Cha-ching$
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 1:22PM 22. Get a raise.
Today was my annual performance review at work. I have had a varied past with these because - and I know it sounds cliche to say this - it wasn't me, it was them.
I have good faith in my capabilities as an employee. I'm flexible, I think quickly, I'm very good at responding thoughtfully, thoroughly, and carefully to inquiries and requests. Basically, you want me working for you. No, I'm not perfect, though - I have my bad days. I have days where I'm in a bad mood and it affects my demeanor or days where I'm distracted by what's going on in my personal life and am just doing the minimum requirements for my job that day. But I'm also aware of those things and work to remedy them (and stymie them, if possible).
Most of the time, I have had supervisors who were very complimentary of my work. I have been told that sometimes I work too quickly and make careless mistakes, which is true. I'm terrible at proofreading my own work and so I try to slow down and also try to make sure I can set time aside for extra careful, non-distracted proofreading.
But there was this one time... this one time that turned me off to performance reviews for a long time. Unfortunately, it was at the very beginning of my working career. I was given a mid-year promotion and told that the associated raise would be put in at the next annual review. Except when that review came around, the same boss that told me this said, "No, I never said that. I would never say that." Except she had. It was my big first lesson in getting things in writing.
Today I got it in writing that I am an "effective" or "outstanding" performer in the various tasks of my full-time employment. This garnered me a good raise, the details of which I'm not comfortable discussing publicly since salary is always a private matter (imho). But I'm content. At a time when many companies are experiencing downsizing, hiring freezes, and 0% raises, I'm very happy to have a secure job where the work I do is appreciated and compensated.
101 in 1001, work in Work 
Reader Comments (3)
w00t!
Congratulations girl! Super happy for you!!!!
That is awesome! Congratulations!