Web Headline: His Wife Is A Stay-At-Home Mom, And After He Gave Her A Written Performance Review, She Lost It
When I read this headline, I winced, thinking what might
happen if I did the same thing. I wondered what the mourners would say at my
subsequent funeral –
Yeh, Don was sure an intelligent man, but that
performance appraisal thing, well ….
Now, in the guy’s defense, his complicated, unusually
blended family had formed internal factions and became highly dysfunctional.
Which coincidentally describes the office environment at every large company I
have ever worked for. Thus, the contrived idea of a written performance
appraisal for his wife, I guess.
His family needed counseling, but he went for the easiest,
cheapest alternative, which in this case, was far from the best. If he had
asked just one guy, any guy, about this idea beforehand, he could have been
saved a lot of grief.
Because if you have the insidious balls (and they better be
inside you to prevent them from being ripped off) to present a written list of
grievances to your wife (a marital Festivus, if you will), prepare to be
presented with your wife’s unwritten list of your indiscretions, which could go
back many years.
Yes, you will have opened a Pandora’s Box – appropriately
named after a woman – which includes that comment you allegedly made five years
ago, at some alleged dinner, that you don’t even remember, to her cousin, which
was (select one):
A. Offensive
B. Suggestive
C. Embarrassing
D. Weird
E. Stupid
F. All
off the above
To which you will probably reply: Is she the one with the enormous
breasts?
And the discussion will all go downhill from there.
Rest assured that your wife’s unwritten list will dwarf
your written one. And you will have totally forgotten about all your alleged transgressions,
including the ones you committed yesterday, and thus, will not be able to put
up even a token defense.
And in this case, the guy’s wife reacted harshly, as
expected, and then yacked about it to all her girlfriends, resulting in a huge
estrogen-fueled pity party, as always happens when a guy does something stupid.
In this case, it was so absurd that it made its way onto the Internet, which
caused a national pity party, and got the guy ridiculed as a colossal jerk.
Let’s hope he didn’t “write her up” because of it.
So guys, a written performance is not recommended if your
wife is not performing up to acceptable standards. What is recommended? I don’t
know – maybe ask Dr. Phil.
But maybe my opinion of the performance appraisal process
itself is somewhat biased ….
Performance Appraisals
During my business career, I hated the disgusting,
humiliating concept of yearly performance appraisals. I wouldn’t even have
agreed to do these, except you had to submit to this tortuous abuse to get a
salary increase. In effect, you become a prostitute, getting screwed for money.
Oh, and they do enjoy boinking you.
I’m convinced that the large companies I worked for predetermined
what raise they could afford to give to you, and then wrote the performance
appraisal to match the percentage increase. So:
If you were doing a great job – The company had to rip you
apart to justify not giving you a higher raise.
If you were doing a poor job – The company ripped into you
in hopes that you might quit.
If you were doing a fair job, well-matched to your raise
amount – The company still ripped into you just because it was fun.
They asked you to rate yourself to make it appear fair, but
they don’t even look at your drivel most of the time. When I was young and
naïve, I spent over an hour writing my first self-appraisal. At the end, it was
pencil-whipped in five minutes.
At one of my former employers, where the appraisals were
the worst, I was skewered for the type of neckties I wore, who I ate lunch
with, and other trivial matters. Instead of being at home with my wife the week
after my second daughter was born, I came in to work to launch a new product I
was responsible for (the project ran two weeks late, and my daughter arrived
three weeks early, creating the conflict). Still, I received a grade of “needs
improvement” on the “Is Committed to the Job” metric on my performance
appraisal just two months later. The former company president is buried at the
same cemetery as my parents. I hope I never happen upon his gravestone after
drinking a couple of liters of Dr. Pepper.
One of the jokes I planned to use in this post is to ask
what I would rather do:
A. Go
through a performance appraisal at work?
B. Have a
vigorous prostate exam?
Funny joke, I reasoned, but then I truly pondered it. Both examinations are intrusive, highly disgusting, painful, and degrading. And surprisingly, my preference, provided I still received the same raise after either option, is the prostate exam. Something is going up my @$$ anyway, it may as well be only a finger and corporations eschew rubber gloves!
I reason that the prostate exam is shorter in duration, and
once your sphincter returns to its original size, you are all fine and normal.
And I have also passed all my prostrate exams and have never been criticized by
my doctor during the procedure. Whereas I could be upset and sore for a whole
month after getting my @$$ ripped apart in a performance appraisal. Maybe you
guys who are still working can suggest this alternative next time you are due
for a performance appraisal.
Final Words of Wisdom
So guys, never give your wife or woman a written
performance appraisal. And at work, don’t spend much time doing your
self-appraisal, and remember to always keep your sphincter tight during the
actual performance review.
