Big Boys Don't Cry....Do They?

I had a little whinge the other day about having to console some friends who have recently broken up (for what seems like the 500th time).

What I didn’t mention is that one of them is a friend as well as a co-worker. He sits at the desk next to me and at the moment, I’m kind of his temporary supervisor. By supervisor, I mean that my job is basically to give him a hard time about doing his work properly. This involves pushing him pretty hard for most of the day and drumming into him how important it is that he does things properly.

This has been made really awkward now, because during work hours I’m supposed to be the serious supervisor, but it’s really hard when at completely random moments, he will begin dabbing at the corners of his eyes with a tissue and getting all emotional.


I’ve never really had any problems separating my work from my personal life. I’ve always been good at it - I have to be, because I work with KJ, so if I couldn’t we would probably be divorced already. It gets a bit hard in this situation though, because you can’t just ignore someone being upset. But it’s difficult to be the concerned and caring friend trying to let him know that you’re there for him, then in the next breath demand to know why he forgot to do some critical part of his job. I might be great at separating work from personal stuff, but I'm hopeless when it comes to combining the two in any way.


Also, for some reason I just find it so much more gut-wrenching when it’s a guy doing the crying. It’s stupid to pretend like guys never cry, but I guess that as a female I’m aware how often women cry, but have no idea when it comes to men. After speaking to his ex last night, I was completely unsurprised that she cried for our entire half hour phone call - in fact I expected her to. And yet a few tears from him has me at a loss for what to say or do.


So, awkward times at the moment.