Susan's Scribblings the Blog

This week it was time for me to evaluate myself at my job.  Does anybody really enjoy either trying to write about their entire year’s worth of toil in the cubicle kingdom or reading those self-aggrandizing exploits?  For one thing, telling the truth about yourself is nearly impossible, and over- or under-bragging never really seems to change the way the boss sees you (plus you already know the raises are capped and impossible to change anyway).  For another, it’s a matter of one human being sending their view of the workplace to a totally different human being who may not see it the same way.  You’re always in danger of toppling the entire process against yourself by saying what you’re supposed to say and having somebody read it the wrong way.

The appraisal process in my office is all done on the computer.  The questions don’t really ask what I did for the past year (in fact, there were few questions needing an “I” answer).  There is no mention of whether I was on time or sick, or if production went up because of me or in spite of me.  What it did have was a box to hold a set amount of my text, and a spelling checker.

I did my human best to make the system work for me.  I dug into my mental storage boxes to find highlights from the past 12 months (I gave up trying to find five minutes to chronicle what I actually accomplished each day via one of those nifty $200 planners months ago), and tried to find someplace in which to list my actual production figures.  There was none.  I could mention that I’ve had perfect attendance for 20 years on the job (I’m not kidding you; really I have), if there was space for it.  There was no place to mention that carpooling a total of nearly 70 miles per day helped the environment, or that I had adopted every little job that nobody cared to do.  The questions were closed, static and meaningless in terms of how they capture who I am when I put on my business attire and wield my pen every day.

The evaluation my boss will provide, on the other hand, will have my name all over it, followed by sentences of excruciatingly detailed feats and faults that somebody, somehow, managed to gather.  I can just hope they are positive enough to matter.