CASE INCIDENT 1 Is It okay to Cry at Work? As this chapter has shown, emotions are an inevitable part of people's behavior at work. At the same time, it's not entirely clear that we've reached a point where people feel comfortable expressing all emotions at work. The reason might be that business culture and etiquette remain poorly suited to handling overt emotional displays. The question is: Can organizations become more intelligent about emotional management? Is it ever appropriate to yell, laugh, or cry at work? more Some people are skeptical about the virtues of emotional displays at the workplace. the chapter notes, emotions are automatic physiological responses to the environment, and as such, they can be difficult to control appropriately. One 22-year-old customer service representative named Laura who was the subject of a case study noted that fear and anger were routinely used as methods to control employees, and employees deeply resented this use of emotions to manipulate them. In another case, the chairman of a major television network made a practice of screaming at employees whenever anything went wrong leading to badly hurt feelings and a lack of loyalty the organization. Like Laura, workers at this organization were hesitant to show their true reactions these emotional branded as"weak" or"ineffectual." It might seem like these individuals worked in heavily emotional workplaces, but in fact, only a narrow range