The following exchange between a college student, who had a friend suddenly die, and her manager at work, Katie, just went viral.

“Someone close to me just passed away, and I’m trying to find a cover for my shifts so I can attend the funeral service rather than call out and leave you guys,” the college student wrote.

The manager, “Katie”, tells her: “Just don’t come back to work. I like you but I’m sick of all staff not taking their job seriously and just f—ing expect me to cover all of your shifts,” she wrote. “I have a business to run at the end of the day. And a family. If you can’t work and there is no one to cover the shift in order for the restaurant to operate I have to let you go (fire you-editor’s translation). Sorry”.

You may conclude Katie is a heartless manager who doesn’t care about others’ tragedy. Does Katie care more about someone covering their shift than attending the funeral of a friend?  I highly doubt it. From her words you can “hear” the stress. She has people missing work shifts, she is having to cover for them, she is neglecting time with her own family and now, she SNAPS! She can’t take it anymore, so she lets it all out without any empathy for her staff. That is what stress does to all of us, if not managed. It leads us to act in ways we normally wouldn’t.

We all have a normal behavior and a stress behavior. I doubt Katie is a heartless person. She was simply acting out of stress. If we are honest with ourselves, we ALL have done this.

Leaders must be careful in managing stress for this reason, but also for another reason. As leaders we are very busy. And, when we get overwhelmed, we stop handling people problems well. We bypass protocol because we are so busy. We “expedite process” in order to make decisions quickly in order to alleviate stress.  So, instead of consulting others, we decide on our own, instead of meeting people and talking face to face, we send a quick email. Responses like this lead the people around us to feel they aren’t important, and their feelings don’t matter. We bypass proper protocol in order to alleviate stress AND we hurt a lot of people along the way.

How are you doing at managing stress? Is your stress taking a toll on YOU? On others? Here are some helpful tips on managing stress.    Stress Management Tips