How To Stay Calm During ANY Workplace Crisis

Ah, the office bathroom. That place of camaraderie and questionable etiquette and so, so many tears. Maybe you flubbed a presentation, or you were reprimanded in front of your colleagues, or you got a bad-news phone call at the worst time — and all of a sudden you're speeding to the office bathroom so that you can "pee," a.k.a. snot-cry, in peace. (If this sounds like an unfamiliar scenario to you, you're lucky.) But hear me when I say: There is another way.

As much as we'd love to provide you with a therapist and a career counsellor and a breathwork healer who will be on call at all times to help you defuse workplace drama and confront every crisis with a cool head and the confidence that the world is not actually ending, we couldn't quite make that happen. What we could do, however, was talk to experts in all of those fields and provide you with a menu of their very best tips for how to stay calm in the midst of any workplace storm.

Whether it's a meeting that didn't go well at all, an ongoing struggle with your office arch-nemesis, a case of Real Life encroaching on your work woes, or a royal screw-up for which you're actually to blame, these experts have the exact next steps you need. Think of this as a "Choose Your Own Office Adventure" guide — with the true adventure being avoiding that bathroom meltdown and keeping your job while you're at it.