Sweeps Week

It's that all important time of year when we get our annual ratings from our supervisors. This involves multiple copies of several pages and covers all aspects of our professionalism.

In short, they kill thousands of trees to tell us were are not quite as dumb as the trees, but it's too close to call.

Sometimes I'm pretty sure they'd be much better off keeping the trees and printing on us.

Once a year we get rated on five different attributes:
1. Knowledge of work.
2. Quality of work.
3. Situational responsiveness
4. Initiative, and
5. Dependability

Your rating can go from Poor to Needs Improvement to Satisfactory to Highly Satisfactory to Outstanding.

As long as you get at least a Satisfactory on your rating they leave you alone. Anything below that for more than one rating period and they can start paperwork to get you fired.

But sometimes that is difficult to back up if it comes right down to it. There are Sergeants rating people who they have hardly ever met, let alone worked with. I suspect that's a little difficult to do.

My first rating when I was at the other camp up the road, was done by a Sergeant who worked on the other side of the camp and who had never seen me before in her life. She just walked in one day and had to ask somebody who I was, then said "Here's your yearly performance rating. I don't know you but I haven't heard any complaints, so you get a rating of Satisfactory."

Okey dokey. After she left I said "What the hell was that all about?" They were all about as new as me and nobody was quite sure. I just said "Okay. Whatever." and went on with my work.

Since I got to Raccoon City I have always known who my rating Sergeant was. For most of my career to this point, it was whoever was the Hive Sergeant at the time. I think I went through about eleven of those in six years. Well, ten. We ended up getting the same one twice.

Now, since I'm considered "utility" I got shifted to Sergeant Archer. I figured that was a good deal on my part. Archer and I spent many nights hip deep in the snit down in the Hive together back when he was a lowly peon like me.

And his lovely little wifey likes me. That always helps.

This year, for the second year in a row, I pulled off an Outstanding.

Those used to be pretty much impossible to get. You'd have to pay somebody or save the Wardens grand daughters life or something to get one of those. And apparently the line following her around waiting for the chance was pretty long.

But they've lowered the bar some and allowed supervisors to hand them out if they think it's suitable. So now if you show up 99% of the time and don't run with scissors too much, you can score an Outstanding.

Good thing I leave my scissors home most days, huh?

It is nice when a supervisor gives you props for doing something right, though. If the rating system went both ways, I'd give him an Outstanding right back again.

Gee, tomorrow is Old Stuff Day. We could hold the parade for that in my living room. Or would it be considered Old Yard Sale Junk Day? I get those confused. When does Stuff become Junk and when is Junk considered Stuff?

And where is George Carlin when we need him?