Performance Review

Ah, the infamous performance review – you love it. You sit down and await for hopefully constructive criticism from your supervisor. It can go one of two ways: Good or Bad. It’s all about the attitude – yours and your supervisors. The last thing you want to happen is walk into a performance review when your boss is having a bad day.

In order to survive a performance review in today’s economy I’ve come up with some tips to get you thru it without the headache.

Kiss UP F.A.S.T.

Not a huge advocate for this particular tip but in reality you do have to be on top of this. I remember working at a job that I absolutely detested. I was young and could really care less of the job – don’t get me wrong I worked and did my job but going above and beyond the “call of duty” – no thanks. Yet, on the week of the review I would do everything I could to butter up my supervisor.

1. More Coffee: What can I do to better serve you with drinks and snack from the common area. Oh, out of your favorite pop? I’ll run out and get it.
2. No more shop talk: Find something that THEY like whether it be sports or entertainment and talk about it NON-STOP!
3. Hungry? Lunch on me. That’s right offer up to pick up the check when you go to lunch with them.
4. Copies? Collated? Office supplies running low: I’m on it. Your supervisor might have an assistant or can do these things themselves but why?

Spreadsheet of Performance

Why have your boss do all the work on trying to evaluate you? Just put together an itemized list of projects and your contribution to it. This takes some time, especially if you’ve slacked off the past 6 months. This is why I go with the first option so far. Nonetheless sometimes you just have to do the work to get by.

Letter of Appreciation

You did well on the last performance review so why not bring it in just in case your boss gets on you about your recent lack of enthusiasm for the job. Maybe you worked with other co-workers or clients and they felt you did an excellent job helping them so why not print out that email.

It shows that you are in fact doing something besides playing solitare.

What have you done to survive a performance review?

A co-worker falls ill and ends up at the hospital. What does your office do? Send flowers? Cards? Visit them? Steal their office supplies? Okay, that last one was a little out there but trust me it has happened and to be honest I’m not proud of it. Truth be told I had NO clue they were laid up with messed up back.

This happens almost weekly in my building. I don’t get it. It sometimes feel like I work for the:

a) 1-800 Flowers

b) HallMark Cards

c) Counselor

It never ceases to amaze me though the people who will roll their eyes when they hear a fellow co-worker’s loved one has past away. When they do the heavy ‘sigh’ I usually walk away, pissed.

There is just no empathy in the work place anymore. I can’t deal with it. It’s not JUST my co-workers either my boss does the same thing.

“Suzan’s OTHER grandmother passed away, well okay – send a card or whatever.”

So sorry to bother you boss I didn’t know a world existed outside of your own.

I apologize to you reading this because in all respect this has happened at just about every job I’ve held. At first everyone is truly emapathetic and then something happens. They forget how to be human. They forget how to care.

Again, sorry to bring you down today but this question has been on my mind for awhile and I’d like to know if this has happened at your job?

Okay, it’s been awhile since my post and while I hate excuses I can say that what has happened in the last few weeks has shown me sides of people I never thought existed.

One thing I found out, not from my doing of course, is that during this economic recession making waves is the WORST thing you can do. The best bet is to just do your job and do it well or stay as invisible as possible and pray you don’t get fired when the next wave of cutbacks go around.

I’ll give you a quick snippet on the overall situation – a coworker for one reason or another felt the need to complain to higher management about their boss. Why? Well, from what I gathered they were under the microscope so they lashed out as quickly as possible and the result…well – you’ll have to stay tuned for that one.

Nonetheless the bottom line here is folks is please do not go making waves during this econimic recession. It’s not a good thing AT ALL!

People are getting laid off daily during the recession and I’ve mentioned some tips on How To Stay Invisible. Now over at Wired they broke down the top 4 contents of how to lay off someone – or tell tall signs that you might be getting fired.

While most are pretty standard:

1) Predictability

2) Understanding

3) Empowerment

4) Compassion

Those are 4 ‘okay’ ideas but I’d like to add my personal top 4:

Humor

What? There’s nothing funny about being fired…well, there is if you make it. Why not make have fun with it (especially if its someone you don’t like).

Surprise Party

Seriously?! Yep, that’s right. Have a surprise party for the firee. Let them know with cake and friends (co-workers).

Laid Off Card

I’m pretty sure hallmark makes these cards – find one – fill it out and put on an empty box for their personal items so it’s the first thing they see in the morning.

Time Them

If you have to do massive lay-offs why not time them and the winner gets a surprise like a stapler or a roll of tape.

Any other suggestions?

When I wrote the introduction to my boss I mentioned the spreadsheet of doom. Allow me to go into detail a little bit about it. What my boss has done has put down each employee’s name, the date and how many minutes late. My boss’s office makes sure that each employee comes by his office so he can time them.

Every morning it’s the same thing. He says,  “Hi,” looks up and then enters numbers on the computer. Everyone knows what he’s doing but he tries to play it off. Nonetheless the amusing thing is that sometimes co-workers will go into the back entrance to get to their office just to confuse him. When he notices that you didn’t come in the ‘right’ way to the building he gets blustered and visibly upset and huffs back to the office.

We try not to do that too much.

So, the question that arises is – how do you know he keeps this spreadsheet. It’s actually pretty funny. Apparently I know my way around Microsoft Office products because he had me take a look at a “spreadsheet” which he wanted me to come up with equiations to add up weekly numbers to show a graph.

What’s even funnier from all this a few people around the office and come together to put a spreadsheet of doom on him. To track his tardiness and sick/vacation days. I’ll be giving updates as the year goes on but I will say that when a few people tried this last year it looked like this supervisor had taken at least 3 months off from work over the course of a year. That is above and beyond his sick and vacation days.

Pretty amazing huh? Do you have a boss/manager/supervisor like this?

I know, I know. It’s called Meet My Co-Workers not Meet My Boss but I felt the need to talk about about managers since I reference them quite often. So allow me to introduce to you to my personal manager. We have quite a bit in our office – in charge of different things. Why? I have yet to figure that out especially since they all report to the same person.

If you’re involved in one project you have a project manager. If you’re involved in a report you have another report manager. The manager’s are endless in reality.

Getting back to my favorite – my boss. Oh and yes that IS sarcasm.

Allow me to paint you a picture. One of my personal ‘pet projects’ was last year was to time his lunch breaks. To see exactly how much time he actually takes. In the year 2008 he took a total of 5 months time. What does that include? That is going beyond the couple of weeks we have for vacation and the week for sick days. This is the 3 hours spent at a sports bar minus the 1 hour ‘allotted’ for lunch. That is 5 months of calling in for a ‘personal day’ after all ‘personal days’ were taken.

Wait that’s not the funny part.

What he likes to do is make sure everyone arrives on time and everyone in the office has called the Spreadsheet of Dome, more on that later. Basically if you’re 5-10 minutes late he marks it down and compiles it only to review it with employee.

I just wanted this to be a brief introduction to my boss because trust me there is more coming on this interesting individual.