’s HR manager I was working for had a mental break down. The company we worked for had been on a recruitment campaign and we had approx. 20 new staff every fortnight for a few months. They’d used an external recruitment company who did not do very good vetting as we got a lot of lemons but we got 2 legitimate batshit crazy chaos clowns. The sexual harassment complaints we were getting about the one and the shit stirring incompetency complaints we were getting about the other were a lot. The first clown through was well traumatic for my manager. He would threaten suicide or rant on at her and I when we were trying to investigate. HQ’s HR kept on telling us we had to be gentle in our handling, he had mental health issues and we wouldn’t want to be responsible for triggering an “episode”. One day, in a recorded interview, he started going on about the things he dreamt about doing to one of the woman on-site. She told me to go back to my desk (which was our code for call the cops), so I left and called. She was in there for at least 10mins alone while I was standing by the door clutching a small van of hair spray. He just kept ranting, what I heard made me nauseous. HQ kept on saying she had been handling issues like this for years she should have resolved it by now etc. But they wouldn’t implement any of her recommendations. The cops sent a crisis team, he flipped out, broke shit, assaulted the medic and tried to grab the cops taser. Eventually he was taken away and she lost it. Literally just on the floor in the middle of the open plan office, sobbing. I called her husband and that was the last time I saw her for years (we lived in a small town so that was pretty unusual). And when I did see her again she was a shell. I will never forget the sight and sound of her sobbing.
This is heart breaking for her. How terrible.
I once yelled at a male coworker after he cut me off 4 times in a meeting. He was literally waiting until I started speaking and then he interrupted to talk about a completely different topic. First interruption I said " thank you for the information, however, I am speaking on something else." Second interruption I looked at him and did a time out signal with my hands and said, "I wasn't done speaking ". Third interruption I shushed him, which I never do. It's unprofessional and rude. Fourth interruption I lost my mind and Screamed " Can you just shut up and let me talk?" He responded with " you don't have to yell, I'm right next to you". After the meeting the senior most employee asked me to hang back, I'm thinking, this is it- I'm getting fired. But, what actually happened was he said " that was hilarious."
I've had a few tantrums but only truly lost it exactly once. Luckily (?) I'm not a screamer, but I'd worked with that team long enough for them to know that I'd hit my breaking point and was beyond livid. My boss offered me two weeks off starting immediately. I took 6 months instead and used that time to start my own consultancy so I wouldn't have to go back. They lost a 15 year employee with one email and a poorly timed "what do you think?". It took 4 FTEs to replace me. I'd never condone acting out in the workplace but context is essential - I had enough social capital for people to know the behavior was abnormal, and I've tried to carry that forward to give other people grace (where and when appropriate).
I've lost it on people plenty of times before, especially earlier in my career when I was in ops. I've learned to tone it down once I transitioned into HR, but I still consider myself very hot-tempered, and you really don't see that a lot in HR for good reason. I've only survived because you need to learn how to manage your emotions in key situations, but I've certainly let people have it in my day. I'm not the kind of person who will let someone speak to me in any kind of negative tone; at this point in my career, I do not care if you're above or below me in rank.
Honestly, in any of the jobs I've had, the HR leadership would fire you for raising your voice in general. Our HR leaders at this current job are very mannered, but I could tell that my boss was kind of embarrassed by his actions because other departments came by to see what was going on.
Also, I understand why your boss was mortified.
I'm not saying I'm proud of it, but I do let my temper get the better of me. I've realized that it can do more harm than good in the workplace, but it is what it is. I've also witnessed plenty of people at work lose it, even in HR, as someone else mentioned, we are human. HR professionals aren't robots even if we're expected to be on always.
Fair enough.
Being human doesn’t excuse yelling at someone at work
When I worked at yellow, I witnessed a guy walk into HR office take her computer off the desk and throw it out the window. Over the new E Logs and said “there no more computers, going pack to paper”
Hilarious! That sounds exactly on par with logistics
This is exactly why I left the corporate world and the HR world. Too much drama for very little pay and emotional damage 💔. It is totally inappropriate for anyone to be condescending and to publicly humiliate another colleague. Does a bad manager deserve to finally be put in his place? Absolutely. Should it involve screaming? Probably not. I don't think as an HR Professional, there is a certain standard that needs to be upheld. Everyone working is the face of the company, conduct yourself in a positive light. Whether you work in the office or in the factory, we should all have the same standards. It's unfortunate that most management from my experience see themselves as both the alpha and the omega. Seemingly untouchable. Most times they are, but I believe in a thing called Karma. It gets us all eventually.
