Upper management bans above-average reviews to avoid raises, pushing employees to question why they should even try: ‘I was shocked when I got a “met expectations,” 3/5 across the board’

Author image for Etai Eshet
Etai Eshet • Editor
Mar 23, 2025 9:00 AM EDT

Here's a classic corporate power move: spend hours designing an intricate performance review process. A system to measure success, reward effort, and highlight areas for growth. Sounds promising, right? Now, at the last minute, remember that rewarding success might cost money—GASP—and proceed to rate everyone as "meh." Boom! What a win! You've successfully created a system that requires time, energy, and paperwork but accomplishes absolutely nothing. Hooray for us! Someone get the PowerPoint ready; we're adding this to the quarterly accomplishments slide.

Isn't corporate culture magnificent? The sheer audacity of inventing elaborate frameworks solely to ignore their purpose deserves some kind of award. Probably a "met expectations" one. It's like building a fancy ice cream shop with 31 flavors but only ever serving vanilla. Exciting! Innovative! Revolutionary!

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  • Saved the company millions? “Met expectations!” Set the break room on fire while microwaving a fish sandwich? Also “met expectations!” Showed up wearing pants? “Exceeding expectations”—just kidding! That’s “met expectations” too! It’s like a carnival game where every prize is the same tiny plastic finger trap, no matter how accurately you throw the ball.

  • "Boss admitted that upper management is forbidding managers from giving positive performance reviews."

    EXCELLENT “I find it disgusting quite frankly. unbelievably demoralizing❞ AVERAGE
    via ozgurkeser

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • Boss admitted that upper management is forbidding managers from giving positive performance reviews.
    via greendaisy188
  • After busting my a this last year, earning an award, getting tons of positive feedback from various colleagues, I was shocked when I got a "met expectations" performance review. There were 7 different categories, and I got a 3/5 across the board.
    via greendaisy188
  • All of the improvement suggestions were quite literally "keep doing what you're doing”. There was zero negative feedback as well.
    via greendaisy188
  • □ Excellent Average □ Poor :) : 1) (: (
    via IvelinRadkov
  • I asked my manager why I didn't get exceed expectations in at least a couple different categories. She struggled to answer. After a bit of back and forth, she admitted to me that
    via greendaisy188
  • managers were told by upper management to give everyone a "met expectations" performance review this year. I'm assuming to keep raises to a minimum.
    via greendaisy188
  • Has anyone ever heard of this? I find it disgusting quite frankly. How unbelievably demoralizing.
    via greendaisy188
  • Cheezburger Image 10481932800
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  • I am job searching for a multitude of reasons. But I just found this absolutely wild.
    via greendaisy188
  • Any managers or others ever heard of companies doing this?
    via greendaisy188
  • R-Dragon_Thunderzord Take your awards, land a new job with them and get the HL out of there. They're doing this because they're children who don't know
    via R-Dragon_Thunderzord
  • how to deal with the current orange uncertainty in the economy and don't have the money for basic cost of living adjustments (or are simply pocketing the money for themselves in management)
    via R-Dragon_Thunderzord
  • belkarbitterleaf Yeah. Sounds like corporate. I just got one of the highest reviews, but one of the lower raises I've ever gotten. "It's going to be a tough year"
    via belkarbitterleaf
  • BlackcatLucifer I've managed people for years and have always given accurate end of year reviews. Every single year, I get told to reduce my scores.
    via BlackcatLucifer
  • immallama21629 This is basically every company ever. "No one ever gets a 5 out of 5, cause they can always do better" "you did ok this year, and you exceeded your sales goals again, but you didn't make (unobtainable)% over last
    via immallama21629
  • year." "You're performance this year was stellar, but as a whole team, we didn't do so well, so we can't recognize you with more than a 5% raise"
    via immallama21629
  • Nevermind04 I was a one-man department at my last job so I had to do my own performance review. I was given instructions about how to score certain aspects of my role and like your boss, I was basically
    via Nevermind04
  • told that our version of "meets expectations" was the baseline even for an exceptional worker, since everyone was expected to be exceptional.
    via Nevermind04
  • I was as fair as I could be and I believe I produced relevant and tangible cause that I had far exceeded the expectations for my role and had earned a pay raise. Of course, it was denied. Not only was it denied, executive running the site (and my boss) edited my scores to
    via Nevermind04
  • "conform to the average" which put me one single point below earning a raise. Nevermind that my role was anything but average and that I had proven it with two dozed metrics, editing my
    via Nevermind04
  • scores on a document I had already signed was 100% out of line. Unfortunately, I lived in a state where that bulls.... is legal and although my position was critical to the business, my boss had
    via Nevermind04
  • proven that he was the type of person to cut off his own nose to spite his face. If I pushed back even a little he wouldn't hesitate to fire me. He'd take some amount of pride in it and brag around the office, even though
    via Nevermind04
  • everyone else would be disgusted with him. I'd seen him do it twice at that point and in one of those instances he screwed that project so bad that they fell hopelessly behind and the business was penalized
    via Nevermind04
  • nearly 2 million dollars for failing to fulfill a contract on time. My boss left early that day to golf, leaving me the rest of the day to think about it. I left him a hand- written note in his inbox
    via Nevermind04
  • telling him that his leadership has profoundly failed to meet expectations and that it was time for me to resign. I offered the same amount of notice he had given to the other former members of my team: immediate.
    via Nevermind04
  • Katz3njamm3r Yep. This happens all the time. That's why I never take my constantly "average" reviews seriously because they need to keep them low so they can fake improvement year over year. It's all pretty dumb.
    via Katz3njamm3r
  • regprenticer I worked for a bank where staff were graded 1-5 with 3 being "met expectations" and 5 would be "exceeded expectations".
    via regprenticer
  • When I became a manager I was involved in agreeing the grades for 120 people. Managers all had to meet to compare results and ensure "consistency". In 2.5 years of assessing grades every 6 months one person got a 4
    via regprenticer
  • once and no-one got a 5..so only one person got "above average" in roughly 600 chances.
    via regprenticer

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management boss workplace-stories hr toxic-workplace manager bosses work PTO managers supervisor workplace Horrible Bosses work-life balance
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