I just can’t decide if it happens after a good life or a really terrible one…
All top Veterans Affairs managers got high performance ratings despite long delays, patient deaths
Every top manager of the Department of Veterans Affairs received a positive performance evaluation for the past four years, and 78 percent got a bonus in 2013, despite a string of patient deaths and falsification of records related to patient wait times, according to congressional testimony Friday.
Agency executives write their own performance evaluations, which seem to receive only cursory reviews from their supervisors, several committee members said in questioning the VA’s top personnel officer.
While everyone was deemed at least “fully successful” in meeting their performance goals, 57 percent of top managers were rated to have exceeded expectations and another 21 percent were found to be “outstanding,” according to testimony from Gina Farrisee, assistant secretary for human resources and administration at VA.
That’s what I did wrong all those years: I let other people write my performance reviews. Dammit!
Must be nice. I’ve never had a job — mil, civ, cop — where I got to write my own performance evals (unless you count my self-employed time). But geez…
These guys get great write-ups and bonuses when people are dropping dead, when…
Back in my Air Farce days, I had a guy working for me. He had just cross-trained from parachute packer to radio tech. Despite being new to the field, he was an above average tech. I also put him in charge of the tech library and he cleaned up all the problems there. He’d get bored on slow shifts and look for more little things in the shop to fix. When his performance review came due, I wrote him a great one, and forwarded it to the commander. The captain then called me into his office to order me to lower my rating of Ripcord’s work. I refused. We went back and forth, and the captain declared that he was going to down-rate Rip and that’s the number that would go in his records. I told him fine, but that would make it a referral APR with mandatory review by his boss, and I could damned well document everything I put it in it. The captain freaked and yelled that I had to to lower the rating. I just said no. The captain shouted, “But he’s black!”
As you might imagine, things got nasty then. But Ripcord got the walk-on-water review I wanted. I went through that shit with that captain every time someone with a low albedo or Hispanic surname got an APR. Contrariwise, he also tried to force me to rate one loser — who routinely showed up late for his shifts, got counseled multiple time for faking meter readings, and commonly “forgot” to do scheduled PMs — higher; that guy was white.
Truth to tell, I wasn’t terribly popular with the guys in that shop. Over the years, I’ve sometimes wondered how they’d feel if they’d known what was going on the background.
Bear: Wow. When was this?
Long time ago. ’87 or thereabouts.
Wow – I was in (Marines) during that time and had the exact opposite problem. I had a “dark green” radar tech who hadn’t touched a radar in the 2 years he “worked” for me. He spent all his time acting as the CO’s “driver” – the CO didn’t have a .mil vehicle – and appearing before boards. Only time *I* saw him was at morning formation, but I was always pressured to give him outstanding reviews (so he’d continue to look good in front of the boards). Finally the CO just stopped tasking me to do his reviews. But I have to admit, the guy did have some shiny boots and a whole lot of Marine/NCO/Black Marine/Black NCO of the Month/Quarter awards!
And I had a “light green” radar tech who was repairing more equipment than any 3 other techs combined, but because he had been involved in a fight out in town 3 years previously (no charges – it was acknowledged by all that he had been jumped and just defended himself), the CO consistently refused to let his name go up for promotion while ALL his peers were promoted far beyond him.
The CO was a “good ol’ boy” from NC, so it wasn’t a case of him “taking care of his own”. In fact, the CO was probably the biggest bigot in the company!
Eventually, we got a new CO and I was able to get the second guy promoted.
Heh. I sat on a few “Airman of the Month” boards, but only once did I go up before one. That was in tech school (Keesler AFB) after Basic. The first question they asked me was, “Why do you think you should be Airman of the Month”?
I replied, “I don’t. I didn’t want to be here. I have work to do and a block test I’d rather be studying for. I asked the guy who nominated me to withdraw the nomination, but he refused.”
No, I didn’t win. And I was seemingly thereafter followed through USAF life by a secret file that said, “For Bog’s sake never, ever put this guy in front of board again. Really!”