A lot of career advice revolve around how to keep your personal life separate from your professional life. When professional environment comes into play, you are expected to act with a certain dignity that allows for productivity. If everyone brings in their emotions as they do in their personal life, then there is going to be a lot of drama!
However, once in a while you will come across situations at work when you may find it hard to maintain your cool and lose your temper.
The standard career advice for such situations is to stay calm, but it might seem that these situations warrant a response. This is why we have listed some professional situations where you may want to scream and show anger, but this is what you should do instead –
- You have finished your work, but your boss piles on more work and refuses your vacation leave
Imagine you have planned to go on a vacation to Goa with your friends. It is your first trip after a very long time with your friends, and you have your tickets booked. But, at the last minute, your boss wants you to do some work and asks you to stay back in the office. It will want to make you scream in frustration, or worse maybe do something drastic like quit your job!
Here is career advice on what to do –
– Ask if the work can be done when you come back from the vacation.
– Ask a colleague if they can pick up the slack and you can do something for them in favor.
– If that doesn’t work, ask if you can work remotely, better to go on a vacation than not at all.
– If not, stay back, it’s never worth shouting and being upset, any wrong move will place a tag as a difficult employee, and you won’t be given extra responsibilities.
- Your co-worker takes credit for your work which you have put in hard work for
This happens a lot, especially when you are new in the office and people expect that you don’t know any better. Your senior colleagues might make you work on projects but then, when it is presentation time, report the work done as theirs. Shouting at them or publicly shaming them is not the way to go.
Here is career advice on what to do –
– Talk to the colleague privately and tell them that you would like credit the next time.
– If the same thing happens next time, make a note of it, and then speak to your boss about this recurring incident
- You worked hard on a project, but without reason, you were taken off from it
When you get towards your first appraisal time, it is time to show what you have done throughout the year, and this is why projects are important. It may happen that you have worked hard for a few months on a project, but suddenly you are taken of it, don’t flip out and demand to be put back.
Here is career advice on what to do –
– Speak to your reporting manager why you were taken off.
– Ask if you can improve on your skills or anything else to be on the project again.
– Just move on, and pick up something else to work on.
- Your co-worker shouts at you in frustration or in meetings
It is a tendency in personal life to curse and use foul language, but that’s not permissible in a professional environment and is against job ethics. However, some people forget that and use cuss words in meetings or shout at you to show frustration. Don’t retaliate and give it back.
Here is career advice on what to do –
– Tell them that you don’t want to be treated like that and spoken to in that fashion.
– If they don’t stop, raise the matter with HR and mention that the office environment is toxic
- Your client says something rude
If you are in a client-facing role, then chances are you have borne the brunt of an irritated client. Sometimes clients go overboard and equate you with the company and get angry at you for shoddy work or call you names. You might want to shout in such cases, but you shouldn’t.
Here is career advice on what to do –
– Talk to the client calmly and tell them you are an employee and work in a professional relationship. You don’t expect to be treated like that.
– If it doesn’t stop, report to your boss and tell that you would like to stop working with the client because of this behavior.
- You have done your work, but your teammates haven’t done, or something goes wrong
In an office team, you often have to depend on other team members to do their bit. If a task is derailed due to their inefficiency, it might reflect on your work. It can be simple things like not taking a backup of files before deleting them, or not preparing for a deck. You might want to scream at them for being so inefficient.
Here is career advice on what to do –
– First of all, solve the issue at hand, blame game won’t help at the last minute.
– Once you are done, sit down with the team or other person and tell them what you expect the next time you work together.
– If it doesn’t work, then ask to be shifted to a new team.
Do you agree with us that these professional situations are frustrating and can cause you to blow up with anger? Just follow our career advice, and you will be in control of your emotions. For other such career success tips follow our blog.
