Being a Bitch at Work

I'm having a bad week.

Last week I had my performance review with my boss. I usually dread performance reviews. Typically I’d be gunning for a promotion. Sensitive to real or manufactured feedback from supervisors that could place an obstacle in the way of salary and title growth. Since college I have worked at advertising agencies that are constantly getting bought, sold, and restructured, so I have always had to be pushy to get ahead.

About a year ago I decided I wanted to go to law school. I did really well on the LSAT and have gotten the scholarship offers I wanted, so for a few weeks I’ve known that I’ll be quitting my job in July and am not looking to get promoted. That took the pressure off this year’s performance review. Also, last year’s review was good and I have gotten better at my job since last year, so I didn’t think I had anything to worry about.

I want to paint a picture of what people at advertising agencies are like. One time a few months into a job, a supervisor asked me how I planned out budgets for our campaigns. I used a combination of historical data and intuition, as was the process at all my previous agency jobs. I took our breakdown from last year, and made some changes based on recent ROI numbers, platforms that the clients like, budget increases or decreases, segment sizes, stuff like that. This supervisor, who took 80mg of adderall a day, made a big huff about this and was bewildered that I was ever trained to do it that way. She explained that I needed to use this excel document with formulas that she created. On a video call she walked me through how to use this document. It didn’t just generate the values for you based on audience size, reach, and frequency. That would make too much sense. She told me that I had to “manipulate the formulas to output the budgets I want.” Even more arbitrary than what I was doing. This was a fully internal document that only she required us to use.

My performance review was on a Teams meeting. My current supervisor is not as neurotic as the one described above, but tends to spiral and upend entire processes when she makes a mistake. She started off the call by reading me her feedback and the feedback provided by coworkers. It was very positive and made me smile. The account team and clients love me. They said I make their jobs easier, and that I’m more responsive and cooperative than other people at my level. My supervisor’s feedback was very positive as well. She said I’ve done a great job holding down my brands while we’ve had a few coworkers go on leave this year.

Then we got to the rating. Every year we’re rated on a scale of 1 to 3. This is used by the company to justify promotions, PIPs, and firings. You only get a 3 if you’re getting promoted, and you’d know about it before the review. You get a 1 if you’re in trouble, and you should also know about it before the review. I got a 1. My supervisor told me that she had a really hard time choosing between a 1 or a 2, and “could have gone either way.” I asked her how 1 was even considered as an option based on our conversation, and why she didn’t just go with the 2 if she “could have gone either way.” She alluded to project ownership and a campaign error that I had caught last year - we had discussed that incident earlier on the call where she admitted it was out of my control.

I hung up on her, started crying to myself, and started writing a strongly-worded email to our VP. I said that my rating was inaccurate and unfair. He expressed sympathy and said that he can explain my review more detail. I met with him and we went in circles for 25 minutes. He alluded to ownership, I asked if he had any examples where I haven’t shown ownership, he had none.

After that meeting I wrote an email describing the situation to HR and stared at it for 30 minutes before hitting send. I was soft with my words. I wrote that I felt my rating was “inaccurate” instead of unfair, and basically just asked if they can help me get a clearer explanation for the rating. It seems like it’s gonna become a battle of paperwork.

I don’t expect HR to do anything about it. My company just got acquired and has laid off hundreds of employees over the past few months, and our client just told us they’re not renewing our contract at the end of the year, so I suspect this has impacted promotions, raises, and ratings.

A couple years ago I’d have sat back and taken the beating out of fear for my job security. Even though I’m leaving in a few months, I don’t want to end my tenure at this company with a bad mark on my record. And since I’m leaving in a few months, I’m happy to drag this out and give them a headache. I like the feeling of letting my self-assurance take the wheel.