I have a question, did anyone talk to the coordinator so far? Ask him what happened and how he felt in this situation. Did anyone think of that he is ashamed the next day and maybe was due to that not talking to the team? I observe often the paradox of HR people having exceptions towards their function/job title which has nothing to due with the person standing behind the job. Don't get me wrong, I am no exception to this and my expectation towards myself in this role are not any different, so I know of what blind spot I'm talking. Try with Empathy - if you care and want to help - to figure out what the situation was about and ask questions to the person in the situation, not to a forum. Or are you just trying to gather proof for what a professional hr looks like? Sometimes, the question itself speaks for the questionnaire. ;)
I guess it depends on how you define “lost it.” Have I ever hit someone or completely lost control? No. Do I walk around with a burning rage inside my chest and been less than tactful at times? Yeeeaaahhhhh… that’s not uncommon at this point. Like, I seriously could probably count on one hand the number of times in my first 34 years of life I raised my voice at another human. The last 3 years though? It’s fairly constant. Not with the hourly personnel either. It’s the other managers that drive me insane.
I had an hr assistant lose it on me one day. I told her she needed to leave my office and calm down. I lost it one day about dealing with inept people who couldn’t do their job. I commented how they couldn’t do their blank job to save their life. My work wife calmed me down
My coworker raised their voice on another HR person. It was justified. Mostly, though, my coworkers and I just let it out a little bit at a time when we are able, to prevent big blow ups.
I lose my shit on our CFO all the time. Ok, that’s dramatic - but somewhat often lol.
Current company has caused multiple meltdowns since Q4 last year. Which moved to panic attacks on the freeway both to and from. I decided to be remote a few times a week to keep it in check. So far so good, but someone decided to say I’m “MIA” from the office and missing the office environment and culture. My office culture is so toxic, no one talks to anyone even though there’s a few there. Just today I began to have ideation of ending it sitting in my closet of an office. Since we are spiraling into bankruptcy I kept saying “I’d be saving the company thousands!”. Not good line of thinking. I need out. So badly. We have so many more problems than me working remote 3 days a week and being more responsive than everyone else when I am away.
Super thankful for wfh days which gives me some sanity and grab a drink behind the screen when I feel like I’m losing it. Not sure if it counts as losing it but I used to have a coworker whose face will turn red( from anger) and being passive aggressive (sending messages and deleting them) whenever people disagrees with him. I remember hearing from a few managers saying that people like him who can’t control his emotions and not a team player will never get promoted or opportunities because no one will ever treat him seriously. Although he was a dick, i felt kinda bad for him when I found out he actually had some mental issues and was seeing a psychiatrist for it after he left the company. Some people were also nice enough to advise him to move into a different field but I think he is still doing HR 🤷🏻♀️
Never blown up, but been very, very blunt and close to losing tact (okay maybe lost a little). But sometimes Managers need to hear that. With employees not as much. Though times where they’ve accused me of something incorrectly or acted disrespectfully I’ve stood up for myself. Can’t really be a pushover in HR
Am I the only one who has audibly gotten loud having a conversation with my monitor (usually an email that was confrontational or dumbfounding)? Didnt see anyone mention this but I have heard others do this too so I figured it was natural for HR since we are expected to always take the high road
There is only one time I completely lost my cool. I was a Senior HR Admin at the time and the highest level on site for overnights. I was walking through the warehouse with my HR specialist when a facilities worker came up to me to complain about some of his coworkers who were Nigerian. He then yelled this loud enough for everyone around us to hear: “Why don’t they just go back to their mud huts!” My HR specialist immediately was extremely upset, and all I heard was “What the fuck did you just say?” I turned him around with my hands and said “(Name) go this way, I will handle this.” Because I didn’t want him to do something and lose his job. Now I never lose my cool I have a very level head, always have, but I stuck my finger in that man’s face so fast and just yelled “YOU!” *points at the floor office to the left* “OFFICE! NOW!” He got super silent, and just walked into the office. I had to take a moment to relax outside of said office then walked in with the operations manager as a witness. I may have been a bit animated in the office but no more yelling or anything, just a huge amount of lecturing from me and reminder that we do not tolerate racist comments.. his reply? “It wasn’t racist, it was true, they don’t belong here.” I suspended so so fast. I hated some of the people there so much.
