Blogging since 1998. By David Wertheimer

Month: October 2008 (Page 2 of 2)

links for 2008-10-20

  • I really, really, really want to do this with my kid next year
    (tags: kids humor)
  • "I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. 'Can I interest you in the chicken?' she asks. 'Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?' To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."

On performance reviews

Get Rid of the Performance Review! in the Wall Street Journal tackles the outmoded concept of one-way personnel assessments. In it, Samuel Culbert makes the case that reviews slow productivity and breed animosity in ways that are not particularly useful. Employee “previews” are suggested as an alternative.
But a far better mechanism already exists: the employee-led performance review. Staff are given blank assessment sheets and write objective reports of themselves. These are then shared with management; the boss leads a sit-down session to discuss areas agreed upon as well as areas omitted by the employee.
I’ve been giving and receiving self-administered performance reviews for years and see many benefits. Employees are often more critical of themselves than their managers. They encourage improvement even before the face-to-face review begins. The process also eliminates the one-sidedness of employer reviews, because the process begins with a dialogue rather than a directive.
Some organizations do two-sided assessments, which is even better: employee fills out a form, employer fills out the same form, then both sides review the two sheets together. This provides great momentum for consensus-building and easily identified goals. It also clarifies why areas are included or excluded by either party (e.g. “I hadn’t mentioned my early Friday departures because I thought my late nights offset them… I’m glad you highlighted this as something that’s important to the company.”).
My current employer has begun managerial reviews, which is an interesting twist: we’ve got one-way reports, but they’re up the chain of command instead of down, so I’ve been reviewed by a project manager and am scheduled to review the president. I was reluctant to do them at first, and now I know why: they are the one-side-accountable, administered/received reviews outlined in the WSJ article. Fortunately, bubble-up reviews work differently–they’ve been excellent sessions of constructive criticism and a good chance to think objectively about peers. Very useful for continued personal growth, particularly in a small company.

On Manhattan

Emily Magazine: The kind of crazy you get from too much choice.

The truth [about living in New York City] is that we try to make it hard for ourselves by creating a lot of tasks and rules and very, very specific needs. The arcane evidence fills the shelves at every big Korean deli in Manhattan and every bodega in gentrified Brooklyn: we need almond butter and organic tempeh and unbleached cotton tampons. We might even need specific brands of these things. We need 24-hour access. We need to never be more than two blocks from an ATM. We need taxis and car services that know how to take us anywhere. We need free wifi and bottled unsweetened iced tea and perfectly decent sushi that costs less than $10. We need fresh lemongrass and thai basil and epazote and coconut milk and three different kinds of artisanal ginger beer and cane-juice-sweetened dark chocolate. We need $40 moisturizer from Kiehl’s and perfect $10 bras from Target and Japanese bubble tea and two eggs and cheese on a toasted whole wheat bagel prepared in under a minute.

An absolute truism of Manhattan residents is that we define our existence by our cravings. We sacrifice significant comforts of space and money in exchange for convenience and specificity.
I can write a paragraph just like Emily’s. My family lives in an utterly charming apartment, filled with light and two minutes from the subway, that also happens to consume an extraordinary percentage of our take-home pay and has no closet in the baby’s bedroom. We have several boxes of Mighty Leaf tea (15 packets, $9) alongside the Lipton (48 bags, $4) in our cabinet. We bring our Chinese and Japanese food uptown from the Village because we haven’t found restaurants on the Upper West Side that meet our tastes. I have over the years switched drycleaners no fewer than 11 times. My wife craves nice shoes like Sigerson Morrisons, of which she a pair, and also Sigerson Morrisons from Target, of which she also has a pair. Our stroller retails for nine hundred dollars and barely fits in the trunk of our car. That we even have a car is considered a luxury; that we share and street-park the car is considered cheap.
Yet this lifestyle is by choice, and it’s one we are pleased to have made. We are in Riverside Park nearly every day with our son and our dog. We do have a 24-hour specialty grocer around the corner, and six places with baked goods within a five-minute walk, and we take full advantage. I ride my bicycle to work twice a week alongside the Hudson River. Our home is full of century-old detail that can only be found in an urban dwelling. We see award-winning theater on a whim, shop in fascinating locally owned stores, eat at world-class restaurants and walk home.
In some ways it is a peculiar living, but it is also a spectacular one. We made a conscious decision to stay in Manhattan, at least in the near term. And I, for one, don’t regret it in the least.

links for 2008-10-10

In the elevator

Scene: two tall, thin women, one blonde, one brunette. The blonde is carrying lunch.
Brunette: “You go there?”
Blonde: “I like their egg whites. They’re really good.”
“Really? What do you order?”
“I get the egg whites, some brown rice, and a little bit of fat-free cheese.”
“That sounds like it doesn’t taste like anything!”
“Well, you can put, like, ketchup on it.”

links for 2008-10-02

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