Final Word: It’s my party and…

By Paul Moore

There are many disadvantages to ageing, just as there are many advantages – not the least of which is the fantastic ability to not give a fiddler’s flute about the opinion of others.

Being in public life makes this blessing more difficult to sustain, however, as Rachel Reeves discovered last week.

The UK Chancellor was caught on camera having a moment of, as she termed it, ‘personal distress’ which led to her shedding tears in the Commons.

This also precipitated a fall in market shares in the UK and a tirade of criticism for the unfortunate woman, most of it, as one might expect, coming from right-wing males of a certain age. She did confirm the following day that she was feeling better and that, as is the case, ‘we all have bad days’.

However the incident has once more posed the question as to whether it is ever acceptable to cry at work, leaving aside emotional moments as, for example, the demise of a colleague.

As someone who has been fortunate enough at work to only ever cry tears of laughter at some of the muppets I have had to deal with on a daily basis, I am not in a position to answer this with any great authority.

I will also admit to having occasionally gone to my office, locking the door and having a quiet weep, but this was generally relief from something positive having happened, such as promotion, or news of a funding grant success, or perhaps even a spectacular event which I was privileged to be part of. I have no idea if that counts as crying at work.

A survey carried out by YouGov does offer some interesting statistics about the phenomenon.

The study revealed that 34 per-cent of men claimed not to have cried at all in the previous year, compared with only seven per-cent of women; 18 per-cent of women said they cried at least once a week, compared with only four per-cent of men.

Sadly, while these figures fluctuate according to cultural settings, the research does suggest that women tend to cry more than men, but then perhaps they are given greater reason to.

Referring to the disadvantages of ageing mentioned earlier, I think one of them is the capacity to cry at the strangest and most inappropriate of moments.

I am genuinely not someone who cries easily and certainly tend not to cry when I should, for example at funerals, or indeed weddings, of friends I hold close. But I now find myself close to tears at the most ludicrous things. One example is watching someone receiving an award on television.

I have managed to rationalise this by telling myself it is because I have never had a award in my life and I am actually weeping for my own misfortune which is underlined by the fact that most of my colleagues have had awards which they did not desire and which, obviously, I should have had.

Then there are the animal videos. I have had to stop looking at Instagram because it is crammed full of animals, dogs in particular, doing the most sentimental and crass things which, instead of infuriating me, make me want to cry since none of the dozens of animals I have tolerated in my domestic space have ever shown me the slightest modicum of affection. None of this unfortunately answers the question as to whether it is acceptable to cry at work. When someone does so and I am in the vicinity I have, however, developed a coping tactic which has meant I remain immune from any fall out: Basically, I run away.

So if you need an answer to that question and are considering a work weep, I will be the one whose back you will see exiting stage left.