Mostly Harmless

Recently I had my mid match review. In the public service, indeed any white collar org I suspect, you have performance agreements in play. Every few months, typically six, you sit down with your boss and check your agreement. You then get given a grade and the grade given determines if you get a performance pay boost.

I hate this process. I can fully see its need, I just dislike having the spotty turned on me and a discussion about how I've gone

My boss is a proper boss. As in he gives a shit about what I do and more importantly how I go about doing it. It's a nice change - but it means I can't be coasting along in my job. Which, again is how it should be.

But the mid match review is an optional thing. It's basically half way to see how I am tracking.

I have never had one of those before. Yes, my boss cares enough to see half way how I am going.

Well ... okay is how I am going. I dropped the ball a couple of times of late and because I am a soft cock who dislikes confrontations I've let people miss deadlines to my (our) disadvantage. The boss, bless him, said it was because I was a good citizen but noted the need for me to toughen up and have clear 'too bad, bad luck, so sad' milestones that, when past, meant people missed out.

Again, he's right.

Finally, after this constructive do better advice, he said he appreciated my "quirky" humour and said he was really happy with my mucking in with social activities.

In short - it went well - even if it was constructive criticism. And I got a quirky out of it - which is the Mostly Harmless.

The other thing is unlike bosses of the past he's willing to play bad cop to my good cop when it comes to telling people off which is just awesome.