was it unprofessional to say I was angry?

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

This year, I was put in a difficult position by my HR representative. My work requires a licensing process with the state, and I’ve moved to a new role whose laws regarding those licenses have recently been updated. Despite having conversations with my HR about these changes and working to navigate them, my HR rep filed the wrong paperwork for me and insisted that I was flaunting compliance by not submitting the outdated paperwork that was provided and contacting the wrong people for required letters of evidence. This error was really stressful to me — not only was my HR emailing me that I could lose my job if I didn’t come through with the license, but argued that the rejections from the state were my fault, CC’ing my manager.

At one point, I spelled out the correct process to the HR representative, citing the state guidelines provided to us both, and she argued that I was essentially dragging my feet on doing what was necessary, and that she would not hesitate to post my job as open to hire someone who would meet the correct guidelines.

I eventually followed the state’s correct process against my HR’s guidance, only to discover that I had been misinformed by my HR over months when everything fell back into place and my license was quickly approved. When I contacted HR again in my long email chain with my supervisor, I said as kindly as I could that I was angry that my HR had not only called me out for not doing due diligence, but had not done their own, and had threatened my position over what was their own mistake.

Which brings me to my question: When my supervisor talked to me recently for an annual review, he suggested it was unprofessional to state that I was angry about how this had shaken out. I was pretty shocked to hear this — I had in no way been unkind or hostile, had limited this expression to a statement in one brief email wrapping up the issue, and my HR had been without question in the wrong with how they handled my situation.

Is it always unprofessional to say you’re angry in a business situation? Am I off the mark here?

Yeah, anger at work is … tricky.

There are lots of times when anger at work is justified.

But there is very much an expectation in many parts of white-collar American work culture that you will not declare yourself “angry.” Instead, you are “concerned,” “alarmed,” “surprised,” maybe “taken aback.” (I use “concerned” in scripts here a lot. It gets the point across without flouting that cultural convention.)

Some of that’s because part of white-collar professionalism is supposed to be not taking things personally. Some of it’s because anger is a fairly aggressive, even threatening, emotion to declare. You’re expected to be more even-keeled in how you express yourself.

Is this a sort of fake gentility? Sure — especially because not announcing your anger doesn’t mean you won’t actually be angry. But it’s a cultural convention in many workplaces.

To be clear, your HR person was an ass. Not only did she continually get the process wrong, but she threatened your job?! (Saying she “would not hesitate” to post your job and replace you?! Does she even have the authority to decide that on her own? I doubt it, not that that’s the point.) Your anger is warranted. She owes you an apology — and more than that, someone above her needs to look into what happened and whether it’s part of a pattern of incompetence from this colleague.

But yeah, you violated a cultural expectation that you’ll be more buttoned-up about it.

I can’t in good faith write about this topic without acknowledging that some managers traffic in anger pretty regularly. However, that’s bad management, and it’s unprofessional of them too.

There are, of course, industries where this doesn’t apply. But I’m guessing you might not be in one of them, based on your manager’s feedback.