Appraisal time

It's time for that annual ritual called appraisal, a time when the boss and I get together for a heart-to-heart talk and use words like 'Initiative' and 'Pro-activeness'. It usually happens in four stages.

1.Positive feedback: This is when the boss displays how concise he can be. And on the rare occasion when he decides to be liberal with his praise, you end up understanding not a single word. This time I got shot with this one "Your intellectual horsepower is commendable".

2.Negative feedback: I don't know if this is an example of a-few-seconds-on-the-stove-seem-like-an-hour theory that that Einstein guy proposed, but this part seems very very long drawn. This is also when the boss puts on a wooden face to hide all the glee he's experiencing. But atleast the language is lucid ("You are a piece of stinking horse-shit")

3.Task for next year: They call it fancy names like 'Key result areas' and 'Crucial undertakings' but they all mean the same. They are a bunch of tasks carefully worded such that they bear no resemblance to what you actually do for the rest of the year. The idea is to make next year's negative feedback session longer than this year's.

4.360 degree feedback: This is when the boss demonstrates his faith in democracy. He lets YOU give HIM feedback. Before you can start you have to allow him a few seconds to adjust his posture so that his body language screams out 'I'm not interested!'. But this year, I was determined to pull one back. So after he folded his hands, leaned back and half-closed his eyes, I told him 'You don't do enough to improve team-dynamics'. He's still trying to work that one out!