On Crying at Work

Basically, crying at work is a bad idea.

So it's a good thing I haven't yet. I almost did tonight, but I'm sure it was a fluke. I cry VERY easily (I get that tingling-nose, going-to-cry feeling any time the situation makes me look less than perfect, which is a lot of the time), but at work the last three weeks I've been the most cheerful, positive person on the floor. Boundless optimism is at my beck and call! I am not the sad sack of tears that I am at home where no one can see me, because crying is just not good for business! And I was doing very well at being cheerful and rolling with the punches, and I was proud of myself!

Then Black Friday hit, my teenage coworker started dumping her relationship drama on me and wanting advice (Ha!), and the area manager threw a fit today because we hadn't done all the things we should have been doing two weeks ago but which she didn't think to tell us about until Friday, which meant all of us spent the day running frantically around the department to please her (and it didn't work anyway, but if we sat still she would've bitten our heads off). I've worked nonstop since the 22nd, unless you count Thanksgiving as a "day off", which I don't because it was nonstop work here trying to make the house presentable so Rick's grandma could visit without me dying of embarrassment at not being able to keep the house livable. My first actual nothing-to-do day off in a week is tomorrow, and then I got asked to stay an extra hour and help clean up another department. Which is why I almost broke down and sobbed tonight in front of a really nice manager who just happened to get flustered at me.

Thankfully I got a minute alone and pasted my smile back on. I had to laugh the other day when one of the regular salesladies told me that I was always happy. I put on a happy face at work because I like to be liked (although the job's not that bad, so smiling does come easy). It works, but now I'm stuck with the reputation of always being happy... uh-oh. I get the feeling sooner or later I'm going to have a bad day, and they're going to think the world is ending.