Words You Don't Want to Hear During Your Annual Performance Review by Scott Adams Read Free Book Online

Introduction
    If you are an “employee,” sooner or later you will be subjected to a horrible humiliation that forensic scientists refer to as your “performance review.” You will need a strategy for coping, and I can help.
    I recommend working for a timid boss who likes to avoid confrontation. You can test whether your boss fits that description by bringing a huge bag of fertilizer to work and shoving his head into it, then sewing it to his shirt collar and laughing as he goes running around like a man with a bag-o-fertilizer head.
    After that, if he says something about how humor helps morale and how you’re like a member of the family, then you have a timid boss, and your performance review will be just fine. He’ll give you “exceptional” ratings on every category just to lessen the chance you will cry, complain, glare, or sew his head into another bag.
    The next best kind of boss is a lazy boss. If he asks you to write your own performance review, you’re home free. Try to weave into your evaluation words like Einsteinian, overlord, magnificent, and deeeee-licious. Even if he crosses out a few of your descriptors, whatever slips through the cracks will still serve you well.
    If your boss is neither timid nor lazy, you’ll have to do things the hard way. Sacrifice your health and your personal life by working extra hard to earn that highest performance review rating. Bankers will tell you that the 1 percent higher raise you earn for being a star performer will add up over time, thanks to the miracle of compounding. But later, when they’re alone, the bankers will laugh heartily at your working 50 percent harder for a 1 percent higher raise. And they’ll mock you for not understanding that compounding doesn’t apply to people who spend all their extra money on beer to forget their jobs. Bankers are funny.
    Or you could ignore your performance review altogether, and wait until Dogbert conquers the planet and makes all non-Dilbert-readers our personal domestic servants.
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