Yesterday evening about an hour before I was planned on going home for the day, I get a meeting request from my boss. It was time for my annual performance review/employee evaluation...the first formal one in two years. I think I mentioned earlier that last year my review was given to me verbally in the men's room while standing at the urinal. I am not kidding. I never received anything to sign nor was I asked for my input. The review lasted less than two minutes and consisted of , "El, you make me look good in this company so I have no complaints. Keep up the good work." That was last year. Some things have changed since then. I changed job roles and I also have a new boss, who by the way, was my old boss 2 positions ago. Round and round and round she goes...
This year I got a formal sit down (which is required and customary) , which is face time with the boss. I was not really looking forward to this eval because I hate my current role. I really did not want to go into a review with a bad attitude so I let my boss (who really should be a salesman...he has such a silver tongue) do all the talking. I only added info when asked. To make a long story short, I:
* was given a glowing review
* was given a 1.8% raise (max allowed was 2.2% this year)
* found out that I am now 103% of max pay for my band/level
* am a candidate to move up a level with a different role/pay grade.
One of my "strengths" was the way I treat all the techs as well as our customer with respect. I have the ability, when I chose to use it, to be very diplomatic while offering just a hint of sarcasm to make my point. Word to the wise. This works in the corporate world...do not try it at home on your wife.
I told my boss that my current role, while not difficult, requires me to be available 24x7 with no back up available (Okay, I do have backups, but you try to get 2 mgrs who have more seniority than you do to work a holiday) and it is beginning to be taxing. He agreed and that is where point 4 came in. He asked what I thought about giving some SLO mgmt (over the teams in KL) a try when he could get it set up. I told him I was all for it if he could offload escalation mgmt to KL. He told me that he thought that was doable.
So I went home in a much better mood than I came to work in. I am sure for a little while I will have to pull double duty, but I think I can handle that as long as it is not longer than a couple months. I would like to be off the escalation mgmt by May (vacation time).
On a side note, I have now been told twice in three days that it must take a lot of my time to post my blog entries. Actually it does take some time, but not as much as it may appear. Most of my posts I can write in one sitting. I can multi-task (check tickets, run reports, talk on the phone, do e-mail) while entering them. I have enjoyed writing for years...ever since community college in NC. I even had one instructor (my second year English teacher) encourage me to get some of my stories published, or at least submit them to magazines. I realize that what I post is not very professionally written, but I do not spend time proofing them like I do my "work".
The "Chronicles" posts are a different story (no pun intended). I have been working on eight or so chapters all at one time for over a month now. They require a lot of thought and while they still are not as polished as my unpublished short stories, my style is still evident. One of my teachers in ComColl described it as "grammatically dangerous but entertaining". Oooooookaaaaayyyy.
I tend to write/post during lunch, breaks, and slow periods saving the drafts until I finish. I cannot help it. Once I got bitten by the blogging bug I was hooked. I have plans to start another one for my church (unofficially) called "The Christian Geek Times"...geared on helping and educating people in our church about technology, mostly geared towards PC's. It is still in the planning phase.
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