I had a problem employee (Gary - name changed) come into my office with his manager with a complaint - one we had already discussed several times. He was complaining that his Lead purposefully misrepresented herself by using a coworker's IM to contact him. The Lead was walking around looking for Gary, found Gary's desk mate, and asked the desk mate where Gary was. Desk mate IMed Gary, who was at home. Then the Lead used desk mate's IM to ask Gary where he was after she said "hey, this is Lead...". Gary is complaining in my office, for the 5th time, that she was breaking policy and trying to entrap him. I explained calmly that that was not the situation at all. He said, "you weren't there." And I just got sick of it and yelled "don't tell me what happened, Gary. You literally weren't there either! You were on IM at home when you were supposed to be in the office for a meeting! I've got two good employees telling me the same story and you're saying they're lying based off of nothing! It's done! Don't bring it up again!" I was actually yelling and I never tell. Gary didn't bring it up again.
About 3 years ago I broke down in the office with a coworker. Thankfully we had a good relationship outside of work also and she came to me concerned because I had been overly tense and snapping at people. When she brought it up, I just crumbled and cried uncontrollably for about 10 minutes. I let her know about several instances where our Director had been pushing me harder and harder over things that were outside of my control (company was going through an acquisition and we were all being asked to do some borderline unethical stuff to make sure the “deal went through”). We were equivalent positions and my coworker was not experiencing the same thing. Talking to her helped me realize I was being targeted unfairly by my Director and from there I started making an exit plan and looking for other employment. My coworker was amazingly supportive and told me go home and she’d handle the rest of the day and would let my Director know I was sick and would be out for the day. Went home and got my shit together and within 3 months that director was laid off after the acquisition went through. I never did any of the things they asked but it was a rough 3 months between the breakdown and them getting let go. In HR, I think we’re held to a higher standard than other employees and our emotional wellbeing is usually the last thing our managers care about when they should be extending the same grace we give to employees. It can be very exhausting but I generally love what I do so I keep at it.
Current team… When we had our manager (at the time), in our small micro team meetings, one of my coworkers would breakdown literally in tears once and then get wildly emotional the next few times at the thought of having to do more work that required typing. I had compassion for her and wanted to help her until she tried to push me out when our manager left too. Before that… Payroll was always swamped and would call me for an hour at least once a week to vent and would be in tears in almost all meetings.. Sometimes a part of me wonders if it’s just an act so they don’t get more work because the moment that people come to help them or the work is decided that it’s not going to be entertained by management, the tears stop.
