While most of my friends who are not in a trade wear a suit to work everyday, I have the pleasure of working a business casual sort of environment. But since two thirds of our facility is a laboratory, we really wear “lab casual” each day. Lab Casual around here means jeans and a t-shirt, maybe a sweatshirt in colder weather.
I don’t want to sound like we are total scrubs – we step up our attire to dress slacks and suits when clients are in or if we are attending an industry event but day to day is pretty relaxed. For me, its an added benefit to my job – I get to save a lot of money on clothing for work and the simple action of wearing a polo shirt instead of a t-shirt catapults me to well dressed category of the office.
We also dress up for annual reviews. Why? Because we go out to a very nice local restaurant called Augusto’s. Augusto’s is a great place for dinner with a client or a quiet dinner with your significant other but it is brutal for an annual review.
Despite the best of intentions to make the annual review process as pleasant as possible, all I am really left with indigestion.
Yesterday was my first annual review with my organization. It was the most anxious filled hour I have spent at this company to date. The review went well. My supervisor had nothing but praises to say of my last year. I am very happy with the compensation that was offered to me as a reward. But having a plate of food in front of me almost made it worse. I kept waiting to hear bad news so I could choke on my chicken and gnnochi as a self perservation tactic.
A few months ago, Brad Hilderbrand wrote about the dreaded performance review at Employee Evolution. At the time, I just sort of laughed about it, left a comment and continued on with my day. Ten minutes before show time yesterday, I found myself rereading and searching the comment section for hope. Its good to know that I’m not the only one with a reveiw but I am quite sure I am the only one who had to do it eating.
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