For many years I was quite reserved and in most cases kept my thoughts to myself. Then I entered a period of “Internal Sweats”. Someone would do or say something that I knew was not correct (at least from my standpoint) and those Internal Sweats would build up until I just had to say something to the person. This story occurred in the early to mid-1990s.
I was working in Center City Philadelphia, experiencing a “brain drain” at work so I took my Philadelphia Inquirer with me at lunchtime and sat in the Suburban Train Station on a bench and read my paper. Shortly after sitting down, two individuals, a lady probably in her 30s along with a man in his 50s came walking toward me and took a seat on a bench facing toward me that was several yards away from me. They sat far enough away from me that I did not hear every word of the conversation but I heard enough to get the gist. There was no doubt in my mind that this was a professional relationship and which of the two was the supervisor and which was the minion. The lady was made up like a model, wore a bright red dress and had spring in her step. The man was bundled in an overcoat and wore a hat and appeared to dread what was about to come.
The performance appraisal began right there in the middle of Suburban Station. The lady chewed up the man on one side and down the other with nary an “Atta boy”. No sooner had he recovered from one derogatory comment than two more followed! Every so often I would glance over the paper that I held in front of me to see if the fellow was going to survive. I actually felt both sorry and embarrassed for the poor man.
The appraisal ended and they both got up to go back to work. But wait a minute. Now there were three going the same direction! I just had to stand up a bit for that man so I followed them both to a large bank building. My trail ended when I saw the lady in red going up a giant escalator inside the building. End of story? Nope, there is more than one way to solve this problem. I got back to my office and called the bank. I described the lady to whoever answered and told them she may be in Human Resources (or maybe then it was still Personnel). The one receiving my call immediately gave me the lady in red’s name and phone number. I called her and told her who I was and where I had seen her. I’m sure I would not make a good private eye because she said she had noticed me peer over my paper a few times at her. I proceeded to tell her that I had been in Personnel early in my career; however I would not have needed that experience to know by common sense that she broke almost every rule in the book while giving a work appraisal. She told me she would like to go to lunch with me to discuss my feelings further. I did not accept right away and told her I would get back to her once I cleared our lunch date with my wife. My wife agreed and we scheduled the lunch. I voiced my concerns to her and she did listen. Of course I will never know if she took my criticism to heart. However, I did learn one thing. The saying: “There is no such thing as a free lunch” may be right most of the time but she offered to pay and I let her do so. I suppose I thought my time spent counselling her was at least worth the price of a free lunch.
Jeff Hall, of Honey Brook, writes columns for Tri County Record.
