Everyone hates their annual performance review but we dutifully do them. (For some good reasons, but I digress.) I few weeks ago, I published 18 True Tales of Ridiculous Performance Appraisals, and what I got was even more tales of ridiculous performance appraisals. Enjoy, but managers, don’t use these a template.
- There was a statement about a complaint made on me the previous year. I’d never heard about it. I asked why she never told me about it and my boss then went on to say she didn’t put much stock in that person and had problems with them making complaints about her, too. Yet still, she wrote it on my appraisal.
- I was told I had far too much biased language in my analysis reports. I asked for examples. Was told to “go back and read through them and you’ll see what I mean”. I wrote one whole report that whole year. It was all financial figures and dates. But, yes, if I’m being truthful, I’ve always hated the number 9. I just didn’t realize how much it showed…
- The orders to smile and to be less direct in speaking turn up often in women’s evaluations. “Somebody said they didn’t like your facial expression” sounds suspicious too. Some of my female coworkers used to joke with me about getting “you need to be more direct” and “you need to be less direct” on alternating years’ evaluations because one can’t be appropriately assertive and still be unthreateningly demure in some offices.
Thanks for all your comments! To read more, click here: 19 (More) Tales of Performance Review Horror
Dear Evil –
You and Alison (https://www.askamanager.org) always remind me how fortunate I am to work where I work and for the people I work for. Thanks for the laughs.
I was working in documentation for a CAD software vendor. Unlike other departmental employees, I had writing, graphics manipulation (a few years in the trade press), and engineering experience. I would experiment with the software, create realistic models, shoot my own graphics, create a draft version, and then to great dismay of everyone, I would walk over the engineer’s cube and discuss what I had done. Five minutes was plenty of time. I was “expected” to converse only via email and phone, which would have taken at least a few days and dozens of drafts. Verifying a surface normal and curve rate is tough to do over the phone. I was also told directly, “To just sit and be creative.” Did I mention my page rate was between 4 and 60 times that of co-workers? After 8 bosses in 5 years, I left.
I just completed my third year of working for an almost absentee manager. He “works from home” — a practice verboten in our organization — a lot. We have a Pay for Performance system that requires mid-year and end-of-year conferences and evaluations. All but 3 of our 6 mandatory “conferences” consisted simply of his entering his comments on the online evaluation reports, which are accessible for me to read. Regarding the 3 “conferences” we actually had, 2 consisted of his sticking his head in my office — not even sitting down — and delivering a few, vague, remarks. One was an actual sit-down conference in which I was, finally, allowed to say a few things. Over the years, there have been numerous times when I could have accomplished more, or accomplished things much more quickly, had I just had the benefit of a little guidance from my manager. Oh, well, it is what it is.
My “favorite” was 3 years ago. My biweekly 1-on-1 was overcome by some emergency meeting. My boss and I had 5 minutes at the end alone, the week before my annual appraisal. All my previous decade of reviews were fine, like the regular 1-on-1s. I said: “I just got acceptance on our offer on a house nearer the office. Is there anything I should know before I go through with it?”
He looked at me and said: “funny you should ask…”
It’s become one of our catch phrases and punchlines. BTW I don’t work there or live anywhere near now…
WTH! If I am reading this right, did they fire you or something? I realize that it is legal to fire someone without any warning but that is not the way it should happen!
My review this year was drastically lower in score than last year even though the comments were all positive. It was the end of the my first year in this position when I received that stellar review. When I questioned it I was told, “I rated you too highly last year because I was so excited you were here and I don’t want to look like I’m over inflating your review.” So apparently she’s not so excited I’m here anymore? And the result of this change is to our CEO it looks like my performance has slipped. Needless to say when her review hit my desk last week and the CEO gave her a perfect score I just about cried.
Years ago I was dinged on a review because my manager thought my hair bounced too much when I nodded my head.
I was once called into the director’s office (medical clinic) and reprimanded for having “too big” handwriting. Apparently my handwriting on chart notes (single page, couldn’t have anything else on them) was “too big”. I was also told I could no longer use the nickname (my initials form a name, a perfectly normal given name, that just isn’t my actual first name) that EVERYONE used for me – fortunately, both of those came to a screeching halt when the doctors in the clinic found out.