Outstanding (minus)

On "performance reviews" and not reading the comments

As I write this, I am living in a perpetual tick tock tick tock, less than a month away from the most vigorous piece of work of my career being released: a podcast series about the wrongful conviction of Toforest Johnson, who’s been on Alabama’s death row for 25 years. I’ve been quieter lately while I complete this project that I’ve worked on for three years, the last several months focused on nothing else outside of pulling it over the finish line.

This quiet time before this series reaches the wider world is both precious and nerve-wracking. Each day that I revel in my relative anonymity, I am closer to people around the country, and perhaps the world, listening to this series and of course, forming an opinion about me. I know audience opinion isn’t the point of doing this work, but it’s going to be there and I’m trying to bone up my toughness before it comes. I know reading the comments will be a bad idea, but it will be an intentional act of resistance for me to not go there. As “Moth to Flame” suggests, I’m often attracted to risky business.

I recently found a document in a file, my staff performance evaluation from 2015, from back when I worked as a TV news anchor and reporter. Scanning the document, I snort-laughed when I saw my bosses marked “outstanding” as my overall score, but then hand wrote the word “minus” above it in parenthesis.

Why the minus? On this particular review, I was rated in ten different categories on a scale of 1-5, one being poor and five being excellent. Five of my ratings were excellent, one was a 4.5, but four were 4s. Those categories where I fell short of excellent were volume of work, skill & aptitude (OUCH), punctuality & attendance and attitude toward company, managers and associates. In that last category, I didn’t hit the qualities of “earnest,” “sincere,” and “cheerful” in my attitude toward the company to garner an excellent rating. In hindsight, I am totally good with that.

I underwent yearly reviews throughout my career from 1997-2019, and I don’t recall ever receiving a truly bad evaluation. I was a steadfast worker who cared about my job and tried very hard to execute what my supervisors wanted, and my reviews reflected this. But there was always some something that I should improve, some area of growth or development opportunity or attainable goal that I needed to achieve before I could be declared truly outstanding.

I remember the dreaded routine of these reviews, being called into the boss’s office to go over their findings, sitting on the other side of the desk and nodding along. I remember signing the document, saying thank you and yes I’ll work on that, then sliding out of the seat and slinking back to my desk in the newsroom, wearing a hot-faced shame, like when my 5th grade teacher announced in front of the class, “Beth Shelburne, nobody in here is impressed with you.”

Finding this document from 2015 reminded me of the emptiness I felt working for media companies, striving for their benchmarks, year after year, but never quite finishing in first place. And the absurdity of this practice—rating human beings according to categories, like we are just another consumer product, it’s a good reminder to take all feedback, be it from a boss or a reader/listener of my work, with a giant grain of salt. Yes, constructive criticism is necessary for growth, but at the end of the day, loving and accepting myself as I am is paramount.

The highly visible positions I held in TV news thrust me into the public spotlight, often garnering both positive and negative recognition, but it’s the insults I remember the most—the slights, the mean-spirited critiques, the “minuses,” if you will.

“You used to be hot, but now you look like a skunk died on your head,” a viewer once emailed me after I changed my hair color when I worked in San Diego.

“It’s too bad about your eyebrows,” a talent agent mused casually as she studied my face. Then she suggested I pencil them in with black eyeliner.

“You’re not that bad,” a makeup artist in Boston stated, right before she gave me a heavy makeover prescribed by a new boss who insisted I needed to be “glammed up.” That boss, by the way, was a woman.

A quick hallelujah that I’m no longer subjected to regular reviews on my physical appearance from assholes, and being self-employed keeps me safe from enduring annual reviews from bosses. But I do still receive feedback on my work from readers, many of them critical, and soon I will likely be bombarded with opinions from listeners of the podcast. I’ll be over here doing deep breathing exercises until that comes.

I’m also here working my butt off to make something true, enlightening and important. I have immersed myself in this project like nothing I have ever done before and have lost sleep trying to make sure every element is told fairly, accurately and expertly. It has been a gift to do this work and to bring this story into form. I know I have done my best, am still doing my best, and no good or bad reviews can change that. No handwritten “minus” can take away my time and energy and creativity and work. And the more I think about it, maybe that minus on my review was actually a plus. I mean, who wants to be perfect?