There's No Crying in Baseball

Still doing a mental post-mortem on my end of the year employee review fun.

There's something about me that makes people cry.

While some of my d/s friends think that can be great fun in a sex scene (not my bag, but everybody should live and be well with what floats their boats), I don't know anybody who thinks making people cry is a rollicking good time in the real world. Seriously.

Three people cried, I mean cried, big tears, had to get tissues, had to pause for long moments to help them compose themselves, on me during the reviews. A couple other people welled up, cheek muscles moving but didn't actually cry to the point of red noses and swelled eyes.

Why they all cried, I can't say. I'm still figuring this out. I only had one review that had hard things the listener wasn't prepared to hear. The other reviews were positive, with reasonable notes on areas for improvement. When the people cried, they told me things, things about how hard this year was for them personally...their families, their parents, their children. Struggles they had had in the job. Dissatisfaction with personal limitations that kept them from spending more time on work, or the exact opposite. How they needed more money, lots more money, because of this, that, the other thing.

Honestly, three of them sobbed. (And, mind you, I gave out pretty good raises. The raises weren't mind blowing, but they were well above cost-of-living increases.)

Hang with me here a sec.

One chick, she does solid work and makes decent money. Sole provider for her family for a bunch of reasons. She says, I looked up my job on Salary.com and I should be making $25,000 more a year than I am. So, I told my husband I'd tell you and then you'd advocate for me.

Seriously? What do I *seriously* say to that? What I need to say is there's a *big* difference between Salary.com and Monster.com and you should try Monster.com and see how that works for you. Real world, real career, toughen up and take responsibility for your destiny.

What did I say? "Here, have a tissue."

I talked to a healthy handful of my management type friends over the last couple days. Couple of them are serious management professionals, Sr. VPs in large, publicly traded companies, and they all agree I fucked up. More than once the Tom Hanks quote (which I'd thought to myself during the process), came up. "There's no crying in baseball."

I'm not doing these women (yeah, they were all women) any favors if I let them think it's *okay* to sob during an end of the year review. They could have gotten this idea when they said, "I'm sorry I'm crying." And I said, "Oh, it's okay."

[bangs head against wall repeatedly]

Oh, and I gave hugs at the end of a couple of them. Do you think that was a problem, too?

[bangs head against same wall repeatedly, leaves large dent]

I do not like making people cry. I like making people smile.

My dream job is where I make lots of money by spreading sweetness, light and fairy dust across the land. When you see that position come up on Monster.com, let me know, mkay? In the meantime, I'm going to have to figure out how to say the hard things more effectively.

My natural response, comforting someone in the moment, feels like the right thing to do, but long term, people are more helped by brutal honesty than hugs.

Also, I had a set of boundaries around here, not sure where I left them.....


Mr. Tom Hanks, "League of Their Own", *the* scene