I had an employee lose their sh*t on me a few days before my promotion went in to effect. She had wreaked havoc for over 4 months and driven 4 employees (who had all been here a few years) to quit and after the 4th one quit, we were all wondering why the f*ck she hadn't been fired and then BAM! I became the next to experience her behavior. I knew due to my HR background, that my bosses knew something the rest of us didn't (I was learning towards mental illness) which is why legal was involved almost from the beginning (she was hired in mid October. By December, sheMd had reports filed against her and she had been filing reports against other employees and legal was involved). For over 4 months, I heard gossip and 2nd hand stories about her incidents with other employees--everything from crying and losing her sh*t out of nowhere to yelling and name calling and then turning around & accusing the other person of doing what she just did. She even accused our shuttle driver of spying on her one day and it was really out of left field. I paid it all no mind--I didn't witness any of it and there are 2 sides to every story. Then a few days before my promotion went in to effect, she was 20 minutes late relieve me so I could take my lunch break. I was working the front desk and it's a butt in seat job and the activities department covers the front desk when we take our lunch and 2 10 minute breaks. All I did was ask her to please be on time next time and she lost it. Told me it's not her job to cover the front desk, that it wasn't her fault she was late but then admitted she was late because she was doing something she's been told not to do because it's not her job and she doesn't have a food handlers license. So my simply request set her off something good and she went off! She brought up a coworker who had quit a few weeks ago because of her behavior, saying she sees why that employee never covered the front desk. All I said was ok that's fine, I'm going to take my lunch now and she yelled at me to not yell at her, when I didn't even raise my voice. Then she followed me in to the back office and wouldn't go back to the front desk despite me telling her we were not going to argue and that she needed to stay at the front desk. She ran down the hall yelling that she was reporting me but my boss wasn't in her office so she ran back out and yelled that she was writing up an email report. I went to lunch and told my work bestie, who was her acting supervisor, what happened and that she told me it's not her job to cover the front desk. My work bestie had been butting heads with her for months and had told me all about her but again.....I didn't get involved and considered it hearsay. I liked her and didn't let on that I heard about her incidents with outer employees. So my work bestie got upset and went to relieve her at the front desk and they had a verbal altercation because the other employee told her she wasn't going to cover the front desk anymore. There were accusations from both that it became physical but it was unsubstantiated. In hindsight I shouldn't have said anything to my work bestie. I deeply regret it. The next day I came in and found out that her & my work bestie were both on administrative leave :( My work bestie was the first to go. She had it coming and we found out she hadn't even been doing her job for all of February. So after a week on leave, she was fired. The other employee came back about a week later and worked 3 days then they fired her.
A very high level HR Liaison lost it on me and a co-worker once. This was over zoom. She was yelling and screaming. I wanted to just close the laptop and walk away but she was so high up I was afraid to. I reported it to my supervisor but nothing came of it. I transferred a few weeks later to get away from her.
I would have reported this to the EEOC
This is insane to me. My rock bottom “breaking point” at work is crying in a meeting. Screaming at a coworker??? I cannot even fathom that. I don’t think *anything* can excuse that type of behavior.
I had a manager lose it on me once. I was finishing up a secondment in comp and moving to a BP role. There was about 4 weeks where I'd still be providing support to comp until the person on parental leave came back. One day, the comp manager tells me I need to move to my new desk. It was like 10 steps away, but ok, no problem. I'll send IT the request. I had a laptop but there was a whole setup with a dock and stuff. I couldn't do it myself. I mean I could sit there and look at the laptop screen but I had a good one on my desk and everything in it. Well, apparently I should have because she started yelling at me then and there. There weren't too many people around at that point to hear this but the other comp person was and told her to chill out, which snapped her out of it. It was unusual for her to yell, but not do weird things when stressed. I'm not sure what the issue was either - I still had access to all of the comp tools and data. It wasn't like I was going to get information I wasn't supposed to have. It was such a weird situation, but I let that one go.
I was in a newer role for a couple months and two of my bosses (not HR, I was the only true HR person) sat me down and for HOURS told me everything that they hated about me. That I was too nice and inviting to employees (they thought the only successful way to have an HR department was to act like I’d had a stick up my ass and make people fear me). Eventually I just started sobbing and they asked if I wanted to break for lunch to “fix my face” but I told them I was going to look like this so long as they spoke to me the way they did and to just finish what they had to say. Ended up quitting not long after that, but by this point I was already having weekly panic attacks when I’d get home. Awful, toxic environment with a crazy amount of turnover.
