rocklymber

So, I just found out today that no matter what my personal performance has been over the past year, there is NO way for me to score above 50 on my annual review.  That means several things and begs several questions.  

First, you might wonder why I care, considering there's a salary freeze, and I wasn't going to get a raise anyway.  Well, a score below 50 equates to a rating of 'needs development', which means I go on a written warning; the time to be determined by my district manager.  This means, in turn, that I will not be eligible to receive the annual bonus which I earned last year.  

I'm pissed because the reason I can't score higher than 46.5 is because of what they call 'side a' metrics.  Those are things like how much money the store made and how much we spent in payroll.  Things that we were on track to EXCEL in, but then the bottom fell out of the economy, and I get to  pay for it now. 

For those of you who don't know, I have been in my current position at this store for about 1 year and 4 months.  I was promoted from a store in Plano, from Supervisor to Assistant Manager, in October of '06.  All managers have an annual review in February.  Therefore, it came to pass (I've always wanted to use that phrase) that my review was conducted a mere four months after I began my new position, and the score wasn't great.  The store I worked in before earned Store of the Year (due in part to my contributions), and my review sucked because I was rated only on what I'd done for the four months prior.  It's as if the work I did for the 8 months before (at the store of the year) never happened.  I was told then that I would receive a 6 month review, and a raise at that time.  I was awarded a 22 cent raise.  For those of you that aren't math wizards, that doesn't even cover one Sarbucks visit.  Oh, but not to worry, in another six months, I was to receive another review, which would be stellar, and that would be accompanied by a nice raise.  

That's the review I'm getting in a couple of weeks.  No raise.  No bonus.  Written up for some undetermined period of improvement.  Oh, did I mention that even if we knock it out of the park this year, I won't be eligible to earn any portion of my bonus for the duration of my improvement period.  Yeah, now I really want to bust my ass and do well.  

OH, and we're budgeted for numbers that we can't possibly make, unless baby Jesus takes pity on us and does something amazing to the economy. 

So, in the coming weeks I can look forward to a shitty review, coupled with a write up in my file, and accompanied by a big fat no bonus.  

In the coming months I can look forward to increasingly poorer performance, coupled with more 'coaching' and attempts to meet goals that are unattainable.  I can also look forward to hearing more and more whining from staff about how I just don't care enough about them, and I'm placing too much pressure on them to *gasp* sell things and *wha* greet customers.  If I'd only not pressure them so much, they'd be much better at their jobs.  As evidenced by the current state of our business.  Yes, that was sarcasm.

The long and short of it is:

Does anyone have a job for a talented, qualified retail manager?  Office manager?  Executive Assistant?  Editor?  ANYTHING!

Wow.  Who knew it would be so complicated to socially network.  Just when I get used to one website, I find another one I just have to join!  Whew...maybe I'll figure this thing out someday, and it'll be wildly entertaining...
Until then...just keep chuckling at my goof-ups.