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Shobhit has pushed comfortably past Laney in the Winter Social Review points, and yet he remains obsessed with getting as many points as possible. I think he wants to pull
way ahead of it, which is probably not especially realistic.
Still, he suggested we walk to Salt & Straw last night for dessert, for this very reason. We went back and forth slightly as to whether to go there or to Voodoo Doughnut where I still have two free doughnut coupons to use. But, the pull at Salt & Straw is always their monthly seasonal flavors, and we hadn't gone there in February yet. So Salt & Straw it was.
For the second time, we both sampled every one of their seasonal flavors before deciding on what to buy. In the end we got a single scoop cup split with two different flavors, both of which I really loved: a salted chocolate flavor with chunks of brownie in it; and a holdover from a previous month, an eggnog flavor spiked with tequila—something I had never heard of before but which I was amazed by when I sampled it. Shobhit liked the chocolate one much more than the eggnog but I really loved them both, with a slight preference for the eggnog. Knowing how much I love eggnog, Shobhit just said, "Of course. It's eggnog."
We ate it with our two separate spoons while we walked back home.
Otherwise we
had tacos for dinner—all of the filling already prepared by Shobhit before I got home from work—and otherwise watched three episodes of season 2 of
Severance, which is top notch: two episodes before going for ice cream and one more episode after we got back. We're all caught up on the current season now, with four episodes left and the next one releasing on Friday.
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— पाँच हजार सात सौ छियासठ —
I had my 2024 Annual Performance Review late this morning. It was a one-hour meeting with Gabby in the four-person conference room on the other side of two rows of two desks each to my left. She had what I can only assume was her APR with Amy in the same room the hour immediately prior.
Gabby likes to send the completed form to us via email a day before the meeting, just so there are no surprises. I appreciate this. Although I have to admit misinterpreting it at first: she ban the document with my self-assessment, the "Individual Performance Review" (IPR). In that, I rated myself
Meets Expectations, and at first I thought I was looking at Gabby's rating. I was kind of like:
...Oh.
It was dumb. She actually gave me an overall rating of
Exceeds Expectations. That was at the end of the entire document, where her pages began after the last page of my IPR.
She did vary the ratings among five categories that average to the overall rating, though. There are only three options:
Below Expectations;
Meets Expectations; and
Above Expectations. Thankfully I was not rated
Below Expectations in anything, but I did get a mere
Meets Expectations for "Collaborates" and "Focuses on the Customer." I'm perfectly comfortable with that, honestly. Where I got
Above Expectations was for "Demonstrates Kindness" (the one part of this very corporatized APR process still reflects PCC's definitively hippie roots—not to diminish its importance, mind you); "Instills Trust" and "Values Diversity." It's convenient that these five things are given equal weight, given that the two I got
Meets Expectations on are tied to the bottom line in a way the other three clearly aren't.
Gabby had plenty to say when it came to "Opportunities for Improvement," none of which was in any way vicious or even unfair (I will admit to being ever-so slightly defensive when I first read the document), with a lot of specific suggestions where how realistic they are may be somewhat debatable. But, we'll see. I'll be open minded.
It started with the positive, which is clearly by design. Gabby was very generous with what she listed as my "key accomplishments." She did ask me to start the meeting by going over my IPR with her, though, which I wasn't super comfortable with. I had already written it all down, after all. She did mention that I don't necessarily have to come up with five different things under both sections ("Key Accomplishments" and "Opportunities for Improvement"), given that I kind of struggled to flesh out each list.
I did mention during the meeting that I'm not a huge fan of this whole process. "I know you aren't," she said. We've discussed this stuff before. And I won't even say that it's useless. Obviously there is value in knowing how well you are doing at your job. I just can't help but bristle at the deeply structured nature of it all, in a way that makes it very difficult to defend against the perception of PCC "going corporate" in the way that I used to.
Gabby, for her part, has held corporate jobs since she was 20 years old. She's perfectly comfortable with processes like these, and so far as I can tell, is both earnest and sincere when it comes to her involvement and approach. I don't begrudge her or judge her for that, either. By all accounts, even where PCC is now, far more "corporate" than ever, is likely pretty lax and chill compared to the annual cycle of corporate conventions she no doubt got very used to at places like Starbucks or Amazon. I see that as a key difference, though: the kind of pointedly independent spirit that drove PCC as an organization twenty years ago is no longer the same. And I fully understand that much of that is by necessity: you have to add things like middle management when you undergo significant expansion. It's just the nature of business growth.
It all comes back to capitalism, really. The thing that will one day be the death of us all. It's tempting to say that it'll be climate change. No, climate change will be the blunt instrument, the tool wielded—by capitalism.
This is a little ridiculous, isn't it? This hyperbolic diatribe as a result of nothing more than my honestly only moderate irritation with corporate structures and conventions—specifically, Annual Performance Reviews (APRs). We drew up a list of "2025 goals" too: another thing I struggle to subscribe to even though they can also be genuinely useful. I don't know what my problem is. On the plus side, the evaluation is over and now I don't really have to worry about it for another year.
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[posted 12:54pm]
