Congrats, Anne!

Congratulations, Anne!

Fantastic, Anne!

Hah, ita!

People did not eat enough cupcake. EAT people. I'm ready to start roaming the halls giving away cupcakes.

Congrats Anne!!

I made it in and out of the cupcake store to buy a present for my sister without eating a cupcake--even though they were giving aeay a free one with purchase. ...I am so not cut out for dieting, I've only been doing it a week and a half and I feel like it's been forever.

Yay, Anne!

Yay Anne!

I told one of my reports she is getting a raise, and she almost passed out. The two events were unconnected, so yikes! I hope she has actually gone home.

While I have gotten a little better than industry stardard raises in the past, this year...I'm glad to have a job and any bump is going to be a surprise.

I didn't have as stellar a year this year, not that I did bad or caused problems. But we are graded by "Meets expectations", "Exceeds Expectations", and "Does not meet expectations". If you work you heart out every year - how do you ever get Exceeds. That is everyone's expectation of you.

But it is more about the "voluntary" retirements, the layoffs, the mandatory PTO, and the (early rumors) of a furlough program that make me think that anything we get will be lucky.

I'm about ready to leave the office. Headache settling in from the HVAC. And my boss wasn't even here today.

I've been reading some personal accounts of horrors soldiers have encountered during their service, and it makes me chuckle to think how Gomer Pyle-ish my dad's adventures overseas in the Army were. Instead of daring night missions and grenades I get tales of drunken antics in biergartens and The Limburger Cheese Sandwich Left Forgotten in the Room.

My father was stationed in New York City during WWII. The only stories he told were working on plans in New York and Canada, and he had a box full of swizzle sticks from several different bars. Unfortunately, that box disappeared. He died my senior year in college, before I got my brain organized enough to realize he probably had terrific stories about being stateside during the war. Though they probably would not have been the stories you tell your youngest daughter.

we are graded by "Meets expectations", "Exceeds Expectations", and "Does not meet expectations". If you work you heart out every year - how do you ever get Exceeds. That is everyone's expectation of you.

This is the problem in my workplace. We're graded by Satisfactory (or not), Superior, and Outstanding. The bar has been raised to the point that you practically have to donate a kidney to get Outstanding. Satisfactory is what you get by just doing your job, which is - needless to say - no longer satisfactory; they expect everyone to go above and beyond. "Stretch goals" are built into the review process and if you don't meet them, you can expect not to get a very Superior raise.

My theory is, they're not planning to give anyone in my department much of a raise, ever, except the few people who haven't been here long. The rest of us old-timers are bumping our heads on the ceiling of our salary bands with a long time to retirement and nowhere in the company to promote out to. So since we're not allowed to make too much more money, they have to have reasons to not give us much more money.