Quick Clarification on The Ambush in These Foolish Things

If you read my entry about my annual review at work yesterday, I have a clarification to make.

Not that it makes any difference how shitty it was, but our company is working with a new automated review system. We’d been doing all of our reviews the antiquated way on paper for as long as I’ve been here (nearly 10 years now!), and this year HR changed to an automated system that generates forms that you have to sign electronically.

So my boss was going out of town today and tomorrow and she had to get a lot of stuff done before she left - obviously getting her staff reviews turned in was one of them.

And I was actually tipped off that I’d possibly get a last-minute review yesterday when right before lunch I got an automated email telling me to go into the online HR system and sign my documents. Obviously, her finishing the reviews triggered an email that she was not expecting to go out. I assume she was planning on doing her staff appraisals when she returned to the office next week.

And at the moment I received the email, I needed to leave to meet my financial advisor for our lunch meeting, so I figured I’d get into all of that after lunch, and by the time I came back from lunch, the review meeting was scheduled with my boss and boss’s boss.

To say I was ambushed is fair, but to say I was completely surprised by what was said and the results of my review is not quite accurate.

If you’ve read me for a long time you know I was not super happy or fulfilled at work. In fact, I was very actively looking for new opportunities when I was knocked down by my cancer diagnosis. At that point, I stopped looking and was grateful that I was able to continue to work in a somewhat limited way during this whole cancer treatment ordeal. I was not operating at 100%. We ALL know that. But I was at least showing up and getting things done.

And of course, Old Boss and I were never on great terms (he never, ever liked me for some reason) and New Boss consulted with him on the review since she’d been promoted and had never worked with me and what I had been doing.

What DID feel really gross yesterday was the fact that I felt like I was being SCOLDED by my new boss’s boss! He opened the conversation by saying that we needed to have “real talk” and blah blah blah…difficult conversations need to take place.

But seriously? Scolding me??? And belittling the fact that my strengths lie in my creative side, but that’s not what this job IS. I was told that I am NOT allowed to even speak of the creative part of my job in my next executive meetings.

Did I get defensive? Absolutely not. It would not have gotten me anywhere. I told them how excited I was about some of the new strategy that I’ve been working on and that there is so much opportunity with this role and yada yada.

But talk about demotivation.

I’m still pretty devastated.

And I don’t know if I can retire right away, but I’ve gotten back to my financial advisor to ask him to start working with me on a cost/benefit analysis.

Thing is, I need health insurance and I am not in a place where I can just quit my job right now.

Lots of thinking to do. Lots of planning.

I’m so tired.
GS