The time for my job performance review is approaching. At the first one I was told that I wasn’t a team player because I ate lunch at my desk while I crunched data instead of going to the cafeteria with my co-workers and bad mouthing the boss. At the second review I was told (you guessed it) I was spending too much time socializing, because I was going to the cafeteria with the co-workers. Now I’m on the odd / even plan: odd days it’s the cafeteria, even days I eat at my desk. Wonder what I’ll hear this time.
“Don’t call customers ‘ma’am’ and ‘sir.’ It’s rude.”
Hmmm… lunch activities seem to get on some manager’s nerves. I once had to defend someone who worked for me from the owner of the company, because he couldn’t understand why that person sat at his desk at lunch reading a book. He thought the person was a slacker or something. The owner had no problems with the people who sat in the lunch room yakking and eating lunch, but for some reason this lone reader really bugged him.
Probably the worst thing I ever had happen to me was having my boss get down on me because I’d read a book while doing disk copies. On a fairly regular basis, my job involved copying 10-15 3.5" floppies. This takes about 2 hours. I had only one computer, so I couldn’t really work while I was doing this. I had previously asked for and been denied subscriptions to work-related magazines or books. So while I copied disks, I read the newspaper, or a book. My boss told me that this had to stop because I looked like I was goofing off. I said “But you know I’m copying the disks, and that they need to be copied. What am I supposed to do? Stare at the wall?”
She answered “Yes.”
I quit the job shortly after.
I was working as a receptionist, and someone walked in off the street. They did not have an appoitment. I was told once that because I asked “what is your name,” I was being “a little rude,” and that I should have said “Could I ask what your name is, please?”
Sidenote: after that boss denied my raise, on the basis that she hadn’t planned on giving me one for 2 years, I quit. And did a dance as I left the building.
Habit rules the unreflecting herd. - Wordsworth
That my computer skills were lacking.
I was informed of this because my boss had never seen any of my computer work because she had never thought of any of the stuff i had done. Sheesh what an idiot!
-Frankie
“Mother Mercy, can your loins bear fruit forever?/Is your fecundity a trammel or a treasure?”
-Bad Religion
That nobody can ever get a 7 (the highest rating in a review category) because there is always some way to improve. I don’t work there any more, and I feel very much improved.
My supervisor gave me my review. She had pulled together info from several people that I work directly with. One guy make the remark that I needed to have a special recyle can for the soft drink cans and I needed to mark it “for cans only” so that people wouldn’t put their drink cans in the regular trash. She actually put this on my evaluation. Later I told this guy about this and he just gave me this dumbfounded look. He said he only made it as a passing statement as an improvement item and had no idea she would put something that trivial on my eval. Course she was a little thick to begin with.
“Do or do not, there is no try” - Yoda
Senior Intern to
El Presidente
Self-Righteous Clique *
The only thing worse than getting a bad eval is giving one. Not really of course, but that’s how the saying goes.
I’ve had to give evals to people who I liked but they were screw-ups. It’s not fun. One disgruntled employee wrote a memo to my boss telling him what a jerk I was. He retracted it after he calmed down, but it still caused me a lot of anguish.
Perfomance Appraisals are a pain all around.
When I worked at a fast-food burger joint (won’t say which one, but the founder’s daughter’s name is Wendy), I asked for a raise after a year. But our franchise had just been bought, and by their rules, I had to work 3 months under them before being evaluated.
So 4 months later, I got my evaluation. They graded 5 areas (job performance, customer relations, cleanliness, promptness, something else I can’t remember) and gave 0, 1, or 2 points. I got a 7, and was slightly miffed at the 3 points I lost. They gave me a 5 cent/hour raise (BFD!). Later, I talked with one of the best employees. She was really pissed; she got a 10 and a whole dime/hour raise.
I normally worked 30-50 hours every 2 weeks. But when the schedule for the week after our raises went into effect, I was scheduled for a whole 2 hours. The manager said this was an oversight, as she was trying to train more people in closing. Bs! She was trying to keep her labor rate down by using us “higher-rate” employees less.
I quit 2 weeks later and got a career-oriented job for 45 cents/hour more than my raise.
What would Brian Boitano do / If he was here right now /
He’d make a plan and he’d follow through / That’s what Brian Boitano would do.
“Your writing doesn’t sparkle enough.”
This was for a copywriting job. Where my attempts at creativity had been squashed for the past three months. And I was THE SPARKLIEST copywriter this place had ever seen.
“Your writing sounds like it was written by a 22-year old.”
I WAS 22! FER CHRISSAKE!!
Sucks to your assmar.
Lunchtime seems to be a big issue. It wasn’t a performance review but I had a supervisor give me heck for reading work-related material at my desk during my lunch hour. I’m still not sure what his exact complaint was. Fortunately it was a temporary assignment.
The same guy also once told me to make a sketch of some stuff we had talked about (this was in my mechanical engineering life). I asked him what kind of sketch – a rough sketch or a straightedge and compass drawing (without dimensions, etc.) He got all bent, drew the sketch on a tablet and gave it to me. I copied it and gave it back. He was happy then.
