August 29, 2005
I was called that morning to the Goddess’s[1] office for the midyear performance appraisal. Considering it being August, which is two-thirds the way into the year, the appraisal came in pretty late. The whole company didn’t think it needed be reminded about its dismal performance for the first half; instead, energies were invested in recovery efforts to make up for the shortfall in sales.
Anyway, I knocked at her door, and very Goddess-like, she waved at me to come in and take a seat. She skimmed over my evaluation sheet, and made barely audible Uhuhs into what was written there. I thought the whole exercise was nothing extraordinary; she’s probably seen the same marks as with the other marketing associates, as we share the same KPIs[2] and the same discouraging results.
Goddess laid the paper down on her leather-covered desktop, squinted her eyes and smiled. “Ahh…” she said. “Not a good year, don’t you think?”
“You can say that again. We haven’t been hitting any of the sales plans we’ve set out. It’s like we worked tooth and nail for each peso, and still they came in trickles.”
“I wasn’t thinking of the Sales this year though …”
I felt a knot in my stomach. I guessed that I wasn’t going to like what she’s going to say next. I held my breath anyways, and let her speak what was on her mind. I saw that she seemed to grapple for something, and was choosing carefully the words to say to me. She sat upright and looked me, interestingly, in the eye.
“You know, I think you’re very smart. You’re very capable at what you do, wherever you are placed in this company, be it production, in estimating, and now and marketing planning…”
So, I thought, what’s the problem?
“It’s just that you aren’t passionate enough.”
“Huh?” Startled, my eyebrows raised, my equivalent to a knee-jerk reaction when struck with a very huge steel hammer.
“Your work is all in your brain. But,” she pointed to the heart, “not here.”
For all the communication skills I thought I had (E = Excellent), I was speechless, daunted. Bewildered. Nobody has ever told me about how I suck at work, elegantly in the way she did, or otherwise.
When I found my own voice, I jokingly said, “Well, it’s unfortunate there isn’t a criteria for Passion in the package, that way we couldn’t do a career plan for it.” Wise guy defense mechanism. Call it very insubordinate, but luckily for me, they always, ALWAYS let me get away with it.
The strange thing about this was I didn’t ask why she said what she said. Did she see it in my work? My reports? The way I handled campaign crises? How I did my hair, my make-up?
But I didn’t have to ask. It was the worst feeling in the world to know that deep inside, no matter how I worked on it, what Goddess said about me was true.
We ended the appraisal with plans for more marketing lessons, and potential cross-posting to a more left-brained job at Corporate Planning (10th floor). Goddess smiled again at me as I stood up to leave. The look on her face said, “Don’t worry, things will work out.”
I smiled in return. In the meantime, I went back to the thick wad of paper work sitting on my cubicle table, waiting for my numb hands to untangle them.
[1] Goddess –Secret nickname for Arundhati, Marketing Director. When she first came into the Office, she had long curly hair like the fabled Greek goddesses, and wore the most unconservative, and uncorporate get-up (i.e. green cargo pants topped with a spaghetti-strapped beaded white shirt, covered with a denim jacket). She speaks slow, accented English, which hinted her Chinese descent, but looked very Indian in complexion. You can say she looks like an aging, ex-Bollywood star.
[2] KPI = Key Performance Indicators, i.e. Grades on a report card.
posted by Elyss @ 1:28 PM
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