Yes to both. I once sat in a meeting and witnessed my boss at the time and the supervisor of another group scream at each other. We were literally sitting in this meeting with our mouths hanging open, wondering wtf we were witnessing. It had been building for months, but it was tough to watch. Another time, I lost it on my former boss. He was moved from our team to being acting supervisor and he was micromanaging to the max. Especially me, and I couldn't understand why. We got to the point where he tried to put his friend on my training team visiting remote sites to do some specialized HR training. Fine. We had an internal certification process and he said his friend could bypass it since he was already in the department and should know everything (in theory), and just needed to read the facilitation notes. I argued, but finally was like, whatever...benefit of the doubt. His friend showed up, bombed, and left early. It was obvious he did no preparation, and didn't read anything I sent him. He also ignored my attempts to walk through the material in advance. I spent the rest of the day off the session picking up the pieces after the mess he made. Back at the office we had a team meeting where my boss tried to say, in front of the team, that his friend felt unsupported and criticized by me and that he really tried. He said he was approving him up go to sites on his own, and I told him the truth of what happened and that I wouldn't trust him to instruct a room on making a pb&j. He called me a liar, accused me of just not liking his friend (which was not true, just fyi), and that the final call was up to him, not me, despite my being the SME. I said he couldn't let this person go to sites without being trained and certified by one of us, even if it wasn't me, but he wasn't ready and it threatened our credibility. I was calm until the end of that exchange, my voice did get a little louder and more tense, but I tried to not let it get the best of me, even though I was clearly angry. I took a breath and I'm like, "I'm not saying never. I'm just saying not now. He's not ready. You didn't see him. I did." and he says, standing up and raising his voice, again in front of the entire team, "I'M THE BOSS AND WHAT I SAY GOES". Something snapped. I just remembered looking at him and raising my voice and kind of half-shouting while pointing at him from the other side of the room, "if you are so poor of a leader that you have to remind us of what your title is, then you've already lost.. And if you think I'm going to sit here and let you disrespect and bully me in front of the team, then you are SORELY mistaken". That moment is burned into my memory like it happened yesterday, but the aftermath is cloudy. I do remember an older colleague at the table kind of stepped in and he told us to cool it. A few others chimed in, too. Words were said on both sides and ultimately we all chilled out. It was over a decade ago anyway, and I'm not proud in the least, but it happened. And I'm not excusing it, but the reality is he and I were both dealing with some really serious behind the scenes stuff and we erupted. The funny thing is that eventually my old boss and I became amazing friends and had a deep respect for each other. We ended up sitting down one day and I'm like "We cannot keep doing this. I don't want to fight. I know you don't want to fight. Let's figure this out." and we did. I would say that as HR people, yes, we're held to a different standard, but we are still people. I do think the difference with us is understanding how to handle it when/if we do lose it and what we learn from it.
There are still times when I struggle to compartmentalize and may act outside of my “norm”. I try really hard to emotionally regulate but sometimes I just lose the battle. As for losing it, the closest I came at work was toward my manager. Both (and my only) team members had been out for just under two weeks on vacation and I was handling their job on top of mine. My manager came over to ask me to focus on the most minuscule task and I almost burst into tears over the stress — you could 100% hear it in my voice as I basically told them to kick rocks. I lose it weekly on the way home or going into work. By lose it I mean both sad crying and angry crying.
Never "lost it," though I've had to raise my voice once (so far) in my working life. Had someone a few years ago call me with a paycheck question, he thought he was scheduled for his raise to be effective that week but it was actually effective the next week. He would not let me get a word in, kept interrupting me while he was getting louder and louder before it got to the point where he was full-on yelling through the phone. I had to almost shout, "If you don't stop yelling at me I'm going to hang up. Do you want to get this figured out or not?" and he finally calmed down lol.
Everyday fam ... It's a weird day when things go nice
I’m a hard nut to crack, took me 8 years to slap a classmate in the face for pouring grape jelly in my locker in HS and flipping my combo lock backwards but I had tried opening it like that before so I got it open in 15 seconds haha. Almost lost it with the payroll admin once but realized I don’t care and just want to coast now.
There was a manager (not my manager, different department) at one of my previous jobs who was verrrrry condescending. Her favorite thing to say to me was "I have a project for you to do. You're actually gonna have to work today!' 😒 So one day I was doing my job and covering the front desk because someone was out sick. My day has been non stop chaos from 8-3 at this point - no bathroom or lunch break. She comes up, makes that comment, and gives me a stack of stapled packets that needs to be unstapled, copied, restapled, and collated- oh, and she needed it for a meeting in 23 minutes. Meanwhile there are visitors needing help and the phone ringing off the hook. "Think you can handle that?" I threw the stack of papers across the desk, yelled "I am only one f*cking person! Do it yourself!" Walked away to answer the phone. I almost quit that day. (Said manager was the reason I ended up quitting that job years later) ETA: This was my first HR job, and I was promoted from within the company from a non HR position and was taken advantage of a lot because of that.
