Cathartic Reviewaphobia

First, some shout-outs tonight:

- To Dhavid Lakota, for shout-outing to me the other day. My first direct reference in someone else's blog! :)
- To HV, for commenting. You go girl! We'll get you blogging yet. (Oh and HV, don't forget about winning me those tix... :D)
- To Tallulah Fondue, for being a cheerful spirit and my most frequent commenter so far, and
- To Full Stop, for getting this blog ball rolling in the first place (and for the help with the template updates).

You guys make me feel like I have readers! :) Warm fuzzies all around! I'd probably still do this even if no one ever read it (witness how much seems to erupt from my fingertips some nights - I don't plan that, honest), but it's so much more fun to know it's not all wasted. (I know some of my family members are reading too, and you guys are just as appreciated! I just don't always know who you are...)

I don't have tons to talk about tonight. At least, I don't think I do. We'll see what happens when this is finally posted. The number one thing on my mind tonight is that impending Performance Review I mentioned a couple of posts ago. It's happening tomorrow at 10:00 AM, and though everyone tells me I don't need to be worried about it, I am anyway. It's that fear of The Unexpected - the big cloud of uncertainty about what might happen. (Remember that old game of "oh stop worrying, what's the worst that could happen?" Well, in this case, the worst that could happen - namely, me getting fired - is pretty horrendous.) I would like to think that if I were really going to get fired, I'd have had some clue about it before now, so I figure that's a point in my favor. Note that this logic failed utterly the last time I got laid off, but that wasn't about performance - that was about my job "disappearing" with all of the IT outsourcing to India.

(At least that's what they told me at the time. What really happened is that they needed to free up some budget to hire on someone much more famous and expensive than me - so expensive, in fact, that they had to lay off 3 of us to meet his salary. Which brings me to something else, pardon the little digression... Someone once asked me if I have any hard feelings about that layoff. You, dear reader, might even have noticed a hint of bitterness in my tone. Truth is, business is business, and I get that. I understand cutting here to spend there, and how sometimes people get sacrificed for what one hopes will be the greater good. It happens. It sucks, but it's totally the way things work sometimes. And if they had been honest with me about it in the first place, I like to think that I would have been more understanding. But what I don't excuse or forgive is getting lied to about it - especially when it's by a grasping, pathologically sycophantic middle-manager who abuses his underlings and steals their ideas to make himself look good. My previous boss - a person I respect immensely, who got laid off at the same time I did, and who received the exact same bullshit explanation - would never have stooped to lying just to make it easier to sleep at night. Siefert, you're a schmuck. I pray I never run into you and be faced with the choice of being "polite" or being "honest".)

Ahh, that's better. :) That's been rolling around in my soul for a good 14 months.

So, where was I? Ah yes, The Review. Yeah, despite what I was saying earlier, I'm not actually worried about it. I think it's going to go fine. I just hate reviews. I always wonder what they'll find to say for "areas of improvement" - those tend to be the biggest surprises, if you're the type of person who takes pride in doing her best and not needing to improve much. (Right now, I'd say I need to work on getting into work earlier - I habitually show up about 5-8 minutes late. I blame the #66 (Chicago Ave.) bus, and the Blue Line. The fact that I give myself less than half an hour to get from door to door.. well that could play a part too. :D And there was that time I skipped out early for the Cubs doubleheader...) But anyway, they love me at work and I get compliments almost daily from several different people in several different departments. My boss always tells me how great my work is, and how fast I am at doing it. And her boss, as well as most of the other members of the Management Committee, have all told me what a fantastic job I'm doing.

I think that's a good sign.

Keep your fingers crossed for me. And stay tuned for the results...

- Joan