Glimpses of some quirky ACRs

ANNUAL confidential reports (ACRs) have their ironies and contradictions. Ideally, these reports are supposed to give employees what they deserve. An officer commonly says, “What can I give to you except a good ACR?” He thus expresses his veiled gratitude to the compliant employee. He appreciates an average worker with highfalutin words in ACRs, such as ‘meticulous’, ‘conscientious’ and ‘career-conscious’.

The catch comes when the worker is an employee union leader who strikes a balance between his work and his nuisance value. The more problems he creates, the more he commands respect among his colleagues. He also gets due importance from his superiors as they have to keep him in their good books.

I faced such a ‘stalwart’ in the initial days of my career as a branch officer. He would come in the morning and hold an impromptu meeting with his colleagues about “the main issue of the day”. The meeting would continue till the people standing in the queue at various counters became restless. Just as we pacified the waiting public, the meeting concluded with some unspoken mandate.

The people would heave a sigh of relief and I would refocus on my work. After some time, the ‘all-important’ issue would be revealed: The union leader would demand a Hot Case for the staff as food used to get cold by lunch time. He would resume his seat after getting an assurance and announcing it loudly.

I discussed with the chief manager how to rein in this employee lest he came up with more ‘issues’. It was January, the time when ACRs were written. We filled forms and gave each employee a rating — poor, average or outstanding.

The ‘stalwart’ was incidentally in the fray for promotion due to the length of his service. We decided to get him promoted, more for getting him out of our way than for any other consideration.

An exactly opposite scenario was encountered when I was a member of an interview committee to select officers from a group of assistants. One candidate answered our questions quite well, but his demeanour did not exude confidence. On being asked, he told us that he was not very hopeful as his last ACR may not be good enough for his promotion. We noticed that out of three ACRs, only the last one was ‘average’. He said he had suffered because of his honesty in reporting to the higher authorities that two computers that had been received by the office just a month ago had gone missing. His boss had felt offended on being bypassed and may have penalised him through his ACR.

As he waited outside, we enquired about his claims, which were found to be correct; the computers were still untraced. We reported the matter to the higher office and got his ACR corrected by the same officer; the candidate was subsequently promoted.

The ACRs thus ran a full karmic circle of farce, punishment and redemption. And we were part of this grand drama.

Musings