It was time for the annual waste of time appraisal where I work at my real job. I accept that some companies do these properly and it is a worthwhile process. Unfortunately, the company where I work only introduced them because they were part of some accreditation the company holds. All that happens is that the forms get waved in front of an external auditor and the “employee progression” box is ticked.

Sample question

List your main duties
Turning up in the morning

I refused to be drawn into any discussions this year. At one point, I even changed my answer from yes to no in order to avoid a debate. In a previous year, I came up with an example of an event to demonstrate a point. The actual event was extremely trivial, something about not been informed. As a consequence, I ended up having a weekly meeting so this trivial incident never happened again.

Objectives for the year

This is the fun part. We are given about three or four objectives for the following year. Some are part of our normal duties, so they get completed without any additional effort. Imagine giving a butcher the objective of selling a pork chop.

Others just fade away, becoming irrelevant as the year progresses. i.e. some other process or a staff change makes the objective meaningless.

Finally, there are the ones that at first sight look like a worthwhile challenge for the year. As the year progresses, no time is allocated towards these “nice to have” projects and there is no authority to get input from other departments. These objectives just stay on the list for years.