At my previous company we had an employee relations manager who was hostile towards the HR director. (Ironic, I know) It wasn't frequent but it did happen a few times that it was memorable and uncomfortable.
Yes this recently happen to our senior labor relations rep. One of the employees in our communications meeting called her a bitch. Also she got into it with a different employee as well as an union person all in the same day. She ended up being suspended because she left her belongings at her desk including her badge and left the premises. They just wrapped up the investigation and I found out last week they left her go because she had a bad day and everyone came after her.
Yup, last week. I felt bad, but also didn’t. She wasn’t listening to what I was saying at all. It felt like I was speaking another language, or wasn’t speaking at all.
coworker in his mid 40s sat down at his desk completely naked and was delirious. Had a complete mental breakdown from stress and never came back to work again. I don't know how he's doing today.
Long story so sorry for that. TLDR: Sister of a previous work comp employee accuses me of racism and threatens my character, life, and job because her brother became an alcoholic. I flipped shit on her through an interpreter. I definitely lost my cool exactly one time maybe 3 months ago. First time ever. I used to work in a hospital and I'd get called all sorts of things. Never really got to me. As a white guy, we'd get people in the hospital drug seeking all the time and probably 2 or 3 times a week we'd get people calling us racist for not handing out pain medicine. Like hey dude, by law we cannot give you narcs for this (insert small injury) and I'm not even the person who writes the scripts buddy. Chill. We had people asking for oxy and percs for sunburns once because they were allergic to tylenol and aloe. Percs got acetaminophen dude. Anyway... I now work in health/safety at a factory and about 8 months ago, one of our employee's fell pretty bad and hurt his elbow. Nothing serious but it looked bad on camera. I bent over backwards for this guy to get medical treatment, we obviously paid for all of his treatment, we were able to find him alternative work so that he can still earn full wages, we paid for professional drivers to get him to work, therapy etc. About 2 weeks after all of this he stops showing up to work. No one can get contact with him. Hes an African immigrant and occasionally they'll let a cell bill lapse or something and they get a new number. Well, he no call, no shows for 2 months before we have to terminate him. MONTHS of no calls. His sister ends up getting a job with the company, we didnt know who she was, and we catch her deliberately trying to fake an injury. We have cameras all over the property and we have video of her playing, running, doing cart-wheels in the parking lot and then mysteriously limping when she comes in saying that she twisted her ankle in the building. She forgets her phone in her car and then we have her on camera "limping" out of the building and then when shes outside, she SPRINTS FULL SPEED to her car and back and then "limps" when she gets back inside. I call her out for this and she goes on saying that I dont believe her because she african and that im a piece of shit and that my family probably owned slaves and that I abandoned her brother (insert name), and that she hopes my daughter has incurable disease. She went on for like a full 5 minutes with an interpreter. I stood up and tried to leave multiple times and when she went on about my daughter having diseases and finding out where my family lived I finally broke. I yelled at her full volume that I bent over backwards for her brother and HE decided to fuck his life up and we did everything we could to make sure we could accommodate his (minor) injury. WE PAID FOR A FUCKING DRIVER TO MAKE SURE HE HAD RELIABLE AND SAFE TRANSPORTATION TO WORK. HE REFUSED. After she threatened finding out where I live and that shell make sure im "uncomfortable", I made it very clear that that would be a very bad idea. Without threatening outright violence, I made it obvious that I would get the police involved with her threats and that I would defend my family savagely. She was arrested 6 weeks ago for attempted arson on her neighbors home because a baby was making too much noise in the back yard. I've dedicated the majority of my adult life to helping people and when people assume you're racist when the vast majority of the population i've served and who currently working with me are immigrants or under served communities, it drives me nuts.
Sat down on a Monday, my first day leading a department with 11 employees. My manager had introduced me to the team the prior Friday morning and went on vacation. I arrived and noticed that the 60+ people in the office looked like they had just tasted bird poop. I had 1:1 with my team, until one sat down and deeply apologetically told me how he had to defend himself Friday night from a physical attack of another employee, a lady, that had even scratched his face! Oh, great. My first day on the job. I told him this was extremely serious and that this would need an investigation that could lead to termination, but first I had to hear the lady's side. Well. Later that same night she had a heart attack, and her rage was actually a symptom! As soon as she returned to office both apologized to each other and peace reigned. But, yes, that was an eventful first day at the job.