Best one was when I got a call from my boss to come to her office. It was an unusual request and seemed a little formal. As I walked in she must have sensed my apprehension because she said, “You act like it’s bad news!” Turns out she had decided my services were no longer necessary and I should find a new job. Wouldn’t you classify that as bad news? My small revenge was to find a new job within a week so there was not time to train my replacement!
well well said the royal desiccation my political opponents back home always maintained
that i would wind up in hell and it seems they had the right dope
Don Marquis
archy interviews a pharaoh
beefymeg,
Speaking of writing: my husband is a lawyer. A senior partner in his firm told him that he was spending too much time revising and editing his legal writing and that it didn’t matter if the language was vague or imprecise. This was at a firm specializing in contracts. Who cares if the contract is vague and imprecise?!!!
I was too sociable, because I said “hello” to everyone in the morning.
I wasn’t sociable enough because I sat at my desk during lunch.
I looked like a slacker because I read the paper at my desk during lunch.
I was being counted off on because the first part of the year I’d had several problems in my performance pointed out to me. I’d fixed those problems as soon as I was told about them, but I was still counted off for it.
After that review, I went and found another job for just as much money that was much better for me.
I worked for a couple years as a security guard at a department store. Can’t tell you the name, so I’ll call them “Bullseye”, or “Concentric Red Rings”. One item on my review was that I didn’t stand close enough to the doors at all times. My goal was to be no further away than ten feet at any time. My next problem was that I didn’t weave through the checkout lanes often enough. These lanes, I might add, were up to forty feet away from the doors. Hmm…apparently I suffered from a lack of ability to bend space-time.
My boss’s solution to the dilemma? Compromise and divide my time. Which is exactly what I was doing in the first place.
My first full-time job I was told I took too long to do the daily courier run. “It should only take an hour.” That the job had just been changed from part-time to full-time before I got it and I didn’t have half enough to do was neither here nor there – I had to be back to the office in an hour.
So I ran like crazy to do it in an hour, but I was already fired – the boss went on vacation and left my immediate supervisor a note to fire me at the end of the week.
Catrandom
I once had a boss tell me that I talked too loud. I didn’t talk too much, just too loud. Other than that, my work was great and I got along well with the other employees.
Okay, so this is not exactly a dumb thing, it’s just the fact that she felt the need to mark this down on my evaluation. I guess she couldn’t find anything else, so she decided to nit-pick about my voice.
BTW, my job at that time: Answering service. Yep, you guessed it, I spent my entire day talking on the phone (gotta love a job like that).
Shadowfox
“Distinguished” Sexy assistant to Head Honcho,
Self-Righteous Clique
I got a bad review once. I was forced to burn the place down.
Then I left them a preformance review taked to the last pole left standing. "Employer consistently faisl to treat employees like humans. Also cant keep hands of her male employees. Doesnt keep one-time business site clean or rubble and debris. Needs to improve insurance buying skills. Basic recommendation: YOu need to be “fired”. See the pun? I burned it down…fire…NUDGE NUDGE.
(Waking from dream of secret desires) damn it its still here!!! Woman get your hands off my ass!!
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. "
Jonathan Swift
Not a performance evaluation, but this thread brought to mind:
The Two Owners Who Are A Married Couple.
Accountant
Poor Sap Who Does Everything Else
Receptionist From the Temp Agency (Me).
The front area is windowless, with a metal security door. I have to buzz people in after viewing them on a security camera. The way the suite is arranged none of the others can see me from their offices.
I’m told by the owner not to do anything the Accountant or Sap give me because it’s their work, not mine.
I’m told not to read at the desk because it doesn’t look professional (remember, no one can see me, either inside or outside the office.
The phone doesn’t ring often enough to keep me from going crazy staring at the industrial furniture (no windows, remember?)
After a few days, the owner sets me to word-processing. Like a good little temp, I call the agency and tell them to start charging them (and start paying me!!) word processor rates.
The next a.m. I’m apologetically greeted by Sap, who says the owner is so upset with me I need to leave right now and never come back.
Ditto to that above one on account of my wife once.
She wanted to kill him, she had worked there for 7 months as a freaking temp!!! HE didnt even say goodbye or anything, just “you cost too much, and I dont want to keep paying it, so leave”.
Cute arent they?
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. "
Jonathan Swift
Oh, if we’re telling temp stories…I was a temp for 2 years. I was working for this huge corporations, cubicals, the whole 9 yards. I was covering for a woman who was maternity leave once. There were basically three teirs of people at the office, the lowest which was another woman named Glenda and myself. We were assistants to the highest. Then there was the middle tier, who was adminstrative, and had no superiority over me at all. The woman I was covering for called Glenda to say hello, and a middle teir woman named Marjory answered her phone. The woman I was covering for asked how I was working out. Marjory told her I was coming in late, leaving early, and taking long lunches. Keep in mind, Marjory had NO reason to be paying attention to any of my movements, as she was in no way supervising me. The woman I was covering for felt guilty, and called HR. The HR rep called me to her office. She confronted me with all this, and I calmly told her: A.) I was late ONCE because of a snow storm. B.) I had a 1/2 hour lunch and 2 15-minute breaks in the day. I was skipping my morning break and taking a 45 minute lunch. C.)If I was able to leave my desk on time, I was lucky. Usually I was late leaving. Marjory came in earlier then I did, and left earlier, so how the hell would she know when I was leaving? The HR woman apologized, Glenda stopped talking to Marjory. After the pregnant woman had her baby, she came back, and they offered me the exciting job of filing all day – as a temp. I politely turned them down.
Habit rules the unreflecting herd. - Wordsworth