Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Well yesterday was my annual review, and I have to say I think it went very well.

Caught up with my reviewer again today who said I had some more feedback than I needed to read. I immediately feared the worse (as I always do) that it was negative comments; and as a result got really pissed off for the rest of the day at work - thinking about how annoying / unjust our review process is.
Basically the company applies a normalisation curve; whereby you can't all be excellent.
Some people can be great, others average, and the rest crap. So as you are constantly judged against your peers; someone has to come at the bottom of the pile.
For the last 5 years now I've had average reviews when the company has not been giving out payrise; and crap reviews when they have. Which equates to 5 years of no pay rises.
Now if I get an average (or below) review this year then that would be 6 on the trot.

So you can understand why I was pissed off after having a good review yesterday to be told this following the 'normalisation' meeting today.

My journey home from work was immaculately timed to listen to all of Rage Against The Machines debut album.

So after giving John his evening bottle of milk, I logged on to the work laptop and fought my way through the labyrinth of security to our review tool.

I found the feedback in question, but kept looking incase there was more somewhere.
I looked for almost half an hour around differenent sections of the review but could only find the one section completed since yesterday.

And it was very positive and complimentary. So whilst this doesn't guarantee a pay rise; at least it seems that my annoyance this afternoon was all in vain.

So I'm celebrating with a nice bottle of my favourite branded wine (Mouton Cadet); and watchin Roger Waters do the Wall live from Berlin on DVD.

As for the picture. We are very looking to have a house built on a slope which means that at the front of the house we have a cellar. When we did some building work, we had the old coal cellars redone as a downstairs toilet in one, and a wine cellar in the other. I don't touch the wine too often; but it's nice to know that it's there if needed; and whilst you are not drinking it, it continues to get better.