Review Time

Time for the annual reviews.

Never a pleasant process and one that I always dread to some extent.  Our form is certainly more user friendly this year and far less difficult to complete, but there is still is the inevitable sense of slight dread that comes over one when completing the review of an entire year in a relatively small amount of pages.

As part of the process I referred back to my 2013 review to see my objectives for last year.  And found that I could not look at it.

Seeing that review - seeing those words - sent me back to last year, really the last five years.  All the old feelings came up again:  the lack of empowerment, the constant sense of being unsupported,   The words echo back from the paper:  "TB is not this.  TB did not do this.  TB did everything but  it was simply not enough to move ahead.  Ultimately, TB failed to show the proper deference to me"

TB, shut up and accept your lot.

I could not look at it again.  I started to, got about two sentences in, and then put it aside.  That represents such a blot on my life, such an aberration of what I have come to experience from all my other managers, that I chose to put it down and away.

In a nutshell, the review represents everything that I feel like I fight against sometimes.  Expectations without directions.  Targets without definition.  Vague promises about will happen with belief that they will be backed up or acted upon. The proclamation that we are a merit based system but the reality that we are system too often based on how you make me feel as a superior.  And the reality that all the effort in the world will not move the needle for many people.

In other words, it represents an unhealthy work situation.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it is time to seriously reconsider my options.