CEO berates employee over their facial expression during company meeting

Should you be held responsible for your involuntary facial expressions?

You can't help what you look like, and you can't always help what your face does. Sometimes you're just going to make a face, and you have no control over it. You know this if you're an expressive person, and sometimes your face betrays something you didn't mean to. It's not your fault, but you've accidentally revealed all of your cards, and now everyone at the dinner table knows you secretly hate that casserole and you were just being nice when you said it was "tasty." It happens to the best of us, and we have to take it in stride. We also have to know that, as observers, we can't read too much into people's facial expressions. We have to let people tell us how they feel, especially at work, when it can have very real consequences. That's what happened in this story.

via Dylan Gillis

_{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}
My CEO basically berated me over my facial expression in a meeting.
Had a really upsetting interaction at work yesterday. We had a meeting about a new system rollout, I sat quietly in the back and listened the entire time. I didn’t say anything negative, didn’t argue, didn’t disrupt the meeting. After it ended and I had already left the room, my CEO asked me to come back into the conference room and immediately started questioning me asking things like “what is your problem lately?” and saying I looked “angry and annoyed” during the meeting.
via Redmind Studio

_{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}
It's never a good idea to have a confrontation at work. These things need to be handled delicately, and this boss was not willing to do that. They wanted to instigate an argument, so they called out their employee after a meeting. You can't help your facial expressions, and they shouldn't be held against you. That's not what this boss thought, though, when they reprimanded their employee for something as simple as a look. You don't have to perform happiness all the time, nor should you expect to be watched at every turn. But that's what was happening here.
She also questioned why I didn’t move closer to see the screen even though the room was packed with like 8 people crammed in there. What hurts the most is that this wasn’t even about my actual work performance. It felt like I was being criticized for my face/body language while sitting quietly in a meeting.
via Hunter Newton
Being reprimanded about your work performance is one thing. Being reprimanded for something you can't control is a completely different thing. It's not fair to call someone out on their unconscious behaviors, especially when they don't think that they're being observed. The boss thought they were doing the right thing by calling this out, but they really didn't. You don't want to get into an argument at work that you can't get out of, but that's what was happening here, and they didn't know how to get through it. So they turned to the internet for advice, or just to vent for a while.
via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)
I explained during the conversation that I literally just lost my uncle two weeks ago — someone very important to me since childhood — and instead of the conversation softening at all, she kept pressing me about my demeanor in meetings. One of the meetings she referenced was actually the SAME DAY he passed.

I ended up crying and leaving work because the whole thing felt so harsh and personal. Now I’m sitting here wondering if I’m crazy for feeling like this was completely unnecessary. Has anyone else had management basically project an attitude onto you when you were really just overwhelmed/stressed/grieving?
-u/ifyousaysooo_