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Earlier today my boss called me into his office to review my goals for 2007.

For some reason that escapes even the Gods of Cobal, I am taking these goals very seriously this year. So I was miffed when he took it upon himself to change around all my goals as if the ones I had chosen for myself were not good enough. A couple of the changes he made were OK I guess but what he chose for goal #2 was not worthy, in my opinion, of it’s spot in the list. It was more like a task that could take me all of one hour to complete. Certainly not a GOAL.

I brought it up. He asked what I’d rather have for a goal and I told him. So he typed it in real quick and printed out another copy to sign. But as I was about to sign it, I noticed he didnt’ put it in as a goal but rather as a side note or comment. I said I wanted to replace his lousy goal with mine instead, not add it as a comment. Then he said he wanted to keep the original goal but coudln’t add a 5th so he could only add it as a comment.

Before I could protest anymore, he stopped me and reminded me how “bad” my own goals were. He read back one of my original goals and scoffed at how vague it was. “That’s not a real goal”, he said. “You need something concrete, not some gradiose task you may or may not ever complete..”. Gee thanks for having faith in me! It wasn’t like my goals were to solve world hunger or bring peace to the middle east.

He went on to tell me how horrible my goals have been in previous years. “Let me remind you of your goals from a couple years ago..” and he clicked around furiously on his computer until he found them…

He read them out loud!

Goal #1. To help our-tools-development-team get our fabulous monitoring system fixed finally so I can get away from having to work with, sleep, and breathe monitoring-program-#1 and monitoring-program-#2 five miserable days a week.

Goal #2. Strive to be given more meaningful projects where I can feel I’m working to the level of my job rank.

By now I was laughing so hard I had to wipe the tears away, but he wasn’t done reading them…

Goal #3. To lose 30 lbs so I can become a faster worker, have more monitoring-tool stamina and catch those bugs before they blow server-uptime-standard for an entire month.

And finally Goal #4. Have another baby so I can get out of weekly meetings for another year.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’m very ashamed to admit these were my goals for the year 2004. Sigh…

OK, that shut me up.