I Prefer Peace, Wouldn’t Have to Have One Worldly Possession; But Essentially I’m an Animal, So Just What Do I Do With All the Aggression?

Thursday. Sorry about the no post yesterday. Man, I'm getting really sloppy lately. Yesterday, though, I couldn't post because I was busy all afternoon meeting with the Big Boss Lady. She was in town yesterday. I had my annual performance review, then we went out to lunch, and then we spent the afternoon going over my accounts. The review in itself went pretty well. She had no complaints about my past year of service (at least none that will be entered into my permanent record...) and she recognized me for a lot of things that I have done. Most of the time we spent talking about my goals for the upcoming year and what the future holds for me in my new position. But who cares about all that? All anyone wants to know about performance review, whether it's theirs or someone else's, is the bottom line. Did you get a raise and if so, how big?

Well, faithful readers, what I feared would happen happened. She low-balled me. And when I say "low-balled" I mean I estimated the lowest number that she would possibly offer me and she managed to go significantly under it. Put it this way, this promotion is pretty much going to be in title only. Even though I supposedly jumped two pay grades, my actual pay didn't jump any more than what I would have received in a standard annual increase. I tried to counter with a few of those nifty tricks I read about on the internet, but it didn't work. She advised since I would be eligible for the managerial incentive bonus, that was my increase. Um, last time I checked a "bonus" wasn't guaranteed. Base salary is. I asked her what the median pay was in the salary range for that grade (knowing full well what it was ahead of time and knowing that I was well below it). She said that she didn't have the numbers in front of her (yeah, right) but she would take a look at it again when she got back to her office today. She said that if there was any leeway then we could revisit the subject in January and perhaps she could do something then.

I have to admit I am a little disappointed. I mean, don't get me wrong, I am super pumped to get the new title and promotion, but I was really hoping for at least some extra cash, especially for jumping two pay grades. I'm still trying to pay off some debt that the Mrs. and I racked up as a result of both of our respective layoffs a few years back, and that little extra income each month would have sure helped speed the payback period up. But you can't really bring up any personal finance issues while trying to buck for a promotion or during salary negotiations. "Baby needs a new pair of shoes" doesn't really get much sympathy in the corporate world, I guess. In fact, as much as I don't like it, what the Big Boss Lady did was perfectly fair by the company rules. She took a look at the salary range for the position. Then, according to company policy she is mandated to give a certain percentage of annual increase in relation to how an employee's performance review is rated. So, she rated my performance review accordingly and gave me the mandated percentage. My old pay plus that percentage increase just squeaked me into the bottom end of the pay range for the new position. Voila! I am now officially within the pay grade range without having to give me any significant increases in pay (a 10% increase per pay grade is the "traditional" amount for a promotion). If I complain? Hey, the reason why I told her I needed a promotion to this level was so I could operate my job function at the higher level she expected without having my hands tied behind my back because I didn't have the authorization to access and/or approve certain documents, etc. Now I can. I got what I asked for. What am I whining about, then?

Pretty crafty if you step back and look at it from an objective view. I guess that's how you get to be one of the big bosses in the corporate world. On the flip side, I did get the title I've been after for a long time now, which just increased the value of my resume by several hundred times so if I do deem it necessary to re-enter the labor pool I have a much greater fighting chance than I did last time when I was up against everybody else who got laid off here a few years back in tech industry-heavy Colorado. That's definitely a big plus, for sure.

I have new music today to discuss (yeah!). Actually, I had new music yesterday, but since I didn't get a chance to discuss it, I listened to it again this morning so I could talk about it today. There's this song out that is getting a ton of play on the radio right now (yes, I admit it, I was listening to commercial radio) called Crazy by Gnarls Barkley. I'm sure you've heard it. Clear Channel is making sure of it. Anyway, this song is incredibly infectious and wouldn't leave my head so I decided I would check out the rest of the album.

Gnarls Barkley is a duo made up of rapper Cee-Lo and DJ/producer Danger Mouse. Apparently this Danger Mouse guy is really big in the UK. To me, Danger Mouse was a sweet cartoon I used to watch in my younger years (and by "younger years" I mean I currently have some episodes on tape at home). Then again, I haven't been on top of what is hip and cool in the music world since, well, ok - I've never been on top of what is hip and cool in the music world but I'm tryin'...

I guess the big thing to mention about Crazy is that it's the first song to ever go number one in the UK solely on downloads alone. That's actually pretty sweet (dinosaur record execs beware bwahahahahaahaha!). Overall St. Elsewhere (the album on which Crazy appears, not the '80s Ed Begley, Jr. hospital show) is pretty good. The stand out tracks for me were Just a Thought and Who Cares? These songs are what decent hip-hop tunes should be: good beats, soulful vocals, and smart lyrics. Unfortunately these tracks were mixed in with a couple of misses. I could have done without Necromancer and The Boogie Monster was one of the corniest tunes I've heard since DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince did Nightmare on My Street. The worst for me was a hip-hop remake of the Violent Femmes' Gone Daddy Gone. This song was about a hundred times better than Femme's version, but since the Violent Femmes currently have a negative rank on my enjoyablelisteningometer and we all know that anything times a negative number only increases its negative value, this song didn't stand a chance with me. The rest of the tunes were listenable enough though to give this album a positive review. Check it out for the few really good tracks. I think it's worth it.