This whole program has been started here at work on the corporate level. It's all about improving performance, making employees happier and managment easier.

We just finished it for the year 2000. After a discussion with my former manager, since he's covering this program for the end of the year with us even though he's now with another group, I get the fun of filling out an online form detailing what we discussed, and evaluating how well I met the goals I set for myself back in January.

The, at the end, there's this little pull-down box that gives a nice one-line summary of the entire form that will probably be what the people above look at, that will probably be the entirety of my existence to this company outside of the immediate vicinity of my cow-orkers.

As I click on that little box to select that which determines my future, I realize something. Something very very disturbing. There are four options, and meeting my goals is the second from the bottom. It's not at the bottom, there's something about failing to meet goals. But above that, there's two full classifications for how well people exceeded their goals.

Suddenly, I feel like a failure. That I did a poor job because I did what I planned to do. Why is this the way it is? Why is it that when my manager and I had an honest dialog about what it was I would accomplish this year, it caused me to look less than average in the end?

It makes me wonder what incentive anyone has to be honest at the beginning? Why admit your goals, instead of keeping them secret, so at the end of the year, you can be "consistently above expectations"?

Well, I am setting a goal for this year right now. I'm making it clear on here. One that I'll be more than happy to meet, and won't feel like a failure at all for meeting it. My goal? Find a new job.

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