Embracing Emotion in the Workplace: The Fermentation Problem

Summer of 2013. I was twenty-three, selling pest control door-to-door in the suburbs of Salt Lake. If you’ve never done door-to-door sales, imagine walking up to a stranger’s house in 98-degree heat and trying to convince them they have a bug problem they didn’t know about. Now imagine doing that sixty times a day.

I was struggling. Not because I didn’t know the pitch; I knew it cold. I could recite the value proposition in my sleep. My regional VP rode along with me one afternoon, watched me knock a few doors, and then sat me down in his truck with the AC blasting.

“That was textbook perfect,” he said. And then: “That is why your sales are down.”

I didn’t get it. He explained: I was so busy being polished that the homeowner couldn’t feel me. I was a brochure with legs. The families who bought pest control didn’t buy because of the pitch. They bought because the guy on their porch seemed like a real person who gave a damn about their ant problem. I’d taken the emotion out of it. And the emotion was the entire point.

Buried Emotions Don’t Decompose

“You need to take the emotion out of it.” How many times have you heard that at work? It sounds reasonable. Professional. Mature.

It’s terrible advice.

You’re not removing emotion when you “take the emotion out of it.” You’re burying it. And buried emotions don’t decompose. They ferment. That irritation you swallowed in Monday’s meeting? By Friday it’s resentment. By next quarter it’s a resignation letter you haven’t written yet but have mentally rehearsed in the shower.

Jung understood that emotions aren’t inconveniences to be managed. They’re signals from the unconscious; expressions of something deeper that deserves attention. When your colleague’s remark makes your blood boil, that anger isn’t a malfunction. It’s information. The question isn’t how to shut it down. The question is what it’s telling you.

I learned this the hard way on those porches. Every time a door slammed in my face, I’d stuff the rejection down and walk to the next house with a fresh smile. By 4pm I was a pressure cooker in khakis. The emotion didn’t go anywhere. It just went underground and came out sideways; snapping at my roommate, driving too fast, lying awake replaying every slammed door.

The Half-Truth That Does Real Damage

There’s this other corporate favorite: “No one can make you feel a certain way. You choose how you feel.”

Half true. You don’t choose your initial emotional reaction; that comes from the unconscious before your rational mind even wakes up. Your body decides before your brain gets a vote. But you do choose what you do with it. You can notice it, sit with it, figure out where it came from, and respond with intention. That’s different from pretending it doesn’t exist.

Here’s what actual emotional intelligence looks like: you feel the frustration rise. You don’t suppress it. You don’t throw a chair either. You notice it. You might even say, “The way you phrased that landed wrong for me.” That’s honest. That’s direct. And it opens a real conversation instead of a performance of professionalism.

Emotions are fleeting. They rise, they peak, they pass. When you actually let yourself feel them without either clinging to them or shoving them down, they move through like weather. It’s the suppression that makes them stick around, that turns a Tuesday irritation into a chronic grudge you’re still nursing at the holiday party.

I think of it like a kitchen sink. Water runs through a sink just fine as long as the drain is open. Stop the drain, and the water backs up. Leave it long enough and the whole thing starts to stink. Nobody blames the water. The problem was always the plug. Emotions work the same way. They’re not the mess. They’re just water. It’s the refusal to let them pass through that creates the stagnation.

The Brochure With Legs

After that ride-along, I stopped trying to be polished. I started being honest. I told homeowners when I was having a rough day. I laughed at my own terrible jokes. I admitted when I didn’t know the answer to a question about carpenter ants. One afternoon, a woman asked me if I actually believed her house needed treatment, and I said, “Honestly? Probably not. But your neighbor’s yard is a mess and you’ll get spiders migrating over by fall.” She signed up on the spot.

My close rate went up. Not because I’d learned a new technique, but because I’d stopped performing and started showing up.

A workplace where people can be honest about what they’re feeling isn’t weak. It’s the only kind of workplace where real trust can exist. Everything else is a brochure with legs; technically correct, perfectly formatted, and completely empty.

What are you performing right now that you could just say?