Career development

The Big Swinging Dick might have had a day not actually at work, but that didn't mean he wasn't up to his eye balls in it. Yesterday evening I took a string of calls from him as he worked his way through the contents of his 'in-tray', which he'd taken home with him. When he wasn't checking that we'd duly actioned the various product recall notices we've been called upon to deal with during his period of leave, he was checking on the spelling of the names of the new staff we've taken on in the last month and re-authorising leave applications that have been submitted and authorised by one or other of his underlings.

During one conversation he happened to mention the 'good news' that this year we're to have a round of 'annual staff performance appraisals'. Any one outside the organisation reading the announcement (which I'd already done - I DO read the weekly newsletter, even if his managers don't) might understandably make the mistake of thinking this is an unexpected example of 'best practice' within an organisation that is otherwise generally a fine exemplar of amateur hour.

It talks loftily of training packs and staff development profiles and so on and so forth. The truth is going to be somewhat different. If the last round of 'annual staff performance appraisals', held some four years ago, is anything to go by most meetings between appraisees and appraiser will be conducted over a crafty fag out in the delivery bay during a break in the miserable autumn weather.

I don't smoke. (Did I not mention this before? Oops. And I'm an ex-smoker too. Can't even get that right. Phug it!)

Any ho, having made the joyous announcement that these hoops are to be jumped through he immediately proceeded to tell me that Paper Shuffler-in-Chief will be doing mine, unless I want him to do it. Now what the phug am I supposed to make of that?

PSiC is in an excellent position to comment on my er, time keeping, filing, ability with a calculator and a computer keyboard, willingness to come in at 6 in the morning and stay until 9 in the evening (though not necessarily on the same day), and tolerance for rude and stupid customers and her foibles.

All of this is fine, as far as it goes. But PSiC is just as happy as a pig in shit in her little world of the back office, she has a very marginal interest in any other aspect of the business, and so her ability to review my performance outside the office is commensurately limited. As far as she's concerned the position she holds represents a career pinnacle. How to advise someone sitting below her in the food chain? How to advise someone who regards the food chain we're both in is a evolutionary dead end.

A bit of intelligent design is called for here, if no where else. So do I politely tell her I'd prefer that the BSD do my review? What's he going to do? Thank me for my efforts and ask me to sit on my hands while I wait for one or other of the three graces to retire, resign or drop dead? Charming, or what?