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40% of Us Have Cried at Work. Let’s Talk About It
If you’ve ever sobbed in front of your boss, you’re not alone—and it might not be a sign of weakness.
Girlboss Daily
February 25, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes
Victoria here, Girlboss’ executive editor! 👋
POV: You log onto your weekly 1x1 with your boss, fully convinced you can keep it together. But as soon as they ask you how you are, you feel the lump in your throat start to form. Oh f*ck. “Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry,” you tell yourself. And then the tears start falling. Before you know it, you’re full-on sobbing over Zoom. Sound familiar? Well, crying at work might not be the weakness we’ve been conditioned to believe it is. 😮💨
Other stuff the Girlboss team is yapping about on Slack:
So, this is what our boss’ boss spends all day doing. 🤪
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In Defense of Crying at Work 😭
As women, we were always taught to never cry at work. “It’s so unprofessional. Keep your personal and professional lives separate. Don’t be a burden.”
Well, according to new data from Resume Now, almost 40% of people have admitted to crying at work, including 14% who have cried multiple times and 25% who have cried once or twice.
But we can’t talk about this very important topic without addressing the elephant in the room: showing emotions at work is a very different experience for women than it is for men.
“Men are not perceived as negatively as women if they cry at work,” Kimberly D. Elsbach, a professor in the graduate school of management at the University of California, Davis, told The New York Times. “Observers of men who cry at work often remarked: ‘Something really bad must have happened to make him cry.’ Thus, the attribution was that external factors cause men to cry, while internal weaknesses cause women to cry.”
Offices have historically been built around the male experience, where crying or showing any form of “weak” emotion is deemed unacceptable. Sorry, what year are we in, 1952?
But psychologists say there can actually be benefits to letting emotions show. In some cases, visible emotion prompts empathy from leadership, opens up dialogue, and even highlights deeper issues like burnout, unfair treatment, or toxic work dynamics.
So, the next time you feel yourself welling up, don’t run to the nearest bathroom stall or end the Zoom call. Embrace it—because it shows that you’re human.
POLL: Have you ever cried at work? |
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