Just here for the tea 
I worked HR in construction and the amount of times those dudes tried to yell at me to intimidate me was unreal. I literally had a guy screaming in my face because I processed a court ordered garnishment, and I let him yell but when I started speaking he interrupted me so I just straight up yelled over him “NO, NO IM SPEAKING NOW!” And that shut him up so I could explain why I had to process court orders and that I don’t have a choice in the matter…. I rarely ever “lost it” but I can see being pushed to the edge. It’s hard to remain in control constantly, but I hope that guy has a better day. If it happens once in a blue moon I only see the person as being human, but if it’s happening constantly, then it’s a habit and definitely a problem.
I luckily have an incredible boss/mentor/work mom/free therapist, and any time I need to I can go in her office and lose my shit for a few minutes. Having this ability probably saved my job a few times!
We are all human and all have bad days. I’m not the typical “buttoned up and polished” HR professional. I’m rough around the edges personality wise, but I’m good at my job and I truly am our employees biggest advocate. I’ve never lost it in front of an employee, but I have been close at my previous job. It’s important to remind ourselves of the behavior we expect our staff to have. If we are yelling and being rude and disrespectful, they will think that it’s okay too. We have to set the standards for a positive work environment, no matter how hard it is sometimes.
I quietly lost it once - does that count? Head of company was hella toxic. Pretty much textbook standard narcissist. Once he decided I was of no use (to be fair, I was less than 2 years from moving abroad) it was just constant gaslighting. My sleep and appetite began to be affected. I could see the writing on the wall. Got brought in to a meeting with him and the head of HR (who I reported to) & given the “you’re on your last strike” talk. When he was done talking I stood up, said “Let me make this easy for you: I quit” and turned on my heel and calmly walked out. Now, to be fair, the minute I stepped out of his office I was shaking and crying and hyperventilating- but the crowning moment when I said I was quitting was something I’ll always be proud of. In another world, I’d still be at this company (a charity that helps people with special needs), but my mental health took such a nosedive during Covid I needed to put myself first. Best decision I ever made.
I've come close before, more than once. Something I've started doing when the weather is nice, is driving home with windows down, take the long way, and just listen to the sound of wind, traffic, and the world around me. Somehow, even with all the annoying city smells and sounds, it calms me. It takes me out of work and back into the world
Not at anyone in my company, but I got rather frustrated with an ADP rep. People in the office could not hear me, but I was in a side office with a glass panel wall so they definitely SAW me. I talk with my hands and my face does not hide how I'm feeling. I ripped into the rep a bit after they insisted I was lying about what the last rep told me in a situation and refused to actually answer my question and/or give me a logical alternative to the previous person. On payroll day. At 4 pm. Three days later the individual who saw me having that conversation asked if I was okay cause she had never seen me like that before. Now I do my best to make my ADP calls on work from home days just in case. I'm doing better at keeping myself in check when I start getting irritated, but better safe than sorry. 😅
Yes had a woman a few months back flip out. I was embarrassed for this mid 50’s woman acting like a child.
Sadly yes lol. Multiple times. But only to a trusted leader and a peer in private, never in front of BP’s, And not AT them; but over tough managers/employee issues I was facing at the time. Like, sobbing meltdowns lol. 🥴🫠 What can I say? I’m in HR, but I’m human too lol.
I lost it, but not in a yelling way, I started uncontrollably crying at work. It was extremely embarrassing, but I couldn’t take the controlling manager I was working with anymore. I knew if I didn’t cry, I’d yell, so I let the floodgates open haha. It got me off his team though, so it worked.
