When you know you deserve it – ask.

Off to better and happier topics…

When I am not busy social climbing and trying to find a rich husband who will feed and clothe me for the rest of my life, I’m actually one of the lucky few who has a day job (which inevitably extends through the night in most days) that I truly like.

The field of expertise I chose is something very new, albeit also quite difficult to break in a region where it is not exhaustively practiced.

The past several weeks were spent drafting our annual performance evaluations. I rated my one-downs higher than what I received – they deserve it. My team is SPECTACULAR. The mix of people is great and everyone is hardworking.

We managed to reach most of last year’s targets. However, given the economic recession, we were forced to temporarily halt some projects that should have made it.

Pwede kaya itong i-consider na force majeure? Hahaha. Unfortunately not.

My rating was definitely not bad, considering last year’s economic milieu, I think this is the highest rating I have earned, by far. I was already happy with my TOR scores but I felt that in some of the behavioral and leadership scores, both my colleague and I deserved an itsy bitsy higher rating.

Aside from the team’s official cheerleaders, AM and I managed to roll out operations sans the support of my existing vendors in the first half of the year.

Kandakuba na kami delivering all the prototypes and wireframes.

Normally, I just print and sign my evaluation papers. This time, I somehow felt that I needed to justify the behavioral scores to be a notch higher.

I e-mailed my boss about it and made a case as to why I should get higher, citing of course that AM should get higher, too.

I sent my email before lunch time so I was actually antsy the whole time I was eating with friends. It’s not a normal practice to appeal for a re-eval. Hindi ko naubos yung food sa sobrang kabog ng dibdib.

When I got to my desk, I immediately checked mail. Boss raised the scores 2 notches above! Saya! Although the total score was not significantly affected by the increase, I was happy to still get higher.

Perhaps, what made me feel more fulfilled was I took it upon myself to ask for what I think I deserve – which I normally don’t do. There were some evaluation periods that I felt I deserved a higher rating but kept mum about it. I’m happier to have also justified my colleague’s higher scores with me.

Whether or not we get a raise is a different story, but with or without it, I’m just happy with the outcome.

To my team, thanks for being the great and efficient people that you are. We managed to get more visibility and reach more milestones because of you guys.

Game ulit this year!