dagblog - Comments for "Looking For Trouble"

Moat, how the hell are

Richard Day — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:12:36 +0000

In reply to In my job, and I believe in

Moat, how the hell are ya?

Good to see ya again! ha

I'm just getting tready for

Donal — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:08:06 +0000

In reply to Gee, thanks for stirring up

I'm just getting tready for the dag performance reviews ...

Gee, thanks for stirring up

artappraiser — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 03:10:55 +0000

In reply to Looking For Trouble

Gee, thanks for stirring up old bad memories.

In my job, and I believe in

moat — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 01:46:00 +0000

In reply to Looking For Trouble

In my job, and I believe in many others, my supervisor is never present when I am at my most efficient. It is not just a matter of working while observed (I got used to that years ago). The supervisor interrupts or draws energy and focus from self directed activity. Maybe this isn't an absolutely necessary condition but I haven't had the pleasure of experiencing the opposite.There have just been varying levels of decreased or delayed performance.

Now I have been in situations where me and another person took turns being in charge. We ran our own jobs and sometimes had to do a specific project on the other's site. We were able to see what the other could do at their best.

So in my performance reviews, the measure of results by different criteria made sense to me but the actual performance of what I did was usually misrepresented or seen through the wrong end of a telescope.

I hate performance reviews,

LisB — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 01:41:08 +0000

In reply to Looking For Trouble

I hate performance reviews, too. When I first started to encounter them, they were written by my boss and I had a chance to read, review, add feedback, discuss, etc. My last one, at my old job that I got laid off at, I had to write the entire thing myself and then hope my boss would eventually agree with it and sign it. There was barely any discussion, it was a task we both hated, and very little came out of it.

Your mention of the retreat, though, that brought back some very good memories for me. There was a time, many moons ago, when I was a Kelley Temp. I got kinda burned out on being a secretary and asked Kelley if they had any other types of jobs available. They, in turn, said they had a "data entry" type job and they felt my keyboarding skills were suitable, so they sent me over to a temp job in the Order Entry Department of a very well-known Japanese electronics firm (those of you who know me through the past few years probably know which one, but that's beside the point).

Anyway, I took the assignment and started there at $10 per hour, taking faxed orders from customers and translating them into our company Order/Inventory system. Four months later, I was hired. Two years later, I discovered that I enjoyed helping our Sales Force with customer service issues, and started branching out on my own into taking on some of Sales' workload. At first, my boss balked at this. She said if I helped our customers too much, it would make the rest of my department look bad. Personally, I was shocked and dismayed by that attitude. So, I just kept at it, but quietly. It earned me a very good repuation amongst the Sales Team and customers. And eventually my boss started changing her mind. Eventually, the company had a nationwide gathering in Southern California, where they flew in every other Order Entry Clerk from every other branch in the US, and they sat all of us down and asked us how many of us liked the idea of going from basic Order Entry to Customer Service. 90% of the people there raised their hands "Yes".

My salary doubled. My job description tripled. It was one of the best times of my life.

And then, LOL, everything went downhill after that, but that's kinda beside the point, eh?

Good post, Donal.

Agree 100%. Performance

NCD — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 19:17:09 +0000

In reply to Looking For Trouble

Agree 100%. Performance reviews are at least 75% or more merely office politics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?

Richard Day — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:49:06 +0000

In reply to Looking For Trouble

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAyDmJvjxbg

That's all I got.

Well except for this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5EYSiRltf8&feature=fvst

I feel your pain.Now tell me

EmmaZahn — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:06:00 +0000

In reply to Looking For Trouble

I feel your pain.

Now tell me again why progressive/liberals are so focused on jobs and a job-based economy when so few of them are about actual work and so many are about human relations -- not the good kind but the reality tv show or soap opera kind.