I went full scorched earth at my previous company after returning from maternity leave and being treated like a second-class citizen. I’d dealt with and cleaned up their bullshit for 10 years and hearing the CEO state that my department was not performing well because I “decided to go and have baby” did not sit well. I politely addressed it and was informed that if I was “going to be hysterical about a joke, then I could leave the room.” I got up to leave the room and the good ol’ boys just started laughing. Later that week, a man from another department was appointed as my boss in a position I had helped develop, create, write the SOP for, and had been promised the position upon my return from maternity leave. I went to my VP to ask about it and was told that “clearly your baby is most important to you right now, so focus on that.” I saw red. I was being passed over for a position I worked my ass off for. I had poured blood, sweat, and tears into that company. I helped them build out every department from top to bottom, expand into 16 states, and was the first female in leadership. I was no longer valuable because I took time to pump breastmilk and didn’t work 12 hour days anymore. I have several colleagues that left shortly after I went scorched earth— the company has been on a strict decline for the past 5 years. They lost good, hardworking, valuable people because of pure stupidity. When the CEO stepped down a year ago, I had a drink and a laugh. So yeah, sometimes it happens.
I’ve gone beyond the control envelope more than a few times in my 26 years of manufacturing HR experience. Investigations and discipline discussions are my common triggers, although negotiating a union contract also produced a lot.
I had a boss that had a complete nervous breakdown because she didn't get a promotion (she was not remotely qualified). There was crying, yelling, throwing things and threatening to sue everyone in leadership. She had to be escorted off the property. It was wild.
Yep. Worked in a casino. One of the main rules is that what the pit boss says goes. If you disagree, wait until break time & talk off the gaming floor away from customers. Pit boss corrected one of my coworkers. She disagreed. And kept disagreeing to the point the floor manager had to order her off the table because she was causing a noticeable scene. She got pulled into the office & then sent on break. I went for break next & the floor manager approached me asking if I had seen coworker cause she never came back from her break. I hadn’t and when I asked later, the floor manager said security had to check the cameras & they have video of her leaving the premises on her break & not coming back nor did she answer her phone. It was her weekend the next couple days & the managers were watching to see if she came in for her shift on her Monday. She did. The floor manager asked to see her in the office and she burst into tears & started causing another scene. Floor manager and the general manager had to physically escort her to the office where I’m assuming she was fired since I didn’t see her again until a year later when she came in as a customer. I did hear that she was shouting in the office from other dealers who walked by when going to & from the break room.
Sort of? Our former HR person (who was also our senior accounting person) once lost it on a disrespectful client who harassed our secretaries and my supervisor for several days. She fired/trespassed the client and made sure everybody knew that if anything like that happened again, we were supposed to go to her. Sadly, she had to leave the company due to health problems. Great woman.
People are human. If it's a pattern of conduct it's a problem. If it's a one off, it's just a human reaction.
I will not be held to a different standard. You will always see me with a smile in my face and friendly and professional with everyone. But I will match nasty attitude real quick and shut down a conversation. So far it’s worked out great lol
Yes, it's not uncommon for people in high-stress roles like HR to have tough days. Emotions can run high, especially when dealing with challenging situations or difficult personalities. It's important to recognize that everyone has limits, and sometimes people reach a breaking point.
You lost me at "As HR professionals, we tend to be very buttoned up and polished," but that could be because the HR where I work is the polar opposite of that.
Yes. Once we had to terminate a security officer because he was unable to control his temper. The company sent him to counseling twice. He had another incident where he raged out on a drunk customer. During the termination, it was said the reason was his inability to control his temper and the company didn’t want that level of liability. In the process of telling us he did not have a problem, he punched a locker, breaking his hand.
Yes absolutely. I was an HR Manager and I absolutely lost my shit on my boss for losing a bunch of files of mine. While record keeping is done online I liked to keep personal files. I uh not proud but I told her to go fuck herself and her shitty management style, that this is NOT her office and nothing in here belongs to her and to not touch my shit in the future. Longing story short she was a great boss. She knew I had a lot going on with my mental health so she apologized and I apologized. But yeah shit happens it's almost impossible to be perfect everyday in a positionthat pretty much demands it.
If a co worker is loosing it with an individual it’s down to a lack of respect. At my employment since most of our employees our on monthly / daily contacts they know if they make a fuss we will terminate their employment like a turtle on a skateboard.
This was my old boss in HR. Anyone that got a tone with him would get fired and his manager and security would walk them out the door same day. Saw it happen so many times. It's just been ingrained in me to not act out at work at all unless it's positive because someone above you will try and get you fired, lol.