Well behaved women rarely make history

Musings from a self-proclaimed misfit (and trouble-maker)

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Confidentiality

So...every year my company does this stupid Q12 employee satisfaction survey.  Apparently to find out if we are happy working where we work and if not, why.  It's 12 questions that you have to answer on a scale of 1-5, 1 being Completely Disagree to 5 being Completely Agree or some shit like that.  It's ridiculous.  It has lame questions like "I have a best friend at work"  WTF?  Or "In the last 7 days someone has praised my work", or "My team is committed to doing excellent work", etc.  For the last 2 years I have lied and given all 5's, just to get the damn thing over with.  But this year, I decided to be honest for a change.  Because, to be honest, my company is NOT the best company to work for, and many of my coworkers are lazy asses and suck at their  "job".

So, we are all corralled into this computer training room, by department, where there are 10 computers lined up, 2 rows, 5 in each row, and a representative from HR (who, as my coworker says, has the personality of a tuna fish) passing out letters to each employee with an "access code" to get into the survey on the survey.  In addition to the access code, there is a very long letter included that goes on and on about how our responses to the 12 questions are completely confidential and that no one will ever know what our answers are, blah blah blah...

I take issue with this for many reasons:
1)  If it's "confidential" why the hell are you giving me an assigned access code?  Clearly, SOMEBODY can link my name/access code to my answers, right?  Who?  And why?
2)  The person sitting on either side of me at the computer can dart their eyes over to my computer screen at any given time and see my answers.
3)  The Tuna Fish queen (AKA HR rep) is walking around, hovering behind people, clearly looking at people's answers.

And then there's my boss, who asks me, outright, how many 5's I gave.  WTF?  Is nothing sacred anymore?

I know that when she gets the results and sees that we did not score 100% she is going to question all of us.  So, what the hell is the point of having a "confidential" survey if you can't be honest in your responses for fear of repercussion?  Unbelievable.  I don't like confrontation, so I will play dumb when she tells us we scored low.  What's the alternative?  Lose my job?  I don't think so.

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