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I remember a world-famous entrepreneur and the owner of a Fortune 100 company (name withheld for security reasons) saying in an interview: “Entrepreneurial success depends on your ability to hire more talented people than you and make them work in teams.” With such utopian modus operands of successful organizations, the obvious conclusion that any fool can come up with is there are more talents in the lower ranks than in the higher ranks, and the intensity of talents increase as you slip down the corporate hierarchy.

This can also mean the more talented you are the lower your rank would be in the corporate ladder. So, at the end of the year when the appraisal takes place, the appraisee is more talented and resourceful than the appraiser. This inverted funnel of talents is the root of the problem that many companies are overwhelmed with. The result is, the relatively stupid person who is your appraiser makes you accountable for his or her shortcomings and bulldozes the money that rightfully belongs to you.

In this monstrous process of the destruction of one’s self-esteem with the pebbles of others’ drawbacks thrown at you mercilessly, the employee starts bleeding, and a war is raged between the employer and the employee. In a nutshell, this is performance appraisal or performance review which makes the employee feel like Napoleon Bonaparte on the last day of the Battle of Waterloo.

A strange sense of complacency grips the employee with disgust in all the lobes of his or her brain that they desperately try to justify with all their virtues and vices. The employees have to console themselves with the hard-earned wisdom that capabilities are not directly proportional to monetary growth and fulfilment of desires. This uncanny wisdom earned at the expense of employees’ own loss becomes the inspiration for another coming year. And for some who cannot suppress their expectations take recourse to gullible ways of increasing their earnings through appraisals.

Despite the good intent of the theorists of the performance appraisal process to bolster the organizational will with appreciation and monetary incentives, the performance review seems to put a brake on the positivity of the employees’ psyche. They are made to believe they are not as good as they think of themselves and they are forced to pay the penance of their sins against productivity that they have committed throughout the year, lest their good deeds, virtues, and sacrifices.

Building Immunity is Important

As you become more experienced in the rigmarole of the whole process of the performance appraisal, the degree of your mental injury reduces as you start building mental antibodies. Albeit the process is very scientific to woo the employees, inflate their expectations, and break their hearts. They are expected to document the achievements and strengths that they exhibited in the bygone year that their bosses or appraisers are expected to squeeze into negligible trivia. To the unprepared employee, this may seem like hammering the last nails of their own coffins.

Sotto Voce

Irrespective of all your achievements, your appraiser of the performance appraisal process takes care of the main objectives of the process. They are:

• Make your contribution to the organization look negligible.
• Get your signed confession about the crimes you committed against productivity at all levels.
• Justify your low salary with irrevocable decrees of irrationality.

Nevertheless, no matter what kind of discomfort you are subjected to, I, Norman, my friend Ozi, and my colleagues are with you. Subscribe to our newsletter to laugh at our digital comics published daily for mental strength as you get to know that you are not alone. Click here to check out our online office cartoons. Write to us at comics@normanandozi.com for us to throw light on subjects often overlooked.

See ya!

Sincerely Yours,

Norman & Ozi

Ahoy there, my fellow corporate comrades and people sitting behind the glass doors! Today, I am going to spill the beans on the ultimate secret to surviving the nine-to-five grind – how to be the office clown without getting sent to the HR’s cabin! So, grab your coffee mugs and prepare to laugh your way through the workday, because fun is the only way to Nirvana to cut through the drab monotony of the world.

For the somber and serious people out there with nervous disorders in the facial muscles and who rarely laugh, let me tell you, not for all, work is a holiday. For many, it is a drab and humourless affair that we are often tied a noose around our necks and asked to do with tight deadlines and quality departments looming large on us. Despite the monotonous morphology of work, we have to do it for a living. So, here, a little office humor and laughter can make your day by softening the muscles of frowned faces. So, grab your coffee mugs and get prepared to laugh!

Water cooler gossips – Unwiring the weary souls

Let’s talk about the water cooler first where gossips originate, top secrets are divulged, and rumors are spread. Albeit it is the right place to unleash your comedic genius. When someone murmurs saying, again, I have a meeting with the boss later in the day. It is the right time to spill the pun and say, “Good luck – hope PowerPoint works in your favor!”

Breaking the Boardroom Boredom

Another significant place to break the boredom by cracking jokes is when you address the elephant in the boardroom meetings! Everyone pretends to be interested while secretly daydreaming about escaping to a tropical island. This is the perfect venue to inject some humor into these soul-sucking sessions by strategically using metaphors while saving your back too. When your boss is droning on quarterly reports, a remark like “Listening to this presentation is like trying to teach a cat to tap dance – entertaining, yet futile” can make people loosen their jaws a bit.

Unlocking the Cubicle Conundrum

Now, let’s dive into the delicate art of cubicle banter. Remember, timing is everything. When your co-worker is stressing over a deadline, stroll by their desk and whisper, “They say stress is just confusion leaving the brain. So, you’re just getting smarter by the minute!” It’s like offering a mental spa day without the hefty price tag.

Ice breakers in the break room

Now, let’s talk about the sacred territory of the break room. If your office is anything like mine, it’s a battleground for coveted microwave minutes. So, the next time you find yourself in a microwave standoff, unleash your inner stand-up comedian. Say, “You know you’re an adult when you get excited about a clean microwave. It’s like winning the lottery but with leftovers!”

Teaming up for laughter

Lastly, team-building activities – are a necessary evil of corporate life. Whether it’s a trust fall or a ropes course, approach it with the enthusiasm of a cat being forced into a bath. When the team-building facilitator suggests a trust fall, respond with, “I trust everyone here… to watch me plummet to the ground like a deflated balloon. Let’s do this!” It’s a sure-fire way to break the ice and probably a few bones.

In conclusion, my fellow office jesters, remember that office humor is the secret weapon in the battle against workplace monotony. So, go forth and sprinkle your workplace with humor and laughter like glitter at a unicorn party. And if anyone questions your methods, just throw on a clown wig and tell them you’re conducting a morale-boosting experiment. After all, who can resist the charm of a corporate jester? Happy joking, my friends! Have and make them have fun!

Sincerely Yours,

Norman & Ozi