My Yearly Review

I received my yearly review at work the other day (3 years! Longer than I've been anywhere). I wasn't very happy with the result. This year, and probably every year following, a budget crisis has hit the casino, and one of the ways they decided to cut their costs, was to cut the raises. The way they decided to go about this, however, was actually a bit sneaky; don't change the policy, just give them a smaller raise. In order to pull something like that off, employees needed to get low marks on reviews for any and every reason. So, let's get to my review.

The first item I noticed was that a couple of incidents managed to make their way into several categories for the review; the same event that I wasn't written up for due to managerial incompetence, not my own, was in the commentary for why my score was lower in both attendance and policies & procedures, for example. In fact, looking at the categories, there was plenty of potential for overlapping which meant that one write-up could bring your total score down by a few points at a time.

Second, for the things that were praiseworthy, and certainly my strong points as an employee, they didn't matter much at all in the review. My best qualities were at best worth 1 point, and with a potential 4 points in many positive categories, it just makes one wonder who they were kidding. I know I'm better than 1 point, and I also know that other people know that I am, too.

All in all, it was the worst kept secret regarding employee benefits at the casino. Cut the raises in half, but don't make it look like we're cutting the raises in half; the only way to pull this off is to make the employees look like they were pieces of crap in comparison to years before (I went from 2 5% raises the past 2 years to a 3% raise this one. Better than a pay cut, to be sure, but we're all in a situation where we need all the money we can get). I went from fantastic reviews to simply a mediocre one, and nobody wants to hear that they are mediocre.

How anyone could be surprised at my reaction to that (which they were) is beyond me.