First Appraisal Jitters!

19 new emails in your inbox.

I scanned the mailbox in a half asleep metastable state, read emails from my leads, blatantly ignored the rest with a conventional line of thought that people from the other part of the world are jobless blokes who love spamming.

It was yet another usual Monday at office with the usual work, the usual conversations and the usual people. As I walked into cafeteria for lunch towards the table that boasted the youngest prisoners of this corporate giant, I couldn't help noticing skewed faces. Curious to know what happened to their otherwise stupid grins, I paced my steps and lent my ears to their frenzied voices.

"I heard a fresher never gets a 5/5."

"Chandra was saying we have to overrate ourselves in technical aptitude and functional knowledge."

"My manager and I are emotionally attached by mutual hatred."

Okay! We are troubled souls but our lunchtime banter was never this depressing. I had to break in - "What's up?"

"You look pretty cool, Ms Star Performer", retorted Sparsh.

"Jeez, I hate that tag."

"But you would showcase that in your appraisal, wouldn't you?"

"Appraisal?!"

"Lo dekho! She doesn't even read emails."

With an I-know-more-than-you smirk, I was explained, "There was this mail from Andrew Castro, our vice-president apprising everyone about appraisals. Samjhi, madam?"

Ouch! Turns out that Andrew was not a jobless spammer.

As the deadline of the appraisal form completion approached, tensions soared and faces reddened. Seasoned folks like Somali completed it in 15 minutes while overly anxious new joinees would waste their weekends pondering what answers what. Considering the fact that we were ignorant employees, a training session on Appraisal system was conducted by a HR hottie. However, my unfavorable luck sent me out of town and made me miss the invaluable knowledge imparted. Perfect timing, you see. Had I attended the training, I would have said- HR girls had decimal IQs and were consummate bores. I always have something nice to say.

On the second last day, I opened the much discussed online application. An appraisee would have to self-rate herself in 14 competencies, chalk out goals achieved in that fiscal year, answer 5 basic questions and enlist 3 appraisal participants who would further rate her. At the end, employees would be adjudged by a digit in the range of 1-5, 5 being the highest.

Rating oneself was quite easy; the challenge was justifying your rating. To make things knotty, what was expected from the appraisee was already described at length in front of each competency which left little scope to over-rate. All I could think at that time was creative expletives for the HR team, purveyors of head-ache and restlessness.

Mustering the little energy left at the end of day and with degraded writing skills, I set to complete the task at hand. After three painstaking hours I concocted phrases like ‘Prioritized assigned work as per escalations and severity’, ‘Complied with existing processes and kept abreast with new developments’ , ‘Proved as a fast learner and could apply basic classroom concepts and ramp up at a good pace’ - so on and so forth. In just three hours, I had taken important decisions of my life – the purpose of my career, short term and long term goals, areas to improve on – all answers which were non-existent till that momentous day. Out of the blue, my least satisfying aspect of job changed from cafeteria food to missed learning opportunities. There was an innate sense of beauty in the sheer hollowness and falsity of my statements. That day, I left office with a triumph.

Next day, Sangeeta came running to my seat. Let me introduce you to Sangeeta – a colleague who would call you a friend only in the times of need.

“Hi! That bitch assigned me high priority work… blah blah blah … can you show me your appraisal form?”

“Why? What didn’t you understand?”

“What did you write in this question… … Please, can you show me your form?”

“Okay. Just see it once, don’t copy. At least, change the words.”

In a blink of an eye, she copy pasted my entire template. Wow! Can you beat me in foolishness?

One month later, my manager came all the way from Atlanta just to discuss appraisals with his immediate directs. If only he could cut down on travelling expenses, restricted to economical video conferences and saved team budget for hikes and bonuses. Alas! No one listens to my ideas.

My ex-manager and current manager met over a smoke and I was one of the topics of discussion. “She is a 5/5, critical for my team”, said my manager. How do I know this was said? It is the same way I know which department guy is dating which department girl. Office gossip network never falters!

Thus came my Judgment Day. I sat tensed in front of my appraiser, wondering what was going in his head. Finally, he starts, “You are a very good performer, you have done good work. You like your job very much, don’t you?”

My jaw line broke into a smile and inane words spurted out, “Not very much, sometimes it is monotonous.”

There was a long pause followed by, “So, let us start with goal accomplishment and then go back to competencies.”

“Okay, the way you say. All questions sounded similar to me or maybe I had the same answer.”

Oh yes! I said that. Something was definitely wrong with me. I felt like Jim Carrey in the court-room scene in the movie, Liar Liar.

I decided to shut my big mouth. For fifteen minutes, my manager went on saying things that were already known to me. Towards the end, he got bored and decided to take a fun pop quiz.

“Is there some area I can improve upon?”

“Do you have any special requests?”

And the most lethal of all, “How much would you rate yourself, out of 5?”

After many umms and errs, I said he could talk more often to us, requested a leave for Diwali but couldn’t answer the lethal one. To that, I said it was his job as an appraiser to rate me.

Tell me dear reader, haven’t I done enough by completing that form and sharing it with the Sangeetas of my world!

Another long pause followed. “Okay child, you have exceeded expectations. I would rate you 4/5 and I wish you continued success at work. Keep up the good work.”

With that we were done, my 5/5 crashed to 4/5 and so ended my first appraisal jitters.