Originally published online in 2018 from my book (2014)
This is Chapter 3, Men at Work, from my well-reviewed book“Dads of Disability: Stories for, by, and about fathers of children who experience disability.”You can download other sample chapters and learn about the book and where to buy it on its website.
Men at Work
More money. More responsibility. Less travel. This new job was going to be fantastic.
I had a great first few days with my new manager. My research showed this company was going to have a bright future. And I was hired in a role where I would have some access to the executive team and make a real impact. During my first two weeks, I was invited for a 2-on-1 meeting with both the CEO and the VP of sales! Yes, this was going to be a great career change.
Both of the executives I was meeting with were male and more or less 20 years older than I was. I walked in as they were chatting (bragging, really) about the many accomplishments of their children. What schools, what clubs, what grades, what new jobs. It was the usual form that family small-talk banter takes in the workplace on steroids. This conversation seemed to be a bit fueled by alpha-male bravado.
I was there for at least five minutes listening intently to them regaling stories of their children. I suspected I would soon learn that one of them was well on the way to curing cancer or creating a perpetual motion machine. All of a sudden, the CEO turned to me and said, “I hear you have a baby. Tell us about him!”
Bringing me into the conversation. My chance to be “one of the boys.” Sure, no problem.
But then I tried to speak … Nothing.
It’s not like I have a problem talking off-the-cuff. But nothing was happening. Nothing external anyway. Inside my head, it was a completely different story.
My son, who had exhibited numerous challenges since birth, received his genetic diagnosis a few short weeks before I started this new job and sat in on this meeting. So, this very conversation was probably the first time I was hearing a father, older than me and having already achieved a level career success I thought I wanted to emulate, actually talking about his children. And it sort of sent me into a mini state of shock.
During what was really probably only five seconds, every single negative scenario my brain could muster up flashed in my minds eye: disease, intellectual challenges, physical problems, serious behavioral issues, operations, institutional care, special schools. You name it, and it flashed before me. Rational or not. Probable or not.
And then I slowly started to cry.
That was not what these two executives were expecting to see. And it was not what I was expecting to happen.
Well, these two executive dads were certainly nice to me. As I recall, they said the standard supportive things and let me know that whatever I needed, I should just ask. And I honestly don’t doubt that they meant what they said.
But they didn’t pay much attention to me again during my tenure at that firm. Perhaps it was the quality of my work. Perhaps it wasn’t anything I did or said at all. Perhaps it was the unexpected emotion shown on our first meeting. But even though there were other issues, I felt that my tenure at that company was doomed because I acted human and not particularly “manly” during a time I was supposed to punch my ticket to enter the executive club.
I always wonder how that meeting would have gone if I had cried in front of two female executives? Would it have been the same experience? Better or worse? Would the female execs have thought I was condescending to them and treat them as “mother” rather than boss? (For that matter did the male executives feel I was treating them as “father” rather than boss?) Or would it have made me seem more human to the female execs and thus would have made my tenure with them easier? I’ll never know for sure. But what I do know is that those two men I was scheduled to bond with in a business sense never spoke to me on a personal level again. And our professional interactions ended up being very rare.
Now, don’t get the idea that I am a blubbering fool whenever something challenging comes up. I only experienced that level of semi-public emotion again one more time during the next dozen or so years. (See the essay Smartphone Tears in this volume.) People cry for different reasons and in different contexts, and it is all okay. But I did learn a lot from that experience in that conference room. My main takeaways are easy to summarize but profound in impact.
First of all, I learned that I must always try to be compassionate with everyone at work. Who knows why a person is having a bad day? Was it a bad night of sleep, or did she just have a horrible fight with her husband? Was it a just a cold coming on, or is his father moving into a memory care facility? Did this person at work just get a difficult diagnosis about their child and believe that nobody else in the world, much less at work, had ever felt such pain? I learned to try to show interest in others’ stories. And if those stories are really hard, to make the time to listen to the pain, their issues, and be human. Even if it is at work.
The next thing that I learned is that even strong people can be weak sometimes. And that can make them even stronger. In the years since that office cry, I’ve really watched how the public and private people I intensely admire are really just plain-old people. That’s why I like biographies so much, I guess. Seeing people whose “public-relations face” is all power and strength and finding out that the man or woman behind the curtain is, for the most part, just like the rest of us.*
Finally, most directly, after sharing the story of the office cry with others, I found out that this incident is not unique. I am not the only person that this has happened to! One person in particular, a few years my senior, in his version of the “office cry” meeting told me of a completely parallel situation where he revealed to the executives that his son had just died weeks before.
Many years after the “office cry” I was working for another company and attending an out-of-state trip to their annual sales conference. I got a mobile call from one of my son’s helpers. I was told that after more than a year of working with a therapy horse, my son finally got up and rode on it! On a saddle! I was overjoyed. I had to share this news immediately with someone who would “get it.”
A male executive in this company, not much older than I was, had a child with a severe disability. I asked him to come aside with me to an empty buffet room in the conference center next to our main meeting and I leaned my head in and started to put my arm around him. He was a bit taken aback, but indeed he was quite a different executive from the ones I mentioned from earlier in my career. I started to smile and laugh. And yes, cry some tears of joy. I told him why I felt as I did, what my son had just done, that I was so happy, and that I thought he would understand. He smiled, patted me on the back, and said he was happy for us and glad I could trust him to share and understand the importance of this personal news. I was kind of embarrassed and told him I wasn’t looking for a father figure, just someone who would really “get” the good news I just received.
I grabbed a napkin off of a table, cleaned up, and then after a firm handshake, we walked back to the main area of the sales conference. Most importantly, I worked successfully at that company and with that executive for a number of years after this event with no impact on my career from our interaction.
– Gary Dietz
* A reflection from 2017 – Let this be a lesson for those of us who worry about the “perfect” lives of others on social media!
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