Performance Management

My grandfather worked the same job for nearly his entire life. My father has probably had eight so far. I have, too, and I'm younger than my father, depending on who you ask.

So that progression, linked with the fact that Minotaur has now lost three employees in as many days in their New York office alone, says to me that the protective temple of the American worker that was fought for in Pittsburgh's rail yards and Chicago's meat factories has been sacked and burned by the Visigoths.

The unions, the fair pay laws and everything else can now be boiled down into a barely legible laminated poster in our break room, stating all of our rights as workers. The great amount of text is promising but even if we could read it, none of us can understand it.

We also have something called "at-will employment," meaning the job can be terminated on the spot by either the employer or employee with no notice or severance whatsoever. So I just looked up one day and discovered three empty desks.

Working at Minotaur is lucrative but hard. I just finished a work week that passed 60 hours yesterday. So it's not for everybody. The fact that three people left is not as interesting to me as the manner in which they did.

They were disposable. The desks will be filled soon by other people with other resumes, although probably ones that still complain about parking prices and congestion on the LIE. They walked out of the manager's office, took ten minutes to finish paperwork while I catalogued their equipment and left with a handshake to "bigger and better things." It sounded to me more like "a far, far better place," but I hope they do okay.

Of course, if they got hit by a bus five minutes later, they would have no medical insurance, no steady income and not enough personal worth to offset the cost of treatment. I wouldn't have either a month ago, but at least I'm used to it.

The departures came after the high command of Minotaur issued a new performance plan, dictating strict rules for employees. If they did not meet certain targets, they would have to enter a "coaching plan." If that failed, further "performance management" would be necessary, including termination of employment.

I've heard "you're fired," "you're gone," "here's your pink slip" and "we're going to have to let you go." But no euphemism was quite as annoying to me as "performance management." Imagine carting a 40-year-old guy with two kids and an 80-year mortgage into your office and telling him it's now all in jeopardy by saying "I'm sorry, but we have to manage your performance."

Perhaps the American workplace will find that, since everyone knows all that crap means firing, management might as well stop bothering trying to find new names for it. If they're that concerned, it would be far more cost-effective to find new ways to spell it.

So maybe I'll walk into the office one day and hear, "Hawk, you're ferid."