The Golden Mean

The company I work for has this torture devise designed to drive you nuts when it comes time for reviews. The review is a three part process: the first is a self review - this consist of you rating yourself in four areas and then provide fodder for an achievement section, a developmental section and an overall comments section - the second part is the supervisors review which is a mirror image of what you write and the third part is where the the DM, Regional Human Resources managers, and the Regional Vice President discuss your review and determine what your review should be. Based off where you are in the salary range and what your rating is - Unsatisfactory, Requires Improvement, Good, Very Good or Outstanding. The one thing that is preached continually is that no one is outstanding. The individuals that find themselves under this falsde sense of granduer quickly have the review sent back for them to reevaluate themselves. Now I truly believe the process was designed by a very sadistic individual that likes to make people feel inferior. I truly believe that for the most part they have already determined the percentages they are going to give. Yes the supposed purpose of these reviews is determine our pay raise. Now, I understand the need to determine the percent based of performance; however, they are not truly giving percentages that are enough to encourage anyone to strive to be stellar. The maximine percentage allowed for outstanding (which in the 19 years I have been with the company not one manager I know of has received - because no one is perfect) is 6% but only if you are in the first third of the pay range. It goes down 1% as you move up the salary range. A good will only get you a 3% pay increase if you are in the first third of the pay range. Requires improvement means no raise and that you must repeat this humilating process again in 6 months.

This review process is suppose to be based off the performance of your store. This is great but each year they require the reviews to be completed earlier and earlier. This is difficult because the fiscal year ends at the end of Jan. The review is based off the fiscal year and the final numbers for the year come out at the end of Feb to the stores. Of course this is not something you can get at the touch of a button on the computer so you are writing this thing sort of blind. You make statements about performance that are based off year to date info through Dec, but that might have changed with the final month. The powers that be take this opportunity to tell you how wrong you are about your stores performance. I try to be accurate and do the "math" to figure some of the numbers but others we just do not have access to the information needed to calculate it.

This whole process each year reminds me something I was required to read in World Literature my senior year of high school. It was called the Golden Mean. The selection was from the Roman era and encouraged people to strive to be average. At the time, I did not fully appreciate the irony of my class being required to read it. I took the World Lit class because I had been on the fast track for AP English along with many of my classmates, and we decided not to apply for the AP English class. To the schools surprise and dismay(they had to buy a whole bunch of unplanned and unbudgeted for textbooks at the last minute) , my class coveted the mean that the Romans classified as golden. We really did not need the encouragement of the Romans to give us validation. Anyway, the review process reminds me of that selection because the review process ends up being such a negative process. We are not encouraged to strive for more nor do you want to be too positive because they might send it back for you to rewrite. Watch out if you have the nerve to be brutal in review of yourself, they will send it back to you to rewrite. Only they can tell you that you stink. Hence encouragement to go for the GOLDEN MEAN or at least another validation for desiring the GOLDEN MEAN. Yes - I have a really bad attitude concerning this process.