I just had a performance review. Company policy is that it’s done by a “Quality Assurance” department (who has no clue) rather than one of the supervisors in my department (who do). These cretins delight in giving us “Standards For Smiles” that either are too vague to follow (“Uses a greeting that is polite, but not too formal”-5 pts) or are in direct opposition to company policy or common sense (“Always ask the customer to explain in detail what THEY think the problem is. Most people are their own best tech-support”-3 points). In this spirit, I’ve composed a little list of rules myself, just for them.
Six New Rules:
#1)The next goddamn felch-monkey who gives me a performance review with a cutsey name like “A Winning Session-So We Can ALL be Winners” is going to get a boot to the ass with the cutsey name of “A Boot to the Ass”. This is my goddamned job, not Romper Room.
#2)The next motherfucking toad-humper “Quality Assurance” person who makes up new standards, without getting on the goddamn phones and making sure they’re feasible will get a boot to the ass and, believe me…I know it’s feasible.
#3)The next deformed product of an incestuous relationship who knocks five points off my final score because “I couldn’t hear the smile in your voice” on a call where the customer a) called back to speak to my supervisor to compliment me and b) wrote a two page letter to the company about how helpful and nice I was, gets a boot to the ass.
#4)The next posterchild for a retroactive abortion who tries to judge my techical skills and shows how much they know by telling me “Fenris, I’m deducting 10 points from your score, because you didn’t check to see if the monitor’s serial cable was correctly attached to the hard drive” when the call was about a PRINTER (this was an actual criticism), gets a boot to the ass. (I raised hell about this one and got the 10 points back)
#5)The next primordial bit of ooze that missed the evolutionary train to sentience who tells me that “Sir” or “Ma’m” is an “Insult” and that I should call the customer (usually older profession folks) by their first name, gets a boot to the ass.
#6)The next sonofabitch professional shit-sucker who thinks they can evaluate my job performance for the month, based on one allegedly random call, without ever actutally having done my job, gets a boot to the ass.
I never had to go through that kind of Alice-in-Wonderland shit. But at my last job, despite the fact I felt like I was kicking ass and taking names (albeit in a somewhat more maverick way than some of my co-workers), I would consistently get mediocre performance reviews - and insulting raises. (Try $5 - not per hour or per day, per week.)
Got that for a raise two performance reviews in a row. I was really angry and baffled, particularly the second time, because I actually made a concerted effort to improve the areas I was criticized for in the first review.
Finally, after some conversations with my co-workers, it dawned on me: Our raises were pretty much predetermined by the higher-ups. The workers who’d been there longer and made more got less for raises, across the board. Management passed down who would get what to my immediate boss, who then had to “sell it” to the workers. So, if I was destined to only get $5 more per week, my performance review would be crafted around making that sound logical.
I called a competitor the day of my last performance review because I was so pissed and I heard they had an opening. Turns out I *was[i/] kicking ass, in their estimation. They hired me right away – and gave me a 40 percent pay raise to start.
I could tell you more tales of evil about my former employer (Such as, they sued me for going to that competitor. The bastards who could only afford to give me $5 more per week spent $50,000 in legal fees in an attempt to keep me from getting a new job with way more pay and way more opportunity.)
But, you get the point. I’m no longer under the control of the petty, icompetant, shrimp-dicked control freaks; my current employers seem to think I’m The Bomb; all is now well on the employment front.
Now I don’t feel quite so bad about my job.
I suppose, however, that comments like that don’t make you feel any better about yours. Sorry.
Working in tech support, I’ve seen quite a few emails forwarded around with long lists of “People too stupid to own computers”, etc., but this is the first I’ve seen about bosses.
