It's time for year end reviews at work once again. Self assessments, one-on-one meetings, and all around phoniness. Has anyone ever approached a review with complete sincerity? I'd say I treat about 30% of my review truthfully and honestly. The rest of it I look at as another chance to freshen up on my corporate jargon...out-performance, synergy, cohesiveness, team building, right sizing, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
I have to answer about 20 different questions, all beating around the bush instead of asking one simple question: Did you do a good job this year? Yes, No, and why? Instead I'm filling out a review longer than the math section on the SAT's.
And HR wonders why we hate everything they come up with? Their job is to make sure people use common sense, yet they never use it themselves. The secret is they know just how dispensable their jobs are and in order to protect themselves they create these ludicrous reviews and training seminars, and make simple tasks such as reviews, benefits, and firing folks as complicated as possible. So complicated that I had to lash out in a blog because God forbid I take this complaint to HR. There would be documents to complete, focus groups formed, review boards called, and some nice bar charts created, all to come to the determination that they're nagging the shit out of the employees.
