No one likes performance appraisals.

Let’s just begin there.

I have written about this before, but apparently the universe, or rather House reruns, felt I needed another reminder.

I was rewatching an episode where Cuddy is trying to get House to complete performance appraisals for his team.

Naturally, this goes about as well as you would expect.

House, being House, manages to turn the entire exercise into a psychological experiment. He gets Foreman to suggest that he could do the appraisals.

Foreman is oddly invested.

No one else is.

Because everyone understands the game.

House has set him up to fail.

It isn’t really about whether Foreman can thoughtfully evaluate his colleagues. It’s about hierarchy. Who has authority? Who gets to judge whom? Who is the boss? Who is the peer?

Performance appraisals are, in many ways, a mighty workplace game.

There is paperwork.

There are forms.

There are competencies.

There are carefully constructed sentences about “opportunities for growth” that somehow manage to say you really need to get your act together without actually saying it.

And, of course, there is compliance.

Because nothing says meaningful human conversation quite like a required form that must be completed by a certain date.

And let’s be honest about what most people really want to know.

Is there a salary increase at the end of this?

That is generally the part of the appraisal process that suddenly makes everyone very attentive.

I actually put a lot of thought into performance appraisals. I read them. I consider what someone has accomplished, where they can grow, what I value about their work and what I hope they will accomplish next.

I try to make them meaningful.

Occasionally, someone actually reads what I wrote.

And then thanks me.

Which is when I wonder whether I have been sucked into a vortex?

Because apparently I am taking the workplace equivalent of a mandated DMV vision test and trying to turn it into a meaningful human experience.

Maybe that is my problem.

Or maybe that is the point.

Because beneath all the forms, ratings, boxes and compliance requirements are actual human beings who want to know:

Am I doing a good job?

Do you see what I contribute?

Am I valued?

Can I grow here?

And, yes…

Is there money?

So perhaps performance appraisals aren’t completely useless.

Perhaps they’re just a mighty game we have collectively agreed to play.

And I, apparently, am one of the suckers who occasionally tries to make the game meaningful.

House would hate me.

Cuddy would probably be thrilled.

And Foreman?

Well, Foreman would probably like to do my appraisal.