Employee: Me. You know the one.
Employer: Could be anyone I’ve ever worked for. Past, current, future. Mind yo’ mama’s bursitis.
Review Period: Q3, allegedly. Feels closer to 33 years running.
Overall Rating: Exceeds expectations. Compensated like she barely meets them.
Hours Logged
Significantly less than what actually happened this quarter. If I wrote the real number down here, somebody in HR would have questions I have no interest in answering, and I’d have even less interest in the follow up meeting.
Manager Comments
Glowing. Not polite-glowing, the kind you scan and forget by lunch. Actually glowing, the kind with exclamation points in it. Excellent work. Wonderful instincts. So grateful to have me as one of the standouts on the team, allegedly the standout, though I’ve never once seen the list I’m supposedly topping. I have read that word, standout, in more than one review now, and I have started to notice what it does and does not come attached to. It doesn’t come attached to a number that moves my pay closer to what I am worth. It doesn’t even come attached to a number that moves me above the lowest paid person on my own team. Standout, it turns out, is free. The building hands it out generously because it costs nothing and sounds like something.
Self-Assessment, unedited
I delivered what most people in my position could not. I used AI to carry the parts of the job that used to eat my whole day, research, drafts, the first pass on anything that required more patience than I had left to give it, and I put the hours that freed up into the work that actually moves the needle, the brand awareness side, the modifications that make people notice a name before they notice a title. Simple changes. Consistent ones. The kind that compound if you keep making them and nobody’s watching closely enough to take credit. I am watching closely enough. I know exactly which quarter this started paying off, even if the review in front of me does not reflect it.
Additional Notes
I want to name something plainly, because nobody else in this building will. What gets called “quiet quitting” doesn’t map onto me the same way it maps onto everybody else discussing it quietly at the coffee station. The whole premise of “quiet quitting” is that you can quietly do less and mostly get away with it. That premise assumes a level of benefit of the doubt I have never once been extended here. Black women earned 65 cents for every dollar paid to white men in this country in 2024, according to the National Women’s Law Center, and that number was actually better two years earlier, before it slid backward again. 46% of women of color say they plan to leave their jobs within three to six months, McKinsey found, and only 4% of C-suite seats are held by women of color compared to 20% held by white women. Underneath those numbers is what dynamic researchers have started calling a surveillance paradox, invisible when it’s convenient for everyone else and hyper-visible the moment a mistake needs a face attached to it. I have lived inside that paradox long enough to know exactly how much room it leaves for quietly doing less. None. So, I found the version that was actually available to me. Not less output. Less of myself in it.
Areas for Development
Definite tone policing, though nobody calls it that in the actual meeting. The stated reasoning for why there’s no room for promotion changes depending on who you ask, but it circles back to the same shape every time. Being a Black woman who is fully on top of her game makes some people uncomfortable. That discomfort is theirs to carry, not mine to manage. Some find my presence intimidating, and I don’t have to do a single thing to produce that reaction. I could walk in and say good morning and it would still land as a challenge to somebody. When I actually do speak up, when I point out the gap between what leadership says happened and what actually happened, that discomfort gets handed a new name. Difficult. Not a team player. Same reaction, dressed up as feedback. So here is what they get in return now. My silence. I add the positive details. I provide the praise. That’s what they asked for, and the request has been delivered in full. The position has become the place my direct deposit hits. Nothing more attaches to it anymore. No emotional investment left to spend here.
Compensation Relative to Output
Unmeasured, by design. The output is easy to point to. The compensation conversation disappears into thin air, allegedly rescheduled for next cycle, a cycle that keeps arriving without it.
Plan Going Forward
Keep building the brand. Keep letting the machine carry what it can carry so I can spend what’s left of me somewhere it counts. I have not decided yet whether staying quiet is strategy or surrender. Ask me again next quarter, allegedly, if there is one where anything actually changes. I might still be figuring that part out myself.
How has your work experience changed as you’ve become more experienced, older? Other than retire, how have you navigated the political waters? Let’s discuss in the comments.
